eBay India has had a chequered history in recent years with the brand being rented out to Flipkart and then when Flipkart was acquired by Walmart the deal was revoked by eBay. eBay appear to have been caught wrong footed but there’s no way they were letting their brand be used by Walmart so they pulled the plug and announced that they would relaunch eBay India with a differentiated offer to focus initially on the cross-border trade opportunity
That was back in the summer, but more recently they tweeted that eBay India will reopen in early 2019.
Hi there, I can confirm that we do have plans to re-open our eBay India site & we should have an update on this early next year. We would recommend keeping an eye on our announcement pages for further details!~Laura J
— Ask eBay (@AskeBay) November 27, 2018
Now eBay India have announced details of a new billing procedure for India based eBay cross border trade sellers. Previously eBay India was based around PaisaPay, eBay India’s online payment service, where buyers can pay sellers through credit card or Online Bank Transfer. The new billing procedure for eBay fees is PayPal based where Indian sellers can pay with an existing PayPal account or with a guest checkout.
This is interesting as it might have appeared logical to have Indian sellers pay with eBay Payments powered by Adyen eBay Payments in India should have been relatively straight forward as only selling fees would need to be collected as there would be no domestic selling, but sellers would still need to be paid from consumers for their sales and eBay Payments (currently in early live trials in the US on eBay.com) don’t yet fully support international payments and currency conversions. eBay India could have been eBay Payments first foray into International payments but it appears too early for that.
What the new billing procedure for eBay India sellers does indicate is that the marketplace is close to relaunching and confirms that the site will enable Indians to sell globally but that there are no immediate plans for domestic sales to Indian consumers.
