I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, and for a straight ecommerce site, I think it looks a lot more pro to have your own merchant account, ssl certificate, do

I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, and for a straight ecommerce site, I think it looks a lot more pro to have your own merchant account, ssl certificate, domain etc. But for more specialised needs FPS could be the right answer, particularly if you are acting as a broker or escrow agent (which sounds sort of like what coglethorpe was describing) and it would let you build something that would at the very least show the potential of the business model enough to justify a real investment (10-50 Million USD for a new bank that is intended to operate nationally; more if you want to start global).