A duel Sir, a duel to the death I say!

Ah. So the Game is on. Google officially acquiesced to the coming launch of the GBuy service - the ability for Google Base browsers to purchase directly through Google by storing their payment details with the search company. In the continued effort to store and make easily accessible all information known to man Google has taken on our financial details as the next topic. And what a topic it is. Paypal has for long been sitting (some would say resting on its laurels) comfortably on the online payment market. Thanks to its aggressive rates, easy automated sign-up and close affiliation with its parent-company, the eBay owned US organization has managed to sign-up a whopping 105 million users. After the recent much publized $2b++ acquisition of Skype, Paypal was rumoured to finally start tackling the beast that has for long been a sweet money-maker for banks - Electronic Funds Transfers (EFTs) . Nothing has come out of HQ since the purchase though leaving many wondering what eBay really wanted with a free VoIP provideer (a separate discussion altogether). EFT as it stands today is a cumbersome and slow process incurring heavy fees from most banks involved. As ebanking is taking off (many Europeans are now signed up with banks that don't have ANY physical branches) you can argue the flow of funds will start mirroring the flow of information (unhindered, free, global). That is at least what Google (and a lot of Columbians) are banking on.
And lets add to the mix the Mobile Wallet, ladies and gentlemen. A flickering mirage of many entrepreneurs - a feared and not little understood adversary (or partner?!) of the credit-card companies mobile payments could be as simple as texting, or downloading a quick app or .. something completely different? But we digress. Getting back to GBuy for a second it is widely held that to become succesful Google will need to gain consumer confidence and learn to navigate the tricky waters of consumer trust. They will need to police the Google Base forum quite aggressively, not necessarily a current strength of the company. They will have to slam down hard on transgressors, but still leave the forum wide open. They will have to seem totally impartial while trying to provide the most relevant experience to each user. This seem like a tall order for the Google engineers .. but then again, I am still blown away by Google Earth - so I will sit back and watch this duel play out.
Can't wait to see what skypebaypal will come out with..