We had an interesting tip-off yesterday. One of our readers spotted a new feature in PayPal that we haven’t heard about. It looks like a trial is underway for a “pay later” feature on PayPal.
From what we can gather, buyers on some purchases will be able to “buy” goods using PayPal on eBay and only have the payment taken 14 days after purchase. It seems fair to assume that this will be a service only offered to PayPal users with a decent track record.
Our Sherlock also took the plunge and made a purchase using the feature. It has gone through successfully and the text of the confirmation email sheds a bit more light on the service. (I’ve redacted the personal details).
“Dear XXXX,
Receipt for your xxxxx purchase — your payment has been scheduled.
You purchased an item from xxxx for £XX.XX GBP and chose to pay after delivery. It may take a few moments for this transaction to appear in your PayPal account.
What happens next?
– PayPal debits the money from your bank account on 5 Feb 2014, 14 days after your purchase (most items are received within this time frame).
– We’ll send you a reminder email before we debit the money. Or you can pay for your purchase now by logging in to PayPal and selecting your transaction.
– If the item doesn’t arrive or it’s significantly not as described, you have 45 days from the date you placed the order to report a problem. See full details.
The payment will appear on your bank statement as a PayPal purchase.
You can change how you want to pay by selecting My Money from your Profile page.
It may take a few moments for this transaction to appear in your account.”
And this gives you an idea of how it will appear in your PayPal dashboard:
We asked PayPal for comment yesterday and we haven’t heard anything from them. So we’re speculating on what this feature is and who can benefit from it. But it does bear some similarity to the US service Bill Me Later that eBay bought some time ago.
But rather than being pitched as an immediate credit facility that enables you to buy something if you’re a bit skint, this feature is being positioned as a safety feature where you can examine your purchases before paying.
Of course, we have no idea how it works from a seller perspective. We have no idea whether it will be compulsory to take it, or even if you’ll actually know that someone will “pay later”. Does a seller get the funds straight away? There are plenty of questions that need answers and we hope to find out in due course.
36 Responses
why stop at money?, next thing will be pick and match the sellers home,
,or choose his car ,maybe you might want the sellers dog, or wife/husband
We’ve had that available on purchases for some months now, sellers get their funds straight away. When the 2 weeks are up, you get a warning email from Paypal that they are about to take the funds – I guess so that you can check you have left enough in the account if you don’t have another payment method in there.
and what about international buyers and14 days. were having bother delivering anything at all ,with the odd polar vortex buggering things up at the moment
I just had this paying for my ticket to the Birmingham Online Seller Meet up. I got 14 days grace….maybe they need to distinguish between digital & physical purchases!!
Not nervous about this being abused at all.
*POURS A TREBLE SCOTCH
I’ve had this on my personal account for months – the seller gets paid straight away, it’s essentially PayPal offering you credit for a couple of weeks.
PayPonga anybody? Typical ebay buyers will be racking up huge overspends and then what? Paypal say they will be taking the money from the buyers bank account. I have already had a higher than normal number of January buyers asking if they can delay payment until pay day. Will Paypal stand for this type of request?
I must admit that I have not seen this and I would be interested to see all the answers in due course. But in 5 years I have had 1 echeque and then in the last couple of weeks I have had 2. Have the rules changed? (I take it that there are rules attached to echeques) or have I just been unlucky?
Did anybody notice that Thursday 23rd January was a Free Listing Day? I noticed it but could find no note about it on Tamebay.
Can’t say I really care, for the seller the sale must be guaranteed and paid out by paypal on the day, who cares how they pay paypal?.
I can see benefits to this; we often, in our decription, ask buyers to buy it and try it, return it if you arent delighted – its about getting them to understand the quality of the product offered- if they can buy and try it with a deferred payment, then the perception may be its risk free. We get few returns; its about getting the item into thier hands so they can see its good and not just hype.
This has been in place for a number of months now.
I have had this facility for several months now. It only appears to be offered on certain transactions though.
We don’t have all the information, clearly, but it sounds to me as if this will hurt some retailers, make no difference to others and be welcomed by… A few! Not sure it will increase buyer confidence much, nor encourage more sales.
Had this feature for months, it’s good when money is tight to tide me over until payday, I’ve used it for car parts mid month and it’s been a great asset.
Sellers get the money straight away, they don’t see it any differently only that it’s a payment.
It only gets messy when it comes to returns and refunds, say for example you buy something, return it on the 16th day, and get an immediate refund from the seller, you then have to wait an additional 7 days for your physical refund because PayPal have to wait for the original payment to clear before they’ll refund you, so your money ends up ‘stuck’ in the middle of processing for a full week, and when it’s a big sum of money it causes problems as I found out first hand!
Had this feature on my account for a while now but don’t like it. When I pay for something I like to know it’s paid for rather than getting 2-3 extra emails telling payment will be taken at a certain date. It seem’s unnecessary.
If your money is meant to be covered and the seller get there money straight away, why add this feature?
I had this in my paypal account a while ago and I tried it with a purchase on ebay, but it didn’t work because the seller never seemed to get the money and thus never sent me the goods!
I’s be surprised if PayPal had enough cash sitting around to be able to fund two-weeks turnover for an entire country’s or a continent’s sellers at a time.
Remember the mysterious ‘glitches’ when instant bank transfer was forced upon them?
.