oddsod - 9:50 am on May 19, 2007 (gmt 0)

Another bank account is not the answer, I'm afraid. Apart from costs - free checking accounts are very much on the way out - all banks will let Paypal take your $0 account into an unauthorised overdraft. Guess who pays the eye-watering penalties on unauthorised overdrafts?

If I may return to my original point. It's not about running a business selling goods via Paypal payments. Lots of webmasters need to use Paypal even if they're not running an ecommerce site. They need it for everything from buying links to buying services. Many of the things they need to buy online may only be available on Paypal payments. Even if they aren't webmasters and just active ebay users they'll find life very difficult without a Paypal account.

My original point is the length Paypal go for an authority on your bank account that they do not need. The pretext is "verification" but they won't release the DD after they've verified you. This makes them highly suspicious and a dangerous company to deal with.

Maybe my many decades in business have me a suspicious old fool. Perhaps the Paypal supporters in here could offer me some good reason why Paypal needs that control over your account. Not why they make money - I have no problem with anyone making money legitimately. Not that they need to verify you - there's plenty of fraud about and they are entitled to take security measures. I'd like to know what possible reason they could have for being so obsessed with direct debit control over all our bank accounts.