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Are you a shill for the political elite, who, I am sure, want to regulate every single thing and creature under the Sun, so they can impose their own costs and controls over everybody?

I don't see transaction costs of PayPal being 'ridiculously high' at all, I like their service. In fact there ARE alternatives (and more), and I do not like them.

If you do not like their transaction costs, why are you using them? Nobody is FORCING you to use them, right? It's not like somebody is standing with a gun to your head, saying: here, use this PayPal, it's 'good for you', or is there?

PayPal's profit margins is their business, saying that banks would blush if they had those profit margins is disingenuous, banks get 'FDIC insurance', banks get fake credit from the Fed, banks post 'record earnings' based on spread they make from Fed's 0% interest rates to Treasury's 2-3% bond purchases.

I don't put debit card into PayPal I use my credit card, if PayPal wants problems it can get them and not from me, from the credit card company. So if your mode of operation: give anybody my banking information and never expect any problems, well, no amount of FDIC and 'consumer protection' will help you.

Oh and I forgot to note that PayPal generally gives out way too much personal info. If you want to know someones real name, all you need to do is send that email $0.01 and it will be conveniently shown to you. I guess it would work for all emails you have (but don't know who they are) if they just use PayPal with the same email. Sometimes it's good to know the other parties name, especially if doing business, but it should be an option.

Best system I've seen is with WebMoney, where user have reputation score based on their activity amount, users can write about problems in their profile (and account owner can answer publicly) and you can set yourself what information is public and what is private. For example, here's account that Valve (and others) use to process payments: http://passport.wmtransfer.com/asp/certview.asp?wmid=362311291686 . It has a high business level, has been verified and ok'd to have real info via notarized documents (but still the actual information can be private) and complaints are public. This gives the option to the user to decide if he trusts the other party or not.

Maybe it's a cultural thing too, but both Europe and Russia have a history that makes people understand how important it can be protect your private information. PayPal system is really limited compared to WebMoney, but sadly it's only used mostly in Russia and other CIS countries.

I think one of the best online payment system is russian WebMoney http://www.wmtransfer.com/ it's secure, encrypted and you control all the payments. It's closest system to cache, the problem is that it's centralized and windows only.

Interestingly this is only a problem in US and western countries. Russia and Eastern Bloc almost fully uses WebMoney. There is no problems with locking accounts, transactions fees are really low and you can pay your phone, internet or tv bill with it (along with countless of other services). Cards to put money in to account are sold in every kiosk. Security is better too, if you require they send you one-time auth sms or you can have keyfiles to login.

Paypal is shit.

webmoney

That's privacy, NOT anonymity. WebMoney still has your data, and they promise not to let it out into the wild. But data breach or court order or "Oh, we changed our minds" exposes your data.

Actually, WebMoney has different levels of passports. The first Alias Passport doesn't require personal data. You get Formal Passport when you enter it, and the rest types of passports when you go to one of the various verifications offices to verify your identity.

Never the less, you can use the system with Alias Passport and for normal transactions its just aswell usable, so yes, it offers anonymity too. Loans, acting as official merchant in their MegaStock marketplace and other fancier stuff only requires verified account.

You can load the account anonymously too, just walk in to some kiosk and buy one of their WM Cards.

And like you see from the Megastock site, this is a widely used payment system in Russia to pay for mobile phone loading, cable tv, internet and so on that has also good security like options like keyfiles and so on. US is lacking behind.

That's privacy, NOT anonymity. WebMoney still has your data, and they promise not to let it out into the wild. But data breach or court order or "Oh, we changed our minds" exposes your data.

Actually, WebMoney has different levels of passports. The first Alias Passport doesn't require personal data. You get Formal Passport when you enter it, and the rest types of passports when you go to one of the various verifications offices to verify your identity.

Never the less, you can use the system with Alias Passport and for normal transactions its just aswell usable, so yes, it offers anonymity too. Loans, acting as official merchant in their MegaStock marketplace and other fancier stuff only requires verified account.

You can load the account anonymously too, just walk in to some kiosk and buy one of their WM Cards.

And like you see from the Megastock site, this is a widely used payment system in Russia to pay for mobile phone loading, cable tv, internet and so on that has also good security like options like keyfiles and so on. US is lacking behind.

The fun thing is that this is mainly a US problem. For example in Russia the most used payment method is WebMoney, where you define exactly what information is public about your account and *by default* everything is private. All the information other party sees is the "purse number" of yours, ie. Z435903486439 or similar.

And you can pay for pretty much every service with it, from buying credit to your mobile phone to doing online purchases. You can also get credit card that is linked to your account. And the system is a lot more secure than PayPal too, with possibility to use keyfiles and sms verification for transactions along others. And theres none of such cases where PayPal just decides to lock out the user account. It is actually your account.

Sometimes its funny how much US is lacking behind on some things.

Another is WebMoney, mentioned on the spammer board SpamForum.biz. It's a anonymous money transfer service in Moscow. Elaborate crypto. Special downloaded applications. Schemes for transferring money between customers, and finally out into the banking system. Accounts can be in euros, dollars, rubles, or hryvnias. Address is supposedly 71 Sadovnicheskaya Street, Moscow, Russia, 115035. Same address as the "Three Monkeys", which is a gay nightclub.

There are a number of services like this. They come and go. There's Gold-Cash, in Latvia. There's EvoCash, at an undisclosed "offshore" location. (Well, there was EvoCash; they ceased operations on October 19th.) They even have a trade association, which rates services as "Platinum", "Gold", "Silver", "Copper", "Carbon", or "Chlorine", which gives a hint of the problems in this area.

Then there are brokers who transfer money between these services. These can be used to perform the "rinse cycle" in money laundering. But that's another story.