Probably the most interesting aspect of PayPal’s reporting of results was the information that PayPal has been talking to Amazon about payments. Presumably with a view to allowing Amazon customers use PayPal to pay for marketplace purchases.
Regarding the discussions, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in an interview: “We have been in conversations with Amazon. We’re closing in on 200 million users on our platform right now. At that scale, it’s hard for any retailer to think about not accepting PayPal.”
Schulman added that the talks had centred around “how to use one another’s assets to the mutual benefit of our customers.”
Amazon has stayed tight-lipped on the matter. But there are benefits for them, and not just PayPal. After all there will be people out there who trust PayPal but don’t necessarily want to put their bank details on other sites. And anything that greases the wheels of ecommerce, such as offering PayPal, is in their interest.
It would be a huge feather in PayPal’s cap to be featured on Amazon, of course. It would enable them to make money from two of the world’s biggest marketplaces. We don’t know how these conversations will develop over time but it’s clear that a PayPal and Amazon hook-up could well be one of the biggest advantage of the eBay/PayPal split.
5 Responses
Wow, now that would be an interesting tie up.
Not sure that ebay would be happy and how would ebay sellers feel?
Ebay offered Paypal payment exclusivity on their marketplace at the time of the spli until 2020. And then there is the question of how Amazon would manage the Paypal buyer protection side of things given that Amazon actually sell stuff. Can’t see Amazon being too happy at offering ebay type “free” goods or suffering the “use once and return” type buyer that plague ebay.
That’s a good point Gary, the difference is that Amazon are a retailer and are very good at stopping the scalywags before they get near a buy box.
Oh Yes. Then Amazon Customers can have their paypal accounts frozen and suspended, just like thousands of ebay customers.
Paypal are a joke!
Surely this was the whole point of them splitting in the first place.
The only reason for them splitting from eBay is if they wanted to do business with eBay competitors. Otherwise they would’ve stayed part of the same company.