Different payment methods not allowed on ebay

If ebay ever realise that they are not making enough money then they can simply sell the stuff that they are smoking - it has to be good stuff.

I'm referring to the new rule that you cannot have different payment methods for different countries. Why the heck not? I can think of several reasons why it must be allowed.

The first problem is cheques, I allowed Australians to pay me via cheques as there were no fees involved; but if a cheque arrived from overseas then I returned it with a brief note explaining why I cannot accept it.
That reason is simple, it costs a fortune!!
My mother used to run a magazine subscription service where she took credit cards from readers all over Australia and New Zealand. One day a cheque arrived from a New Zealander for $80 (a normal subscription fee), my mother decided to cash this cheque and it took 3 weeks to clear (local cheques take 3 days to clear), but that wasn't what nearly caused my mum to have a heart attack - that was caused by the $50 international clearing fee (she lost heavily on this transaction but we all learnt from it). She has never accepted another International cheque.

By the way - international money orders are just as bad, it takes weeks to clear and has huge fees associated with it. I have no problem accepting local money orders though as it costs me nothing.

Next option is Direct Debit, this is really hard to do for International buyers and in most cases buyers will look elsewhere for their item. Most of my sales were in the $2 - $20 range so a buyer wasn't about to pay a $20 fee to transfer money overseas. Side note - to transfer money overseas from Australia you need to go to the bank unless you have set up your account for this.

The other option is Paypal (which ebay is forcing all Australians to use as of May 2008 - Big Brother here we come).
Now Paypal charge around 2.5% per transaction, this goes on top of ebay charges of around 2-4% (prices have changed since I was trading full time on ebay). So using Paypal effectively doubles my fees so I really don't want to use it unless I have to.

When I sold on ebay I offered several methods of payment. Australians (40%) could pay via Money order, cheque or direct deposit (most of my regulars paid via this method). For international buyers (60%) they could only pay via Paypal. This method worked fine and kept my expenses down.
This is no longer acceptable according to ebay's new terms. My question is simple - Ebay has always claimed that they are simply a 'market facilitator' who doesn't get involved in transactions, so why are they now? And to what extent will they be getting involved? Ebay has opened a can of worms with this which means the real question is - can they handle it?

If saving a dollar here and there sounds pedantic then I need to point out that I was doing around 400 transactions each week - so each extra dollar charged by Paypal or ebay equated to a $400 loss each week.