OK, I'm with yer know. Yep, you have to have credit in there to do transactions of the old days. Now, it's just a CC thing via VISA. I haven't used the old way for many, many years, but have obviously done so, some time ago. I think my balance is zero... so that in the pre Paypal/VISA days, you'd put enough money in for a transaction, and then once done, the balance should be zero (somethin' like that).
Pretty sure that's how I got verified on Paypal. It looks like things have changed somewhat.
I've just checked my Paypal account, and I have neither a CC or bank account stored.