Following on from my recent post about eBay Australia forcing its users to use PayPal, it seems that eBay’s users aren’t the only people who are unhappy about this decision.
eBay Australia is being investigated by the Australian Competition Commission to see if it is abusing its near-monopoly position in the online auction market to gain an unfair advantage in the online payments market (eBay owns PayPal).
If eBay get away with this in Australia, it seems highly likely they will extend the policy worldwide - we wait with baited breath…
More details here.
eBay Australia will be banning all payment methods other than PayPal and cash on delivery from June 17th, it has emerged.
The changes are supposedly aimed at preventing fraudulent and problem transactions but have widely been seen as a way of generating more income for eBay, who own PayPal.
PayPal fees can add several percent to an auction price and are also charged on the cost of postage - netting eBay a nice extra source of revenue.
We’ll have to hope that similar changes aren’t rolled out in the UK, as both sellers and buyers are likely to be put off by the extra costs and the lack of choice to use a cheque, for example.
I know that cheque payment is still popular with our customers and we would not dream of removing this choice voluntarily. Even if such a ban were to come into force on eBay, we would certainly continue to accept cheques and postal orders for website sales.
You can read more about the changes here.