< In many countries, the standard payment problems have been largely solved locally, at least for the local markets. In the Netherlands, a wide selection of payment providers will give you the ability to receive payment through virtually any method.
Is it really? Sometimes I feel the Netherlands is the only country where it's been solved. Who of you live in a country with a satisfying, cheap, standard local payment provider?
In Sweden you can either use bank transfer, invoice (provided by Klarna), and I do not think accepting credit card payments is hard either.
Almost no Swedish businesses who target the Swedish market use Paypal. Paypal is mostly use by Swedish companies when they want to target any country in the world (for example Minecraft).
Dealing with the Swedish credit card providers isn't really any nicer than dealing with PayPal, but it feel better to be dealing with a local company in case something goes wrong.
In Europe bank transfers solve the person-person transfers so there's no need for PayPal for those situations, but for small fry accepting credit card payments it's hard to beat.
In Germany and Finland direct bank transfers are a usable option. They have no fees for the buyer and very low fees for the seller (as a business account holder at an average German bank, you pay 45 cents per transaction regardless of size to receive payments). In Finland, depending on the bank, you don't even have to pay that. This is similar for all eurozone countries. In the UK there are a multitude of local payment providers as well. The real issue is cross-currency, cross-continent payments. There is no simple solution for selling to US customers paying in dollars if the seller is in the EU. The only serious player in that field is paypal.
Is it really? Sometimes I feel the Netherlands is the only country where it's been solved. Who of you live in a country with a satisfying, cheap, standard local payment provider?