I think a compromise (to help both buyer and seller) would be a 24 or 48 hour "grace" period between the Buy it Now and the payment.
From the buyer's perspective: I will sometimes do a Buy It Now on something I really want/need and choose to look over the rest of the inventory to ADD to my purchase. I may do this to get a discount in shipping and it also allows the seller to package up multiple items into one shipment. Sometimes I find other stuff, sometimes I don't. But if I had to pay during the same process I "bought" the item before I was done looking over everything, I might not look over the other items knowing I had to go through the same process each time. THAT can be a real hassle to the buyer. I don't know if ebay's shopping cart helps avoid this problem, but it still wouldn't address the issue of something I really wanted vs something I wouldn't mind having/adding.
From the seller's perspective: I totally can relate to waiting a week (or more) for payment and having to open a case to actually get someone to pay for something. Been there. But I don't think waiting 24 (or 48) hours is unreasonable either. IF the seller ONLY accepts paypal, then ebay can progamatically realease/cancel the sale when the time limit is reached. If the seller takes other forms of payment, then they can "confirm" (or lock in) the sale prior to the time limit (on anything not tied directly into ebay).
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