[wnight]

As you say, they've all got limitations.

The difference will be if they're straight-forward with their customers and let them know of policies long enough before they're implemented so that they could plausibly leave the service if they disagreed. The problems with Paypal in the linked article were their refusal to discuss, especially beforehand.

Paypal, like EBay, (go figure) is an early entrant whose ubiquity has made them think they're successful on merit, and whose sheer size has kept competition away to re-enforce that image to themselves. As soon as a capable competitor steps up customers will flee these user-hostile companies.

[brass_cannon]

You're missing my point regarding Samurai. It's main value prop is a gateway with developer friendly docs. This has nothing to do with risk.

Feefighters tells their customers to go with the absolute lowest priced merchant account provider because they are all the same otherwise. As this post points out, that's horrendously inaccurate.