In Europe, PayPal actually is incorporated as a bank, so all normal rules apply. Merchant accounts for digital goods are subject to a lot of risk! Stripe et. a

In Europe, PayPal actually is incorporated as a bank, so all normal rules apply. Merchant accounts for digital goods are subject to a lot of risk! Stripe et. al. are the credit unions of the card processing world -- they can offer more personalized service. But they also can't really scale and meet all demand, or handle the very largest accounts, without putting many PayPal-esque structures in place.