You can't do without airports and airlines, but why PayPal still exists in 2024 - I don't understand.
Because they have a ton of users. People who don’t have credit card numbers saved on autofill so PayPal is more convenient. People also think it’s safer because the website doesn’t see your card number
That aside, I've seen many normal people use it for the reasons I described: They don't want to type in their card number and they think it's unsafe to type in their card number. It's (literally) all in their head so don't think too hard about it.
The practical alternative is Apple Pay, but you can't use it on Android.
What don't you understand? In the US, the party that says "the government should not interfere with business" wins a lot of elections and the party that says "the government should protect consumers from corporate harm" wins way fewer elections.
So we have almost no consumer protections, so it's largely not illegal or risky for a business to fuck over their consumers which is very profitable so most businesses fuck over their consumers in various ways.
They'll convert to your card's currency automatically and the option to revert is hidden behind an inconspicuous "See other currency options" prompt