I am pretty sure there are other ways to get confirmation besides submitting a credit card. But the best thing a buyer can do with PayPal is to pay sellers by PayPal Credit Card payments! If a problem occurs, you can always do a charge-back as a last resort; it is your most powerful and certain tool. This is advised over and over on PayPal message boards. .... .... ..... Linking to a small separate bank account is a good idea too for both buyers and sellers.
Robert