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First of all, I am an active retail investor. I don't invest in financial stocks so I haven't kept up with PYPL as a investment asset until recently. I have never owned, and will never trade PYPL. I saw a thread recently about buying PYPL "at the bottom" and I figured I'd explain first hand on a story that appears to be very common and why they're a slumping business.
I've had a Paypal account for 16 years. I got it when I was in college and buying/selling on Ebay. I got scammed once when I was sent a fake product and when Paypal stepped in, i got a refund. Ever since then, I've used paypal because it was an easy option (no need to type in my CC every time) and I trusted the protection.
In more recent years, with an IPhone/Pixel I now have the option of Apple pay and Google Wallet among other options. I still use by habit Paypal on the assumption of buyer protection.
So after 16 years, I purchased a camera lens via PayPal. It not the same lens as the listing. For those who own cameras, it was the wrong lens and wrong mount. The merchant basically said "its a camera lens. doesn't matter if it wasn't the same lens, its still a camera lens". Pretty scummy so I escalated to Paypal. After being my default purchase option for 16 years online, I needed buyer protection for the 2nd time.
Rather than making a decision, paypal tried to force me to accept some kind of compromise with the merchant. For an item that costs \~$100, they would give me a partial refund of $60 and I would have to pay with tracking and insurance to mail back to them. So I lose money, the item, and have to pay more to lose even more money for no reason. This is basically a scummy merchant playing the refund game. I called Paypal and it went nowhere.
Congrats Paypal. No more payment for flights in Paypal, no more online shopping in Paypal. It's not any more convenient than other options like Apple Pay, Klarna and what not. If there's no protection and you basically help scummy merchants scam, why bother?
16 years, now the account is deleted because the trust is gone. CLV from now on, is 0. Looking at the Paypal forums, it seems that's the trend. It feels like Paypal user base come from the old Ebay days and now its just bad, like if private equity bought it and maximized short term profit over users.
For those who are "buying at the bottom" for PYPL, good luck.