After the horror stories that surfaced a few years ago, I was very careful to not tell PayPal my bank account.

Actually, it seems like PayPal has setup a proper Australian arm, which they would have had to do to work with the Au banking system. Linking accounts with it was quite an involved process only a few years ago. (But I still haven't done it.)

That said, I had a few period of a few months a little while ago where my only credit card was American Express. PayPal Australia doesn't accept AmEx, unfortunately. :/ That was a problem. OTOH, it's fairly common for Australian online purchases, particularly over Ebay, to do direct deposts into bank accounts. In that case, PayPal tends to only get used for overseas purchases.

Wade.