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

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 22 April 2008 14:04

Business IT - Technology

iTWire: But if PayPal is as good as you say it is, why do you need to make it mandatory to use it on your eBay site?

eBay: Simply because eBay is no longer going to stand aside and endorse payment methods that result in more disputes and more problems. Those people that end up in those either reduce their activity on eBay or they don’t come back. That’s not good for the long term health of our sellers and eBay. If we can address that and make sure that less people have an issue – and clearly the payment method does make a difference  – then those people are going to be inclined to spend more which will ultimately benefit sellers and hopefully eBay as well.

iTWire: What you’re doing (with PayPal and eBay) has been described as third line forcing. Why do you believe that Australia’s regulator, the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) will allow it? What’s the special case?

eBay: We’ve notified the ACCC. The notification is available for the public to read, and the ACCC will make their determination based on that and the submissions they read. But we believe that this is the right thing to do that in the long term will benefit our buyers because they will have more confidence; that will flow onto our sellers and eventually eBay. If you want to sell on Amazon you have to accept Amazon’s payment method and all transactions and all transactions are processed by Amazon. People pay with the credit card of their choice, which is the same for PayPal, all of those transactions are processed by Amazon and the seller pays Amazon a transaction fee on those. That’s the only payment method available to a seller on Amazon. What eBay is basically doing after having looked here in Australia at the payment methods that are resulting in higher disputes and come to the decision that it’s not the right thing to endorse payment methods that result in a higher dispute rate.

iTWire: Why do you think there’s so much angst in the marketplace over what you intend to do?

eBay: It is a significant change and there is always a reluctance by certain groups to change. We understand that which is why we’re doing a lot of outreach. We’ve already held a number of workshops on site; there will be more workshops coming up. We’re hosting a number of events so that people can come and meet us face to face and talk to us so we can explain to people what we’re doing and how they need to adjust. We’ve given people more than two months notice of these changes so that they’ve got plenty of time to prepare and get ready for the change.