eBay Australia to reduce buyers’ payment options
On 24th March eBay announced that from late April 2008 all sellers on eBay UK will be required to offer Paypal as a payment option. I doubt many sellers will have a problem with this since Paypal is currently offered as a payment option on around 95% of listings, and it is to the seller’s advantage to give buyers as many payment options as possible.
However, an announcement on eBay Australia stated that from 21st May all sellers will be required to offer Paypal as a payment option and from 17th June all items must be paid for using either Paypal or Visa/MasterCard with transactions processed by Paypal. The only exception to this will be items which are paid for on pick up.
So as well as making it compulsory for sellers to offer Paypal as a payment option, eBay.com.au are pretty much removing the option for buyers to pay by any other means.
As far as I can see there is no benefit from this ruling for either buyers or sellers. The only winner is eBay themselves due to the extra revenue they will collect on Paypal commissions.
Is Australia being the testing ground before eBay rolls this rule out to other countries? What do you think? Feel free to leave your comments below.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I hear the Australian equivalent of our ‘Trading Standards’ are very on the ball over all things ‘internet’ these days.
It will be interesting to see how this develops, as this sounds very much like something we’d call a forced monopoly or restrictive practice over here.
I have no idea what the Aussies will think - but I’m sure they’ll have something to say about it!!
Randy
http://www.RandolfSmith.com
August 13th, 2008 at 12:30 am
You are quite right Randy, the Aussies had plenty to say about it and eBay have now dropped their plans to force sellers to accept Paypal as their only payment method.
However, they have now turned their attention to eBay UK sellers but rather than forcing them to use Paypal as the only payment option, they are offering an incentive to do so in the form of a monthly prize draw to win a year’s worth of free eBay and Paypal fees.
It will be interesting to see how many sellers accept this ‘bribe’. I won’t be taking part, I like to give my buyers a choice and will continue to offer them as many options as possible.