1. You send BTC to PayPal 2. PayPal sends equivalent dollars to the merchant.
But what is "equivalent"? What is the price of BTC at any given moment? It fluctuates a lot and you can't "lock-in" a price without waiting minutes (as opposed to milliseconds in other financial systems). So between the time that you sent dollars to the merchant and when you sold the coins you are exposed to risk of holding BTC.
Lightning does not help with this.