Mike,
from babenet's perspective, this is a beneficial and safe move because
a) there are 20 programs contributing to the babenet member base of rebills. i know some of the webmasters who run these programs and the traffic volume's they are capable of. Babenet would be doing signups in the 4 figures per day using this system and at a rough rate of 30% staying first month and 30% staying 2nd month the volume will be enough to sustain a profit.
by giving a webmaster who can generate 200+ signups per day an affiliate program of their own, you guarantee their 200 signups are going to stay with you everyday plus a few referrals of the same size MINIMUM.
c) at no time is babenet allowing the affiliate program access to the areas of information that will bring babenet potential risk, such as processing. according to visa, visa has a deal with babenet and is responsible for all risks associated with the 20 'agents' running programs. therefore, you don't just let anybody run a program.
mutt, you are bitching about a different issue - the signup process with its upsells. THIS is what visa will have a problem with once the daily signups reach a point that creates the magic number of chargebacks for visa to say 'bye bye'.
in the case of piecash and any other program running on this system, the risk to them is obvious and the operators are staking their reputation on the success of the program.
it is not as dramatic as this thread has made it seem.