I recall having this problem before. I’ve just checked and followed the instructions in that thread. And now you’re stuck with me for another 2 years. 
I can’t see any way around it. I was going to re-subscribe, just for old time’s sake (even though I don’t frequent these boards anymore). But, alas, I just can’t get past the Paypal barrier. So, I’ll put my card away and say adios and thanks for all the good times.
I used Firefox 38.0, then Safari 8.0.6. With both, after clicking on “Pay with Paypal” (or whatever it says), the next page offers no other choice than Paypal.
But there’s a “Country” dropdown at the top. I changed it to United States and the page reloaded. It then displayed a choice of paying by credit card or Paypal. Changing the country back to Canada removed the credit-card choice.
I refuse to use PayPal because it’s the spawn of Satan, so the Straight Dope remains the loser.
Well that’s very weird, because as I said earlier this thread I have both options. I am Canadian, using a Canadian ISP (Shaw.ca), and selecting Canada as a country (well, it defaults to that for me).
I’m still not about to renew until I need to (next month), but I just make a donation to another (Canadian) organization that appeared to use the same interface (charging via PayPal without actually becoming a PayPal subscriber) with the same prompts that I described in an earlier message in this thread and I had no problems.
OK - My subscription came due and I just renewed it (both the subscription itself and the custom title). I have no idea why it seems to cause problems for some Canadians, but I had no problems at all paying using a credit card, without setting up a Paypal account.
I am Canadian, using a Canadian ISP (shaw.ca) and I don’t do any hanky-panky (e.g. VPNing, proxies, etc.) to look like I am somewhere else. I indicated in the “country” drop-down that I am Canadian. Using Firefox 38.0 on Linux.
i’m on Shaw, too, and I tried it again, this time with Safari 8.0.7 that I run bare naked — no add-ons, no ad blockers — on OS 10.10.4 on my iMac. Safari 8.0.7 and OS 10.10.4 are the most recent versions.
Again, the only “choice” I’m offered is to fill in all the blanks, which means registering with PayPal. When I change the country dropdown to United States, the real choice of using PayPal or a credit/debit card is offered.
I hope you didn’t fill in the blanks and end up registering with PayPal.
Beginning to wonder if you think the first area where you fill in all the credit card information is part of registering for Paypal. It isn’t. It is for processing a credit card charge via Paypal, but it doesn’t register you for Paypal. Look closely when you do it.
Whether I use Firefox, Safari or SeaMonkey (all the most recent versions) doesn’t matter. The same payment pages appear regardless.
After choosing one year for $14.95, the next screen says:
Under that:
Under that is a button that says
Clicking on that because there’s nothing else to click on and nothing else on the page, brings up the next page that says in red type
Under that
Under that is a link that says
After clicking on My selected country, that button disappears but everything else stays the same, including Create a Paypal account at the top.
Under Country Canada I’m to fill in my credit-card number and choose among Visa, MasterCard, Discover or something that may be American Express, but it’s too small to read. When I zoom in on it, the logo falls apart, making it even more illegible.
After clicking on Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express (I presume) I’m to fill in my name, address, phone number and all the rest, then I’m supposed to click on Agree and Create Account.
Then it says
Under that is a link that says Payments processed by PayPal.
There is no other choice of payment until I change the country to United States.
I’d supply screen shots, but I quit DropBox when Condoleezza Rice was appointed to the board, and I dropped ImageShack when it dropped its free accounts. I hadn’t posted anything there for years, so it would have been a waste of money.
I was unable to pay without creating a paypal account this time (from France). I looked up and down but couldn’t find a way.
This is VERY weird. I am not seeing what kenm is describing, even though we are both in Canada, and both have tried Firefox (that’s all that I have tried). We seem to be different after “Choose a way to pay”.
I pulled up the payment screen again. At the top is “Your order summary” on the left with the details of the order, and “Choose a way to pay” on the right. Continuing down the right is “Pay with my Paypal account” with an arrow to click in order to do that.
Below that is “Don’t have a Paypal account? (optional) Join Paypal for faster future checkout” (the part after the ? is on the next line). Below that is all the usual junk for a credit card purchase, with a “Pay” button at the very bottom. Note that none of the credit card junk has you set up a Paypal id or anything like that. I didn’t do screen caps when I paid, but as I recall the next screen reminded me that I could create a Paypal account for faster ordering next time, but didn’t require me to.
I am not about to do further experimenting in case I either screw up my SDMB registration or accidentally charge something, but there is clearly something more to it than what country we are in.
If somebody tells me how to save an image for free someplace where SDMBers can retrieve it I’ll screen cap that screen.
Tried to edit my reply but wasn’t fast enough.
Just realized something - I have little triangular arrows on that screen to expand or collapse what is showing. The “Pay with my Paypal account” is collapsed (right pointing arrow, nothing relevant to Paypal following). The “Don’t have a Paypal account…” is expanded (down pointing arrow, credit card info following). Can you expand/collapse anything on your screen?
Maybe PayPal hates Apple. I don’t recall Jobs badmouthing it like he did Adobe and Flash.
Edit to add: I’ll try it again and look for the triangles.
2nd Edit: The only triangle expands the create-a-PayPal account to log in to PayPal, if the user already has an account.
Someone, somewhere would not like those either.
On the off chance PayPal hates Macs, I downloaded the Firefox extension User Agent Switcher, and had Firefox declare itself Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows (hardly a sophisticated spoof, though).
PayPal remains the only option.
OK - The mystery deepens. I have dual boot set up; I can choose when I boot whether I want to use Ubuntu Linux or Windows 7.
I spend almost all of my time in Linux, and when there I am currently using Firefox 38.0 and things are as I described previously (i.e. I am not required to create a Paypal account).
I decided to boot into Windows 7 instead today. Here I am using Firefox 37.0.2. Lo and behold when I pull up the payment screen I get exactly what kenm is describing (either use an existing Paypal account or create a new one)!
I give up. Anytime anything that might be relevant changes I’ll see what the payment screen looks like, but other than that I am too lazy to poke around any more.