eBay: PayPal’s way or the highway
Want to auction something in Australia on eBay? PayPal will be your payment processor next month. How long will it be until they try to implement that in the US?
eBay goes PayPal-only in June Down Under, with eBay tapping each transaction for a fee and commission as per PayPal’s usual operations. Unhappiness with the idea has been expressed in several places, perhaps enough to motivate Australia’s antitrust regulators to bring the pointy boot down hard on the idea.
CNN suggested Australia may be a testing ground, should eBay have intentions of expanding the program to bigger markets. Like the US, for one:
It’s unclear whether eBay will institute a similar policy in the United States and other countries.
However, the online auction company often tries big changes in smaller markets before expanding them worldwide, and says it is open to that in this case.
“We are going to take learnings from it and apply them accordingly,” said eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman.
Banks in Australia lose under the deal. Rather than a low-cost bank transfer where the bank keeps a small fee, eBay and PayPal pick up the profits. However, as AuctionBytes noted, eBay could be the loser if people simply stop doing business on the site rather than sign up for PayPal.
It’s the same on the UK ebay site.