> WHY

From my experience in the UK it's the only option for accepting payment that doesn't have the serious admin and financial outlay of getting set up with a proper merchant account. Perhaps in this case going with EventBrite from the beginning would have made more sense but that's only an easy call to make in hindsight.

Edit: You seem to have changed your comment. Consider this a reply to the underlying message of your sarcasm.

(Sorry, I thought I ninja-edited quickly enough.)

How serious is the admin and financial outlay? I want to say that it would be worth it to avoid the risk of Paypal freezing your funds (or worse), but that's a hard call to make without knowing exactly what the costs would be.

It's difficult/impossible to get a merchant account without a previous trading history and money to show off. The financial spend isn't too bad, but from what I can tell you need to have some sizeable accounts before you can get one. Basically they're aimed at the larger business end of things, which makes small projects that need online transactions a non-starter.

(I tried and failed to set up a merchant account and instead had to settle for PayPal as the only other option)

I've been involved in small-medium events run in the UK that used Google Checkout. I don't know the details involved though.

Paypal is often the only option. Nobody wants to use paypal, they're forced to because paypal is all they can afford.