Why doesn’t Proton strongly encourage paying anonymously like some services and do they log more data than others? Is this concerning for you?

All mail providers have to, by law, comply with whatever relevant alliances, local or international with agencies like the NSA or FBI.

They do recommend cash as anonymous payment, but I’m not sure what you mean by "strongly recommends".

It seems like you’re mixing the VPN and Mail services together and comparing solely VPN providers. You need more “metadata” for a mail account, but if you’re referring to that protestor story recently then that was due to the client using an unmasked payment method.

That story was very click-baity and made it seem like Proton was happily showing the FBI around the user account and handing over emails.