I used to live in the United States and recently moved to Germany. Using PayPal for payments is a lot more common here than Germany. In fact I connected my Uber account to my credit card via PayPal and my partner pays for a lot of things online via PayPal.
PayPal is also used for transferring money between friends and family quite frequently
I have been trying to help someone in Guatemala receive payments from international tourists and PayPal seems to be the best option we've found, even though I don't like using it (horror stories about money being stranded in locked account, etc).
Dutch people always complain that in Germany they can't use their phones to pay. It really does feel like going back to 1995 sometimes.
Yeah! Germany is big in the PayPal game; especially since they introduced delayed payment. There's an new alternative: https://wero-wallet.eu/
I think the reasoning was to be less dependent on the US. I hope to see it exceed – more competition is great.