Amazon.com have announced they will no longer accept payments via BillMeLater, the credit service bought by eBay earlier this year. A notice on Seller Central says:
Effective December 31st, 2008, BillMeLater (BML) will no longer be accepted as a payment method on Amazon.com. All sales and orders processed with BillMeLater prior to this date will continue to be processed; no changes are needed for these existing orders. Buyers and sellers can continue to use the remaining payment methods available on Amazon.com for future orders.
When eBay bought BML, there was speculation on how long the service would remain on Amazon, but this removal has been announced with surprisingly short notice. As Ina speculates, presumably Amazon didn’t want eBay having access to their transaction data.
Thanks to Eddie for the heads up.
14 Responses
With Ebays track record they really do not have much ground for complaint do they?
It was only to be expected. I wonder if Amazon will team up with another company or create a program similar to Bill Me Later…
Did Amazon make any references to drugs or mention how unsafe Bill Me Later is when they made this announcement?
#3 I don’t think so, but then I don’t supposed they wanted to be sued for spreading unsubstantiated rumours either.
#4 Plenty of unregulated online chemists offer BML, what did you mean #3?
#5 I know, but I still don’t think they’d like to be sued 😀
“#5 I know”
What have you been trying to buy from an online chemist Chris? 😆
Nothing 😛 I don’t have a Bill Me Later account either 😛
I was just referring to stuff that eBay has been known to say about PayPal’s competition. Nice to know Amazon doesn’t act that way.
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/326/1021326/paypal-akin-selling-heroin-ebay
It always make me laugh when people are so precious about payment systems on sites like Amazon – I don’t hear hordes of angry sellers demanding that they be allowed to offer PayPal or Google Checkout on Amazon.
The one and only mistake eBay made re payments was to allow users a choice in the first place. If they’d got Billpoint running as well in the US as it did in the UK, or bought PayPal early enough they’d not have had any problems at all in cutting out unsafe payment methods in the future.
Buy on eBay, pay with eBay payments (whatever that may be) would have been as natural as buy on Amazon, pay with Amazon payments and if you don’t like it you don’t have to buy!
seems odd to buy a company that you know is going to have a chunk of its revenue cut off , that of course is assuming someone at ebay did realise this and Amazon is a fair chunk of business to BML.
One would therefor expect BML to be making an appearance on an auction site near you sooner rather than later.
@ # 10
I have no problem with the idea of eBay forcing BillPoint (or PayPal) on us all. But I do have a problem with what they are insinuating when I offered anything but PayPal.
(ok I do have some problems with “PayPal only” but that is because of eBay’s constant glitches and having the occasional limited account for several days)
I dont care who pays me in What ,and who by ,as long as I receive it .and I can spend it. swap it ,exchange it, or barter it, Camels ,goats, skins , even “beads” will do me,
though I draw the line at wives they are just not cost effective
Amazon UK did take payment by cheque until Sept last year:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200227600&qid=1230914654&sr=1-1
Amazon.com still does take payment by check and MO:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=518222