If i could buy bitcoin with my CC online like i can pay for anything else with my CC online, then there'd be a lower barrier of entry.
When buying anything else with bitcoin, it's generally hard to resell the item, and make your money back. With the amount of credit card fraud, buying bitcoins with a stolen credit card would mean sites offering this service would have too many chargebacks, and they would have to charge a 5% fee on top of the 3% VISA already takes. Few people are going to want to pay an 8% markup on money. Money has a very definite price, they're not like other goods. You can see that you're paying a hefty markup, and people don't like that.
Bitstamp allows you to buy bitcoins by wiring money to them: https://www.bitstamp.net/help/how-to-buy/
It might be me, but I really don't see why wiring money is so hard. I just log into my online banking site and set it up, takes a couple of minutes.
I recently set up a US bank account at Wells Fargo. Today I needed to pay someone (in the US) from it, and after fruitlessly searching for a way to transfer money to another account was told by customer support that the only solution was to do a wire transfer. At a cost of $35 and having to visit a branch to set this up.
They did have something called SurePay that involved sending someone an email or SMS message, but my beneficiary is a corporate so this isn't really an option. SurePay also seems to be limited to very small amounts.
Given this is free and simple to do in every other country I've banked in (NZ, Aus, UK and Canada), I'm still suspicious that I'm missing a something on the internet banking website. Any suggestions?
There are a number of services that will be opening their doors in the coming months that will lower the barriers to fiat <--> btc conversion.
Sell, not buy. There's no obvious risk to buying BTC with PayPal, if anyone is foolish enough to sell them that way.