Stripe only launched in Canada late 2012: https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-in-canada So did braintree: https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/braintree-in-europe-a...
And we're america's hat. Many countries are still bereft of options.
(disclosure: I'm now a stripe employee, opinions are my own)
paypal is only relevant because they invented the uber-way. They ignore all legislation. push away. and nobody makes them accountable for anything.
they are pretty much a bank for free
They're more regulated than all but a handful of international banks, and it's not at all free.
PayPal is a licensed money transmitter in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Most of those states have bond requirements for MTAs, typically six figure deposits. They're subject to 52 different regulatory agencies in the US, in addition to Regulation E consumer protections and the USA Patriot Act federally. Their US<->international transfers are overseen by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control like any bank. They're not an ordinary bank in the US only because many years ago a judge ruled that they don't qualify to be one by the nature of their business; they tried unsuccessfully to be licensed as one in order to get FDIC insurance on deposits.
They are a licensed bank in all of the EU, with a bank charter in Luxembourg, regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier. In Australia, they're licensed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission as a financial product and by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority as a purchased payment facility provider, which is a type of authorized depository institution (i.e. bank). In most of southeast Asia, they operate under their subsidiary PayPal Pte. Ltd. which is a licensed stored value facility regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. They operate in 203 markets in total, most of which have separate financial regulations and regulatory bodies PayPal has to comply with.
go see how many other licenses and laws you have to comply to open a proper bank with a branch in any of those states.
I'd never use or recommend paypal for any business. Their history of seizing funds, freezing accounts, and pulling money from bank accounts is atrocious.
In reality their processes for investigating are often a neverending nightmare that punish innocent people, or in this case are hampering one of our only hopes for reasonably secure mobile communications: http://neo900.org/news/paypal-trouble-delays-project
I am not sure who to blame: the PayPal management or the viscios copyright regime, where a company with the legal resources of PayPal is still afraid.
The "problematic behaviour" you describe is invariably related to the fraud prevention mechanisms required to offer their service. That's the deal - Paypal are incredibly liberal in opening accounts, but they reserve the right to freeze an account pending investigation if something looks sketchy.
Paypal still fills a very useful role. I've used their services to receive payments for over a decade without incident.