Ebay's New Security Plan

[Biffy]

Is to have a PayPal only payment system for "security" reasons. The test starts in Australia in a couple of weeks. In the Australian announcement the company says it plans to implement the system worldwide. In the US the company says it is not considering a PayPal only system, no way, not even thinking about it.

Ebay News

Australian regulators have started an investigatioin into anti-competitive business practices by Ebay. They plan on issuing a ruling prior to Ebay's launch date of June 17.

Google has launched a sneak attack on Ebay and PayPal over the news.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ly-policy.html


After thinking about this news for several days, I think it's a good move by the company and is not anti-competitive for buyers and sellers. It eliminates oddball payment methods used in scams. It will reduce fraud much more effectively than their Quixotic browser blocking scheme.

I think the backlash from their browser blocking announcement had an effect on their decision to test the new payment policy elsewhere, about as far away from here as possible!

[Red Flare]

Re: Ebay's New Security Plan

About 99.9% of purchases on our eBay portal are paid via Paypal anyway. Paypal also has some insurance against fraud.

[d_host]

Re: Ebay's New Security Plan

But... what happens when the ONLY option to use is PayPal? They are then free to raise the fees any way they like (like they did recently to eBay posting fees) and your complaints will fall on deaf ears. Competition, ie: multiple payment options, is putting a set of checks and balances into place. If you know PayPal fees are unfavorable, you can request other payment options. But if that's the only option and they decide to charge 10% or 20% from every transaction - what recourse will you have then? It's better, and cheaper, to prevent them from implementing that policy in the first place, rather than go through many class action lawsuits later on to try to change the policy back.

[Wendy]

Re: Ebay's New Security Plan

About 99.9% of purchases on our eBay portal are paid via Paypal anyway. Paypal also has some insurance against fraud.

Which isn't worth the paper it's written on. Three weeks ago I had some funds stolen and Paypal hasn't even responded to my claim.

[Red Flare]

Re: Ebay's New Security Plan

But... what happens when the ONLY option to use is PayPal? They are then free to raise the fees any way they like (like they did recently to eBay posting fees) and your complaints will fall on deaf ears. Competition, ie: multiple payment options, is putting a set of checks and balances into place. If you know PayPal fees are unfavorable, you can request other payment options. But if that's the only option and they decide to charge 10% or 20% from every transaction - what recourse will you have then? It's better, and cheaper, to prevent them from implementing that policy in the first place, rather than go through many class action lawsuits later on to try to change the policy back.

Good points there.
Paypal has just recently raised the fee for Webstie payment pro to $30/month from $20. They did raise fees on eBay, but "compensated" by reducing them to the sellers that were positively rated by customers. I know on eBay boards there was a literal uproar when the detailed rating went into effect and even a boycott. How much effect it had is questionable.

[Biffy]

Re: Ebay's New Security Plan

When I look at all the various moves made by Ebay/PayPal/Verisign this year a pattern emerges. It is clear to me that they are attempting to increase profits by employing monopolistic techniques.

We can be sure that consumer protection laws will not apply in the US but I look for other governments to take action to protect their consumers from predatory business practices.