eBay have announced that they will be rolling out eBay Payments in a second territory to be announced during the next quarter. Could the UK be the target country?
eBay have already enabled card payments in the UK and the format in which they are collecting debit and credit cards appears in exactly the same format as eBay Payments in the US. eBay are asking for the card number, expiry date, security code, name and billing address and importantly also auto-filling the box to save the card for future orders.
Currently if you pay on eBay via a bank card, it will still end up being processed by PayPal. With a test purchase, the identifier that ended up on my bank statement was ‘PAYPAL *HANNAH‘ with a reference number… as far as I can determine the merchant’s name is not Hannah.
What eBay don’t reveal is where your card details are stored – within eBay or within PayPal. If it’s within eBay which appears to be most likely then they’re setting up ready for eBay Payments and starting to store card details. In fact, next time I went to make a payment on eBay, they defaulted the payment method from PayPal to my stored card details.
While today there are no sellers (as far as we are aware) offering eBay Payments on eBay UK, it’s quite possible that eBay are preparing to launch eBay Payments on eBay UK in the very near future. However it’s equally likely that it could be another of eBay’s sites in the EU as they all appear to have a similar stored card flow – in fact when I checked on eBay Germany my card details stored on eBay UK appeared automatically already populated.
Who would sign up to eBay Payments on eBay UK?
It’s likely that the first sellers to sign up to eBay Payments on eBay UK would be relatively small business sellers and consumer sellers. They would be the least affected by the lack of PayPal and, if it’s not enabled by the roll out date, the inability to offer international sales.
Smaller sellers would also have the most to benefit if rates were similar to the US where eBay Payments fees run around 2.7% of the transaction amount. Sellers turning over more than £6k/mth will (or should) be using PayPal merchant rates and paying 2.4% or less plus 20p per transation. Whilst 2.4% sounds attractive compared with 2.7% eBay Payments fees, it should be remember that for lower value transactions the 20p additional cost with PayPal makes a big difference. Sellers on significantly lower rates of under 1.9% + 20p will need to run the numbers based on their average order value to determine if there are savings to be made with eBay Payments.
Are eBay Payments on eBay UK coming?
There is no doubt that eBay Payments on eBay UK are coming at some point in the future. The only real question is if the UK will be the second eBay site after the US that gets them.
6 Responses
PAYPAL are money grasping scum and just like judas for his 30 pieces of silver.
They offer NO protection whatsoever to sellers on Ebay and nearly cost me £5k from a sale.
Don’t hold you’re breath for eBay payments being any better for sellers. It’s not in eBay’s nature to make things cheaper for sellers.
eBay said at the beginning there would be no opt-out for sellers. Buyers will still be able to pay with PayPal, but the funds will not be deposited to your PayPal account and you may well have to wait considerably longer to access your funds. This will cause cashflow problems for many businesses as they will be paying out for postage but the funds to pay for it will be held by eBay/Adyen.
I also sell on Etsy and Reverb who use Adyen and there is usually a lag of about a week before the funds land in your bank account. I currently use PayPal funds (eBay sales) to pay for postage for sellers from the other platforms.
Much prefer PayPal over whatever that’s coming. I am on Numonday (only one sale in over two years) they use stripe. I has a few customers who didn’t buy off me in the end as they won’t do business with me as they trust PayPal only.
Then there’s eBay money grabbing parasites. More money to go in their pockets.
You can all but guarantee that it won’t be any cheaper than PayPal. I struggle to see any benefits for anyone but eBay Inc.
This sounds exactly the same as what’s used on Etsy and it works fine. You money get drops into your bank once a week and the various fees are all on one statement nice and easy I stead of split between marketplace and PayPal statements. I much prefer the Etsy way and I can’t wait for eBay to do the same.
One hidden bonus us it could stop tax scammers using multiple PayPal accounts to Syphon money off from their listings into undeclared accounts.