Was thinking 13 since lab is 7 so it adds up to 20 <| sep |> At the time Paypal wasn ' t big or trusted . EBay payments were by money order , check or the like and checks were often not accepted because of fraud and general discomfort of having financial transactions online yeah , I know . It ' s true . My plan was to integrate buyerseller eBay reputation to allow payment by credit card to me whereupon I could issue a check or money order and back it up with a solid reputation . I had planned for risk and return issues but the merchant services organizations couldn ' t understand or evaluate the risks and were terrified it was money laundering . It never got out of the gate . Totally replaced by the eBay guarantee and Paypal now . I almost certainly would have lost out to Paypal in the long run but given the time and need I might have been bought out in the 00 s when dot coms were going crazy . Oh well . As for why it is relationships and legal , any bank could have set up a similar system . Ot was a matter of being willing to do it and having the capital , connections to VisaMC and possibly ability to talk to regulators about financial products .