Is PayPal GDPR compliant?

What does PayPal do?

Checkout and express buttons. On a payment page its cookies are strictly necessary; the fraud-detection script some integrations place on every page is the part that is not.

Does PayPal need consent?

No consent is needed for PayPal on its own, because it does not store or read anything on the device beyond what is strictly necessary. That is not a free pass: it must still be named in your privacy policy, and the request itself still reveals the visitor's IP address to the provider.

GDPR Art. 13(1)(e)

Does PayPal send data outside the EEA?

Yes. PayPal processes data outside the European Economic Area, so you need a transfer mechanism under Chapter V and you have to say so in your privacy policy. In practice this means standard contractual clauses, or a provider certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

GDPR Art. 44 · GDPR Art. 46

How do we detect PayPal?

We load your page in a real browser as a first-time visitor who clicks nothing, then look at what it contacted. PayPal is recognised by requests to paypal.com and paypalobjects.com, and we report whether it merely loaded or actually sent data, and whether it set a cookie before any choice was made.