Ebay Payment Methods

[thecatspajamas]

All that has been said about eBay payments being opt-in only (for now), and not opt-outable once opted-in is correct. Ebay has also consistently stated that Paypal will be added as a payment option in July for those who have opted-in.

For those who may not recall, this is similar to when eBay first acquired Paypal in that it was mandatory for sellers to offer Paypal as a payment option, and if they stated anything in their listing to dissuade a buyer from using Paypal, it was grounds for the listing being removed. At that time, there were other online payment options that sellers could offer in addition to Paypal (BidPay comes to mind). Paypal was already the most prevalent choice among buyers, but eBay changed policies and promotions to skew buyer tendencies more and more toward using Paypal.

With eBay no longer owning Paypal, it seems they are trying to repeat the feat with their own payment system. I would expect, as July approaches, there will be more and more promotions requiring use of eBay Payments at checkout in order to take advantage of them (eBay bucks, coupons, etc). I don't know that they will be able to disallow Paypal for ALL sellers by default (remember, it is only disallowed for those who have willingly opted-in to eBay Payments at this time), but there is no reason to think they won't put the hard sell on all sellers to opt-in.

As a seller myself, there is no way I would ever opt-in early to anything that eBay pushes, as I have yet to see a beta-testing "improvement" that actually benefits the seller no matter how they spin it. With 99%+ of my buyers currently using Paypal, I cannot see disallowing Paypal as a payment method being anything but disastrous for my sales. Heck, I'm even afraid to use my "free shipping supplies" coupon code due to checkout requiring eBay Payments, as I'm afraid somewhere in some fine print that I might accidentally opt-in and not be able to undo it!