PayPal is, just like MoneyBookers, basically a money transmitter and is with distance the most used online payment solution today. With a PayPal account you can make payments to and from a with PayPal registered email address. Each PayPal account is either linked to a bank account or a credit card. PayPal to PayPal payments do not reveal this information though. It is also possible to pay with a credit card on a PayPal shopping cart but in that case the credit card data is send to the merchant.

The roots of PayPal lie in 1998 when the company Confinity Inc. was founded. In 2000 this company merged with the in 1999 founded company X.com  In October 2002 eBay bought PayPal for 1.5 billion dollar and that is PayPal we know today.

PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online payment solutions with more than 153 million accounts worldwide. Available in 190 markets and 18 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce by making payments possible across different locations, currencies, and languages.

Being the most used money transmitter also means they are targeted the most by crooks. Ever since its existance PayPal has done a lot of development to prevent phishing and other fraudulent usage or abuse.

That can lead to a lot of aggrevation because numerous business and people were faced with 'Limited Access' to their account. There are quite a few examples out there where PayPal froze an account because a high rate of transactions occurred. For example when Richard Kyanka set up an account to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina to be given to the Red Cross. Due to the high rate at which donations were made, the account was automatically frozen, and Kyanka criticized the time and difficulty involved in getting PayPal's customer service to unfreeze the account. Kyanka finally opted to have the money refunded to the donors so that they could donate directly to their charities of choice, though PayPal did not refund exchange and handling fees for international donors.

There are several websites that gather complaints about PayPal, for example http://www.aboutpaypal.org

My personal experience with PayPal is a good one, I've used it many times to do purchases on eBay. The only real issue I had was when I purchased a fraudulent memory card on eBay. The size of that memory card was supposed to be 4Gb but it was actually a 2Gb card that was altered with software to display a false 4Gb. This resulted in photo's to vanish. As it turned out this was the work a notorious scammer that is simply using eBay to rip people off.

I filed a complaint with eBay about the seller but eBay said I had to file the complaint with PayPal because I paid for the memory card with my PayPal account.  PayPal (an eBay company) gave me a real hard time filing the complaint and finally refunded me but they never did anything about the scammer. As far as I know he or she is still busy on eBay ripping people off.

PayPal offers three types of accounts:

• Personal Account: Ideal if you shop online. Make secure payments on eBay and merchant websites.
• Premier Account: Perfect for both buying and selling. Make secure payments on eBay and merchant websites. Plus, accept credit card payments.
• Business Account: The right choice for your online business; like a Premier Account but also allows multiple logins.

The fees are not the cheapest around but they are fair and sure beat doing a wire transfer. Signing up for a PayPal account is free and there's no charge to send money. PayPal's transaction fees are applied when Premier and Business Account holders receive money.

Payments are usually instant but not always. Every now and then they wait for a payment to be deducted of a credit card/bank account first and that can take up to a week or so before a payment is finally processed. That hardly happens and usually it is limited to once per account but just so you know.

You can sign up for a PayPal account here:

     https://www.paypal.com/nl/mrb/pal=EJZEJ8HN5TTBS