Well first of all welcome aboard, regardless what offshore jurisdiction you go for then it will be a problem with PayPal, since they are country specific and require you to login to your account from a IP address that is located same place as the company then which makes it difficult. That's one of the major issues at the moment, there are solution and also cheap solutions out there to solve the verification process by some sort of cheat, however, we do not support this nor are︀ vi engaging in such.
A Merchant Account is required when you want to︃ accept credit card payments directly on your website without using services like 2co.com, PayPal, Moneybookers︄ and similar, actually it is a contract you have directly with an Acquiring bank that︅ will withdraw the money from the credit card holder's and insert them into your account.︆ Before this is possible you need a payment gateway as well, most often the Payment︇ Gateway provider has one or several agreements already in place with banks to forward merchant's︈ interesting in opening a merchant account.