Someone mentioned paypal. [BTW, using the maillist to get referrals is against their Terms of Use: "You agree not to use unsolicited email, usenet, message board postings, or similar methods of mass messaging (spam) to gather referral bonuses." Let's see if they mean this - I sent them the note.] Looking at the mentioned terms of use: 1. You may enter the money in the system with a check. This is good. 2. You must have a credit card to be able to withdraw money. Idiotic. (I dismiss direct bank transfers - those agreements always include clause about payee's ability to withdraw funds "in case of error", as defined by payee.) 3. "This Agreement is subject to change at any time without notice." This is outright stupid. They shoud hire someone with banking experience. There has to be a notice period so that users may quit before that new "your money is now ours" clause come into effect. 4. "If you charge-back the credit card charge, you agree that we can re-charge it to the credit card." This caused some deliric laughter. 5. It is unclear how they nake money unless the credit card charges are processed as cash advances. If not, they have to pay _something_ to the credit card issuer, and invest in a high-risk area to make it up, and then some - I assume that they expect credit cards to be the most frequently use source of funds. I am not sure that I want to do business when I don't have some idea why the other side is doing it - they are either insane or intend to make money in some undisclosed way which I may not like. My guess is that they will act as a marketing tool for the meatspace financial institutions, offering them your behavioral patterns and offering you their services. Terms do not specify anything about confidentiality of transactions, and try to persuade you that "we are not the bank" (I am not sure if this will fly with Feds, but if it does it absolves them of any privacy protections that may still exist for the banking industry.) Otherwise not so bad. Unless they require Java - I didn't get that far.
