How much technical knowledge & infrastructure is required to participate eg website, payment processing?
Is this job doable from home? (i.e. do participants have to be in particular physical locations)
Will the idea be fully explained and verified BEFORE sending any funds?
Honestly, from what it sounds like coming from OP and what you're asking, there is good and bad news in your case:
The good news: is that you can be able to work from home, but just pay to "secure" an area or city of your choice. The customers will somehow do some kind of business for you... which I think in this case makes it seems like it is a pyramid scheme of some sort if the "customers" hand business for you. Take that as you will though, I just know that me personally will not feel comfortable recruiting friends to do work for me and me receiving benefits for it.
The bad news: The idea will not be explained before you send funds. Going from what he has said before, he is concerned that the idea he has for a business proposal could be stolen from people on the forum. So in other words, he wouldn't feel safe sharing any information on anything that has to do with what he is trying to sell, which I personally think contradicts everything that he is trying to do on this thread.
Let me correct these statements:
Response to the Good News: First, there is no pyramid scheme or multilevel marketing scheme. You will not be asked to sign people up to sell for you or anything of the sort. Your customers are your customers and will stay your customers as long as they need your service and no one else comes in under your prices. This is a business, where you will make money off of the business you do, not the work of someone else. Some people who are getting more than 2 cities will end up hiring a sales team, but this will be people being hired in to work, not someone you can make a percentage of their income. Just business.
Response to Bad news: The business will be explained before you send any funds, we are keeping the business under wraps for now, because someone who has more money than we do could take the idea and run with it, leaving us in the dust. When we are ready to launch, all interested parties will be required to prove they have funding and they will be told what the deal is before they pay anything. I will make another post with more information shortly, to help explain things.