Actually, you can pay directly with your credit card.
When you get to the payments page, scroll down just a little, and look below where it offers to let you enter your paypal information.
You will see the large blue letters:
"Don't have a Paypal account?"
Click on that blue line, and fields will then open up, allowing you to enter your credit card data directly.
Do not be put off by the line that says "(Optional) Join PayPal for faster future checkout".
There is no obligation to connect your credit card to a paypal account.
AFTER you have made your direct credit card payment, you are done, and you do not have to avail yourself of their OPTIONAL offer to make a paypal account. (It's only there as a convenience).
It's unfortunate that the payment methods page is worded so awkwardly, but we have no control over the layout of that page, since paypal corp is also acting as our direct credit card payments processor, and the secure page is hosted on their server. I have asked them to re-word the page - but to no avail!
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There is one slight convenience factor associated with making payment with a paypal account, rather than direct credit card payments, and that is if you have set up a 'recurring payment' (optional), to automatically renew your subscription.
If you choose to do that with a credit card, then in five years (or less) when your card expiry date changes (or, any time you happen to change your billing address) - the auto-renew will fail, and you will have to re-start the subscription auto-renewal fresh.
Using a paypal account, as long as you have kept Paypal up-to-date with your credit card data, then the auto-renewals will automatically take care of themselves "eternally"...
