If you’ve lost interest I can respect that, but I think it’s worth it to continue the thread to avoid wrong conclusions.
Customer Service Manager Christa made a thread on how to get paypal to work.
It specifically mentions that you can add a bank account. Since this is an official statement from Customer Support and it matches my experience (I use paypal with a bank account), I would persist and contact them again. You definitely don’t need a credit card, so there must be some other issue that they might be able to help you with.