Paypal is an online money transfer service. You have to link it to a Bank account / Credit Card first, and then paypal will confirm that your account is legit. Once you have that, sending money is easy, just use email addresses to send whatever amount. It'll take a little while
for the confirmation to go through (4 days max once you've registered and all), but yeah, a little more protection. You can file claims if someone scams you, but read the fine print, lots of stipulations and time limits.
You can also treat paypal like a bank account, and store money there. Theres also an option to get a credit card through them. Its a reasonable service, I think its only like 3% off for every transaction or something, really minimal for the coverage they give. Look into it.