More details are emerging about the new eBay and Adyen payments system that will be rolling out over the next few years. eBay will be distancing itself from PayPal when the operating agreement expires in 2010 and moving to a system that mean the marketplace will be “intermediating” payments on behalf of sellers.
eBay execs have been talking more about the new upcoming system and this comment from an online chat will be of interest:
With eBay being at the center of your relationship in the future inclusive of payments, you will manage your funds through eBay. So you will have visibility to the funds and to proceeds of your sales. We strive to provide transparency about where those funds are along the process, and generally we will be moving those funds directly from eBay to your bank account.
That is where we feel direct access to your funds is most beneficial to all of you as sellers. We will of course continue to explore other mechanisms that will allow you to have access to those funds beyond going directly to your bank account and welcome input on how you would like to access your funds.
But we know gaining access to those funds is really important. That’s your working capital, that’s how you run your business day to day. And we’re going to make sure there is full transparency and that we are working to get those funds to you as expeditiously as possible.
– Alyssa Cutright, Vice President of Global Payments, eBay.
Probably the most critical concern, and one which doubtless has yet to be settled even internally at eBay and Adyen, is what payments will cost when eBay “intermediates” them.
Obviously with the PayPal system, you pay your eBay marketplace fees and then, on top, would be the PayPal fees. And such ‘double-dipping’ consistently felt incorrect to Tamebay. There is scope here, with an integrated system, for fee reductions. Why should eBay, when it processes fees itself via Adyen, also take a payments processing fee? The likes of Amazon and Etsy already do intermediate payments and don’t take a specific extra fee.
Another question relates to the speed of disbursements: PayPal offers great speed and flexibility. There is no indication there yet that eBay payments will be similarly efficient.
16 Responses
i can sell on ebay with paypal and the funds from the sale hit my bank account in minutes, i very much doubt ebay will match that, 3.5% is a small price to pay for that service
I will be amazed if Ebay doesn`t try to screw yet more fees from us via this (call me paranoid….)
As I have a business account with fees of 45p for every transaction, the last thing I want is to be drip fed the sales into that account one at a time.
Two things…..
Firstly ‘when the operating agreement expires in 2010’. Well better get a move on then as you are 8 years behind already!
Secondly. As i get charged a fee for transactions on my business bank account, does this mean i will get charged by the bank everytime i get a sale? At the moment i let my paypal account hit a certain level before i withdraw it to my bank…… i could be completely wrong, and will have to check but any thoughts on this?
Oh great that means my bank statement will ring to masses of pages now every month. I liked it being separate on paypal as it meant i could keep the bank statements as simple as possible! Maybe if they could at the least add them in bulk once a day? I guess atleast they are saying they are open to ideas, no way of letting them know, but they are saying it!
I may have misunderstood Dan but I believe Etsy does charge a specific percentage fee for payment?
PayPal are thieves! I like the word transparency, maybe Adyen wont leave Ebay customers without there rightful money like PayPal does while it sits in a high interest account for days/weeks while each customer service operator tells you a different story about when YOUR money will be available. PayPal are organised crime of the highest order!
“But we know gaining access to those funds is really important. That’s your working capital, that’s how you run your business day to day.”
This needs to be the start of the press release. And written in big letters in her office. This is what drives inventory onto the platform — the ability for retailers to buy stock and list it. This is the lifeblood of the ecosystem.
ebay mess with this at their peril.
The follow-up phrase:- “And we’re going to make sure there is full transparency” just doesn’t cut the mustard. That needs to be “And we will promise it is no slower and no more expensive than the Paypal solution is now”
If they can make that promise, why don’t they? If they can’t, why not?
Personally I quite like Paypal, they are a pleasure to deal with when I have problems and the fees are on par with any other payment service. I think separating the fees for selling and fees for financial processing is more transparent than an all-in-one approach and is not “double-dipping”. Comparing my sales on Amazon and ebay my combined fees for either channel level out almost identically; 8% all in, but with ebay/Paypal I see who gets what.
When the announcement first came out I contacted Adyen as there fees are very low compared to Paypal with the idea I wanted to put them on my Woocommerce site. I asked when they paid out as I could not find it any where on there website and the answer was every Tuesday (whatever is in the account at midnight Monday) and Fridays (whatever is in the account midnight Thursday). They don’t payout at any other time. Don’t know if that will be the same through Ebay or it will be a different set-up. The fees were a lot cheaper than Paypal though 0.9-1.1% plus 0.10 cents (that’s ten cents per transaction as in Euro’s).
Only problem at the moment for using it on my Woocommerce site is that there is only one plugin which is older than six months with no updates so not worth the risk at the moment to try out, shame really as they are a lot cheaper plus I would have liked to test Adyen before Ebay starts using it.
1 – It will without a shadow of a doubt end up costing more than Paypal, even if it starts off cheaper.
2 – They will hold on to our money as and when they feel like it, ALL returns will most likely be frozen at the point the claim is opened, regardless of the reason for the return.
3 – It will allow eBay to have control of our funds and take even more control of our businesses than they already are. I’ve being doing some homework on this platform lately and it really looks to me like they’re heading towards only have businesses on here that are turning over £1m+, the fee structures are heading that way and I’m sure Adyen has been given the eBay contract on the basis that eBay will have nearly full control of seller’s funds, tying them even deeper into the platform.
4 – Any quick withdrawals of OUR money to OUR bank accounts will come with a fee. They will want us to buy on stock on eBay and will suggest something like that as the reason that they’re hanging onto our funds for 30 days, so we can use our own funds to buy stock on eBay to sell on eBay, or some other rubbish.
It’s starting to feel an aweful lot like SME’s are working for eBay and not for themselves.
Etsy charge UK based seller 4% + 20p for payment processing. This is in addition to listing and sales fees.
@Dan / Tamebay
“… such ‘double-dipping’ consistently felt incorrect to Tamebay”.
What double dipping?
On my own web site I use Paypal, funds are direct into my account, as with ebay, should I use Facebook ads or Google adwords etc to drive sales, I have to pay them, just like I pay ebay for “advertising” on their platform.
And as for comparing it to Amazon:
1. My fees using Paypal and eBay combined work out around 12.5% Amazon charge me 15% + £25 a month.
2. With Paypal, the funds can be transferred to my bank account in 2hrs, Amazon take 3 days, 5 if it is over a weekend and + if it involves bank holidays.
Now I gather from what you said you would prefer the Amazon method of being paid. At least with Amazon I don’t have to worry about “double dipping”.
Hands up all those sellers in favour of an Amazon style payment system….
I certainly won’t miss PayPal – their customer service is even worse than eBay’s, something that shouldn’t be possible! You can be sure of the reason why eBay are switching – money. The press releases from eBay are fantastic examples of management speak, nothing more.
All we can do as sellers is wait. The decision has been made and we can but await our fate. In the meantime, it’s time to add stock to my own website and promote it more, the less I need to rely on eBay, the better.
eBay and Paypal are cut from same cloth; extreme caution should be used when using either company.
When they were one entity, eBay benefitted from one of Paypal’s sidelines in making money: payment holds/seizures for the most spurious reasons. Now they have split, that strategy has become more and more aggressive and eBay were feeling the brunt of it with more and more sellers going to the wall and more and more buyers having bad experiences with Paypal. Did you not notice eBay’s language in the email notifying users of its switch to Adyen? Users will supposedly have “….more predictable access to funds…..”
eBay are aware that Paypal’s current favoured modus operandi is the seizure/lengthy holding of funds to be a loaner to those using Paypal Working Capital and Paypal Credit and to report false “growth” statistics. In fact, Dan Schulman is quoted as saying that the back end processing moving to Adyen is “not that profitable”.
Let’s be clear, these payment holds/seizures by Paypal are only going to get worse now that users globally won’t have to use Paypal on eBay anymore and Paypal will feel pressured into continuing to report fake growth figures in an attempt to prove that it does not eBay. eBay served as a trap to provide Paypal with users/accounts and now Paypal won’t have that reservoir anymore. Those of you lamenting the demise of Paypal on eBay should consider that.
Search “Paypal” in Youtube and scroll down to Minnie Smalls’ video. Read the horror stories in the comments including the guy that was rendered bankrupt after $178,000 was seized. Paypal are looking for any excuse to hold funds, married name changes, sales spikes, the vague “unusual” actvity, name not the exactly matching your ID (eg, your name is “Greg William Smith”, but you’ve always been known as “William Smith” because you hate the name “Greg”) Also, if you have time to go through the thousands of comments, you will also see ex-Paypal employees confirming that Paypal are just waiting for you to slip up so that they can pounce on your money.
I consider eBay and Paypal as bad as each other. You need to watch out for both of them.