Hi Viktor

It was not designed to replace the registration verification processes at all. The idea behind this $1 payment was that a spammer would almost never pay the $1 to gain "Verified User" status. This is why it was popular with users to see that another user had the Verified User tag on their account. It gave them some idea of the veracity of the other user. Users cannot see, for them self, the checks made on other users during the registration process but they can physically see the Verified User tag and while not foolproof it did prove very popular with users.