Paypal, owned by eBay, is a great way to send payments for eBay items or anything purchased over the Internet. Within minutes, you can send payments around the world. However, Paypal also has its fair share of critics and members who disagree with their policies and agreements, especially when a decision goes against the member who complains or loses due to online fraud.

With PayPal, you can choose to pay for your item or service in a number of ways. The most popular method is to use whatever balance you have in your PayPal account. This is built by other members sending you payments for eBay or other items. Alternatively, once you have registered your bank account and any debit or credit cards with PayPal, you can choose to pay for items using these options.

The safest way for members to pay for items with Paypal is by registering a credit card and funding all payments through this. Because paying with a credit card usually offers an extra level of protection in case things go wrong.

In most countries, credit card companies are partially or fully responsible if something goes wrong with a transaction and will be actively involved to resolve any issues or perform a full chargeback, placing the funds back into your account. Even if you start a dispute with PayPal and lose, you can still involve your credit card company to dispute any transaction.

However, paypal does not make it easy for you to finance a payment with a credit card if you already have an account balance. Payments are typically funded first from your PayPal balance and then from a backup source (bank account or credit card) if the funds are not enough to pay for the entire purchase.

To pay for an entire purchase, through your credit card, you must clear any balance. You can do this by sending the payment to an email address that does not exist, or to an email address that you own but is not registered with PayPal.

As soon as you do this, your balance will be empty and you can now choose a financing option, such as a credit card. In the meantime, paypal will have sent an email to the alternate or non-existing email address informing them that they have a payment waiting and how to open a paypal account.

Now that your payment is complete, all you need to do is log back into your PayPal account, find the transaction at the non-existent email address, and click cancel. Your payment will revert to your account as it will not have been claimed.

Paypal is great to use and a brilliant resource, but it always helps to have a little more protection when buying things online.