Why do she not have a bank account?
Any adult should have one.
Anyway. It will be difficult to operate a PayPal account without a bank account and without a debit or credit card. In the long run Paypal for verification purposes tend to require those things in order to verify users.
It is possible to open and start using an account without those tough. But then in order to pay for something someone ( a friend) have to help out by sending personal gift payments (personal gift payments are free of PayPal fees when sending in the same country and when the funding source is a bank account or PayPal balance) to her PayPal account. That way money will end up in her PayPal balance that can be used for a purchase of goods on line. So if you are a friend she can pay you cash in your hand, and then you transfer funds from your account to his/hers account in order to make a payment.
There is another very limited option (I am not even sure it works at all anymore) and that is if she buys a cash debit card (pre filled Visa/Mastercard) that can be bought in some stores. Those cards can then be used to pay for goods and services. But PayPal is not friendly towards those kinds of cards because they are anonymous. So as of late there is heavy restrictions on PayPal against using those. There is a life time limit on 16 cards on Paypal accouns and that limit will be used up fast when constantly changing cards and most of them can not be added because they fail at PayPal's verification process. So in general, in the long run those can not be used.
The best is simply for your student to get a bank account and a debit card and then sign up for a PayPal account to get her life on line started.
