There is no privacy-focused PayPal alternative in the US, in part because US money transfer laws and policies (e.g. Know Your Customer) directly oppose privacy.
However, there are a couple of new projects that might eventually lead to something less bad for privacy than PayPal is:
GNU Taler, if they ever get any exchanges, and they either figure out how to mitigate the high fees for wire transfers or use some other settlement method when people on different exchanges make small payments. (Their plan to use batch wire transfers won’t help until the exchanges get a lot of adoption and frequent use. Of course, high fees discourage adoption and use, so this might not ever happen.)
FedNow, if banks ever use it to offer appealing person-to-person payment services instead of just using it for themselves and their business customers.
Cryptocurrencies are not reliably fungible, nor stable, nor suitable replacements for PayPal. They have their uses, and avoiding government control has its appeal, but it’s not what OP asked for.
There is no privacy-focused PayPal alternative in the US, in part because US money transfer laws and policies (e.g. Know Your Customer) directly oppose privacy.
However, there are a couple of new projects that might eventually lead to something less bad for privacy than PayPal is:
Taler looks like a cool project.
Monero as the current fiat system becomes more and more untenable and people look for a solution not controlled by governments.
Cryptocurrencies are not reliably fungible, nor stable, nor suitable replacements for PayPal. They have their uses, and avoiding government control has its appeal, but it’s not what OP asked for.
Thanks for the input