Oh, okay, then everything's fine. I thought that you were using a "payroll" product by PayPal (which I didn't know they had, but I thought they might have recently introduced) which charged the employer (sender) for the payments instead of the recipient, who is usually the one charged. And I thought that the bank account thing was part of the "payroll" product. If you're just using ordinary PayPal, see below.

Don't leave your bank account empty, because as another poster indicated, even though PayPal probably won't care, your bank (depending on its policies) might charge you fee for the rejected debit (like a bounced check).

When you send a payment, PayPal will automatically select your bank account as the payment source (that's how they make money--they don't want to pay Visa or MC a cut, and a bank account debit is "free" to them), but on the Send Money screen you can change the payment source to your credit card (assuming you have a credit card stored in your PayPal profile).
PayPal will ask you "Are you sure you want to change to credit card? Paying with a bank account is great!!!! etc" (again how they make money), and if you hit yes then you can choose to pay with your credit card.

Here's the thing:

• If you pay with credit card, your subcontractors will need a merchant account to receive the payment, and they will be charged the ~3% fee on the incoming payment. So you pay nothing and they pay 3%
• If you send payment with a bank transfer, your subcontractors can receive the payment with a personal account, which has no charge for an incoming bank transfer payment (but costs even more than a merchant account to receive a credit card payment). So you pay nothing and they pay nothing.

If you compare the scenarios, you see that PayPal is taking a 3% cut from your transfer to your employees. If the money amount you pay them is high, maybe you could work out a deal like this:
You send payment by bank transfer (so you don't get the credit card miles), but you pay them 1.5% less money (but they can use a free personal account, with no 3% PayPal charge).

So then you would paying 1.5% less money, but your employees would be earning 1.5% more, because you split the 3% that PayPal would have eaten.

It's extra hassle, but if you're talking large dollar amounts, the 3% might be worth it.

(Oh and the "secret" to how PayPal makes money is this: if you send money to a merchant account, PayPal charges the recipient 3%. But if you funded the payment with a bank transfer and not a credit card, PayPal doesn't have to pay a cut to VISA/MC, so they just get to eat the 3% they charge to the recipient. And the recipient who has a merchant account doesn't even know whether the payment was funded by bank transfer or credit card, since they get charged 3% either way.