Perhaps many buy and sell merit points in secret, I think it is very difficult to get merit points, most people will probably take a shortcut, maybe they have multiple accounts to send each other..
No doubt on the near future this will be updated and there would be no more buy and sell merit , but then again lot's of newbies or the new comers thinking that merit is a big hindrance , but then again instead of thinking that it's a hindrance make it as a motivation though.
I hope this abuse will prevented though.
Abusers cannot be prevented, but they can be contained. Merit abusers are usually easy to be spotted, as they suspiciously give their smerits to a common person only. I found a lot of abusers around this community and I hope they will be paying the consequence from cheating. There are a lot threads in meta section that reports all the merit abusers. Dont hesitate to report suspicious accounts that potentialy abusing the merit system.