Contaro vs PayPal

Contaro

Accounting software for self-employed people and small businesses in Austria

Contaro is accounting software for self-employed people, sole proprietors and small businesses in Austria, covering invoicing, receipts, expenses and tax preparation in one German-language tool. It is built for the Kleinunternehmer and Selbständige who need their books to be correct but have no intention of making accounting their job. Invoices are created from customisable templates with your own logo and colours, and carry the österreichische Pflichtangaben — the mandatory fields an Austrian invoice must show — along with proper USt handling, so compliance is the default rather than something you check afterwards. Recurring invoices can be issued weekly, monthly or quarterly, and overdue items feed a dunning workflow instead of being tracked in a spreadsheet. The receipt side leans on AI: photograph or upload a receipt and Contaro extracts the supplier, date and amount and proposes an expense category, which you confirm before it saves. A built-in assistant called Taro answers questions against your own data and drafts invoices, reminders and credit notes. A Gmail integration finds and files invoices that arrived by email. At year end it produces the E/A-Bericht and a complete tax package for your Steuerberater, exports to PDF and CSV, and supports XRechnung XML for recipients who require it. Pricing starts with a 14-day Pro trial that drops automatically to a free tier of five invoices a month, so there is no cancellation to remember. Data handling is DSGVO-compliant.

PayPal

Online payments for consumers and merchants

PayPal is one of the world's largest online payment companies. Consumers use it to pay online, send money to friends and store payment methods securely, while businesses use it to accept payments on websites, in apps, through invoices and in person. Its origin is part of internet history. PayPal grew in the early 2000s as the payment method for eBay, solving the problem of trusting strangers online, and it became synonymous with online payments. Its founding team, often called the PayPal Mafia, went on to start or fund many major technology companies. After years as part of eBay, PayPal became an independent public company in 2015. For consumers, the core value is convenience and protection. People can pay without entering card details on every website, and PayPal's buyer protection policies cover eligible purchases that do not arrive or are not as described. PayPal also offers peer-to-peer payments, buy now pay later options, a debit card and, in some countries, crypto trading. Venmo, which PayPal owns, is a popular peer-to-peer payments app in the United States. For merchants, PayPal provides checkout buttons, a full payment processing stack through PayPal's platforms and Braintree, invoicing, subscriptions and point-of-sale tools, and its recognisable brand can increase conversion because many shoppers trust it. Fees are charged as a percentage of transactions plus a fixed fee, varying by country, payment type and currency conversion. The common criticisms concern account holds, frozen funds and disputes, which can hurt small businesses, currency conversion costs, and customer service. Seller protection policies have conditions that merchants should understand. Alternatives include Stripe for developer-friendly online payment processing; Square for in-person and small-business payments; Wise for low-cost international transfers; Apple Pay and Google Pay for wallet-based checkout; Adyen for enterprise payments; Revolut for personal money management; and Zelle and Venmo for peer-to-peer payments in the US. Choose PayPal when you want a trusted, widely accepted way to pay and get paid online.