eBay, Moneybookers & Paymate – Amazon launch FPS

This week marks the launch of several new payment services on both eBay and Amazon.

eBay.com Payments

eBay.com which is now a strictly electronic payment only venue have enabled both Moneybookers and Paymate on the site in addition to PayPal and ProPay.

Paymate is an Australian company, and no stranger to dealing with eBay. They were one of the companies to oppose eBay’s move to go PayPal only in Australia and wrote to the ACCC to complain about the plans which were later dropped.

Moneybookers unique selling point is the number of payment methods they accept, particularly in Europe. They enable payments from 200 countries in 34 currencies, using 50 payment options but with just 1 connection so will appeal to sellers who ship worldwide. In comparison PayPal accept just 18 currencies.

In truth however it’s likely that most buyers on eBay will still want to pay via PayPal so sellers who remove this choice are likely to do themselves a disservice. The good news however is that should your PayPal account ever be limited there are at least viable alternatives for eBay.com.

Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS)

Amazon FPS has come out of Beta and as well as announcing it’s availability to all have launched a free payment processing offer for the first 90 days. To qualify you need to register by 15th March 2009, launch your application by 1st June. You’ll then qualify for 90 days of free processing up to a total of $1/2 million turnover.

The big advantage of Amazon FPS is existing Amazon customers will be able to pay using their Amazon user name/password with no additional sign up required. Buyers shipping addresses and payment information already on file with Amazon make this a quick and simple payment system. It’ll be interesting to see how much traction it gains against PayPal in the future.