[expat_panama]

Personally, I’d love to see an alternative to PayPal.

[abb]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampum

Wampum are traditional shell beads of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of the indigenous people of North America. Wampum include the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell; and the white and purple beads made from the quahog, or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam.

Wampum were used as money[1] by the Native Americans, and were kept on strings like Chinese cash. European colonists adopted wampum as their own currency; however, the Europeans’ more efficient production of wampum caused inflation and ultimately the obsolescence of wampum as currency.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I think my next phone may be an iPhone because of this. I think there is going to be a big change in the way we pay in the coming years. It’s not just online either. You go out to dinner and hand your card to a complete stranger and she comes back and you sign your bill. You have no idea what took place while she was gone. Blind trust. Sure the Credit card company will foot the bill but it can be a major pain in the butt.

[BipolarBob]

I’d like to see BitCoin go mainstream/more accessible. The idea of no government governance of private transactions appeals to me. As more and more foreign banks reject American citizen customers because of IRS over reach, an alternative currency is greatly needed. Right now gold prices look attractive and GDX and NUGT is on my radar.

[mad_as_he$$]

I hate PP. That said I do an incredible amount of business with vendors that only use PP and have never had one problem transaction.

[Grampa Dave]

“Personally, I’d love to see an alternative to PayPal.”

So would I have.

I have used PP forever and never had problem until a few weeks ago.

Fellow Fly Fishers and kayakers are constantly selling and trading fly rods, reels, lines and kayaks/kayak parts.

PP has been great there. It has been great until I tried to sign up for a free 2 week trial on Ancestors.com with my new Android tablet.

I apparent signed up with AC wrong and correctly with PP. I was never able to log on to AC. I tried to send a hold to PP, and I never got through. I contacted AC several times and only got long complicated processes to do on my computer, and none worked to cancel the order and start out again. They just billed me for a service never used because I can’t log on.

So I get billed for a $100 from AC for a year’s service, and I still can’t log on.

If I had used one of my Visa cards, that payment would have been cancelled. My credit card vendors want to keep our business. That doesn’t work with PP. Good luck canceling it now and get a refund.

Visa for its high end customers apparently has something like PP that allows you to use your email and a log in without giving out your credit card number charge purchases on line.

I will be checking that out. Like others I get worried when I hand a cc to a waiter.waitress and they disappear from view. Now, I sit so I can see their credit card machine.