I believe PayPal to be far more secure than giving your credit card to the waitress and letting her take it in the back. You give your credit card number to people all the time. If you believe them to be reputable, you don't sweat it. As long as you act in good faith, the credit card company limits your risk. To use it to pay others, that's all you have to do. Until you prove to them you are authorized to use the card, they limit your use. That's a good thing. It protects you, them and the credit card company.

If you receive payments, you have a couple of options on how to get your money. They can mail you a check or make direct deposits to a checking account. To enable direct deposit, I only had to give them the same information anyone I write a check to gets, the numbers off the bottom of my check. I will NOT authorize them to make direct withdrawals from my checking, and the bank won't allow anyone to make direct withdrawls unless they are reputable and can show proof I authorized it. They say transfers to your checking account can take 3 to 5 days, but the money is always in my account the next business day.

I've been using them for months and I think it's great. As far as I can see the biggest risk is losing any money in my account if they suddenly went out of business. Looks like they're doing quite well, and I don't leave money there for long anyhow.