eBay loses out due to PayPal withdrawal from Turkey

With PayPal having shut down operations in Turkey yesterday on the 6th of June, it’s now almost impossible for Turkish sellers to sell on eBay.

The Turkish marketplace eBay acquired, GittiGidiyor have updated their payment policy to exclude PayPal. It used to read “You can only use Turkish Bank credit cards, ATM cards and PayPal to make payments in GittiGidiyor“.

All mention of PayPal has now vanished with the statement now reading “You can only use Turkish Bank credit cards, ATM cards to make payments in GittiGidiyor“.

Of course this also means that Turkish customers will find it increasingly difficult to buy from regular eBay sites including eBay.co.uk. PayPal is the default payment option which sellers are obliged to offer but for many sellers it’s the only payment option they use. That means that Turkish customers either can’t buy from you, or if they do it’s going to cause an inordinate amount of grief to arrange an alternative payment method off eBay.

We’ve heard from some eBay sellers who are simply going to write Turkey off as a country they’re willing to sell to. This is a shame, you don’t even have to worry about shipping to Turkey if you sell through eBay’s Global Shipping Programme.

There’s little point shipping goods if you can’t get paid for them though. What strategy are you using, are you blocking Turkish customers on eBay or do you have a suitable alternative payment method in place?

Our advice is to make a decision before you get another Turkish customer. Preferably you’ll set up an alternative payment system but if all else fails, sadly it may simply be easier to add Turkey to the list of countries you refuse to sell to and avoid any problems before they arise.

Edited to add:

eBay have told us “Due to the suspension of PayPal operations in Turkey, eBay customers will not be able to send or receive funds using Turkish PayPal accounts. This does not impact PayPal accounts registered outside of Turkey. eBay is exploring alternative solutions. Turkish customers will still be able to transact domestically via GittiGidiyor.”