Ebay Australia: we’re not a faceless entity and PayPal better than Paymate

By Stan Beer
Tuesday, 22 April 2008 14:04

Technology

After the recent controversy over auction site eBay Australia’s plans to enforce eBay-owned PayPal as the exclusive payments clearing system for users, eBay Australia contacted iTWire to answer its critics. eBay Australia spokesperson Daniel Feiler presents the company’s case in a telephone interview with iTWire editor Stan Beer.

iTWire: You say there are some factual errors in our last opinion article. What are they?

eBay: I think the first thing that is a straight up error is that eBay has already substantially increased fees and charges in January. That didn’t happen in Australia. On the 29th of January there were fees changes made in the US, the UK and a couple of other markets. There were no fees changes made in Australia and I don’t think there have been any significant fees changes made in Australia for almost 18 months.

iTWire: Why do you believe that eBay Australia should have immunity from the Trade Practices Act given that what you’re asking for is to be able to use PayPal exclusively on the eBay Australia site?

eBay: We’ve never asked for PayPal to be used exclusively. People will have pay on pick-ups and PayPal as their option.

iTWire: Yes but why shouldn’t people be able to use other payment methods like say Paymate instead of PayPal?

eBay: As we’ve said from the very start, we’re introducing these changes for safety. People are less likely to end up in a dispute if they pay by PayPal than other payment methods such as bank deposits. Paymate does have some of the security features that PayPal offers – in particular you don’t share your financial information with your trading partner. (However), Paymate doesn’t have a buyer protection program; it doesn’t have a seller protection program; and unlike PayPal, there’s no ability for eBay to share the data with Paymate. With eBay and PayPal we can look at the data from a holistic point of view; we can see who paid for what from who, what the item was, what potential correspondence they had via the eBay platform with each other on eBay. We can also see the full details of the PayPal transaction – who paid what from what account into which account did it go. That gives us a closed loop and a lot more information which is vital in fighting fraud.