As a long term employee at PayPal, it has always amazed me how much of the bad rep we carry is because of the abstractions we bottle and sell as a company. Mone

As a long term employee at PayPal, it has always amazed me how much of the bad rep we carry is because of the abstractions we bottle and sell as a company. Money, banks, credit, identity, regulation, fraud, cash, etc. are all loaded, fragile and complicated systems on top of which online payments is built and it is a very different problem as compared to sending and receiving e-mail. Money itself is thousands of years old and is not an invention of the internet. It is done differently everywhere and the sheer number of middle men involved is expected but still mind blowing. A good payment system has to fix the leaky abstractions below it someday somehow, to be really great.