Paypal is in all reality a global bank which straddles every frontier on the planet. Not only are they regulated only by their own business interests, but they impose their own set of rules and regulations to your money and you have absolutely no recourse, no appeal process, no hope in hell, when they decide to take your money away from you, as is happening more and more.

Paypal can arrive at the decision that your account, for whatever reason that it solely determines according to its own internal standards, does not fit the profile of a "normal account." Maybe someone you shipped a laptop computer to decided that they didn't want to pay for it so they're making a fake claim against you; maybe you have been transferring money into one account, then putting it back in the original one; or maybe your transactions seem in Paypal's viewpoint "suspicious." For those or any other myriad reasons, Paypal can simply take your money away and give it back to you maybe someday if they feel like it... and not if it doesn't.

Don't think that it can't happen. It does. And much more frequently than anyone can imagine. There are entire forums full of disgruntled Paypal customers with horror stories about how their rightfully earned money was just single handedly appropriated by Paypal.

Paypal has become a completely ubiquitous financial partner to the vast millions of people who do business online whether as sellers or buyers. The Paypal juggernaut is virtually inescapable if you are either buying or selling off an auction site as although there are various competing options such as Moneybookers, 2Checkout, Wirecard and others, Paypal is the 800 pound gorilla in the market and the rest are just fleas on the financial primate's backside.

Ebay owns Paypal, surprise surprise, and has been pushing hard to have all the transactions on Ebay go through Paypal "for security reasons." Yes, the type of security that is received when you own a gargantuan cash cow like Paypal and can siphon away untold millions of dollars in percentages, fees, and the worst currency exchange rates this side of the famous chiselers Western Union who were actually subjected to a class action suit over their outrageous profiteering in international conversions.

It's not enough for the Paypal/Ebay conglomerate to milk users of outlandish fees which when tallied up especially in foreign currency conversion transactions can exceed 10% of the total sale. They have to carry on their business based on a platform whereby they exercise ultimate power over your money, and that is clearly unacceptable. The argument that you can deal with a competitor is the same monopolistic talk we've heard from Microsoft for decades. There is no effective competitor as you either deal with Paypal/Ebay or you are stuck with junior league fudge factories.

That's why it's time that Paypal/Ebay be split up, just like Ma Bell was turned into lots of Baby Bells a couple of decades ago. Let them compete in the open marketplace and offer reasonable fees and considerate customer treatment. The good ones will survive. The ones that continue their parent's punitive policies will just fade away. And not a moment too soon.