I don’t know if there is any precedent for answering your own question. But I might as well.
You pay with a credit card or debit, by actually clicking on the PayPal link. Then you select credit card as your option.
I am wary about clicking on links, when I don’t know exactly where they will take me. So I hesitated to click on the PayPal option. But when I got the courage to do so, I made the above discovery.
It is still good advice, though, for anyone else having the same question I did.
And while we’re at it, what is the policy to answering your own post? That is also a good question, I think.
I’m sure someone could come up with some way of making it an issue, but in cases like this where the OP was genuine and the answer is also genuine, it’s not a problem. In fact, others who have the same issue would probably appreciate you taking the time to post the answer, so thanks for posting it.
Paypal occasionally re-arranges their page layouts and sometimes the credit card option isn’t obvious. We’ve also had reports of the different options not showing up properly on all browsers or all browser configurations. If you don’t see the option, try another browser, if you have one available.
This is simply an observation and is not to be taken as anything other than that.
I am not speaking for anyone or anything, just telling you what I have observed.
The confusion lies in the fact that PayPal is not only an option for paying your subscription fees, it is also the company that is processing the transaction, regardless of how you pay.
It’s a breath mint, it’s a candy mint …
They deliberately make the “pay with a credit card” option small to see and difficult to understand to drive more customers to the “pay using your PayPal account” option. Gee, why would they do that?
And in the past, I’ve had trouble finding that option, depending on the browser I’m using. So if you’re having trouble finding it, try another browser.
The portal to use your PayPal account tends to be all biggity while the hyperlink to click to the use your credit card option tends to be very small. Tricky Mr. PayPal!
For some people, the option to use your credit card isn’t very small. It’s non-existent. We don’t know exactly what causes this, as other users with the same browser have been able to see the credit card option (however small Tricky Mr. Paypal made it). It may be related to particular browser extensions, like ad and script blockers, or it may be related to where the user is, as some sites serve up different content based on the location of your IP.
While we don’t know what causes it, we do know that users who have experienced this problem have been able to get around it by using a different browser.