In an announcement on the eBay AU site yesterday morning eBay informed us that they have decided to “withdraw” the notification in front of the ACCC which was asking for a special treatment in being allowed to enforce a PayPal only policy.

This will be a great relief to many people, buyers and sellers alike that were incensed by the proposed withdrawal of alternative payment options on the site. Although many people do choose to use PayPal as a payment option, there are many for whom other payment options fit in better with their business model or preferred method of paying for items over the internet.

I feel that this announcement is a win for common sense.

There is something though that still concerns me about the whole situation. The fact is, all sellers still must offer PayPal as an option. So even if the nature of your business model makes PayPal an nonviable option you are still forced to offer it and accept it if your customers choose to use it.

Of course sellers are now looking for ways to try to “encourage” other payment options. I wish to warn you to be very, very careful how you tread here. eBay is quite clear in its “Misleading and Discouraging Payments Policy” document:

“Sellers who state in their listing (in the “Payment Details” section) that they accept certain payment methods must not selectively offer those payment methods to buyers or discourage buyers from using those payment methods.

This means that sellers must always accept payment from buyers through the payment methods they have selected in their Payment Details section of their listing, and must not act in any way to discourage buyers from paying by these methods.”

eBay will not take too kindly to you actively discouraging bidders from using PayPal even by you stating how much the fees impact on your profits.

However there is one strategy that I believe is valid. In all of my listings where I accept personal cheque I always state that the item will be shipped after the payment has been received and cleared into my bank account. As everyone knows it can take a couple of working days for a cheque to clear. It is very rare that I receive a cheque for payment of an item as many people like immediacy.

Many people pay with PayPal because they see it as an immediate payment. However, for you PayPal is not necessarily immediate. It is there in your PayPal account but it can still take up to 5-7 days after you have requested a transfer for it to show up in your own bank account. Thus I believe that you can legitimately state that the item will not be shipped until the money has been cleared into your own bank account.  This in itself may “encourage” some buyers to pay directly into your bank account if they want to expediate the delivery process.

Be aware though, if you decide to implement this policy that PayPal charges you a fee for withdrawing amounts under $150.00

I’ll be writing another post on PayPal soon and some of the issues that you need to be aware of as a seller.  Til then, feel free to leave a comment below on your views of this whole situation.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Or perhaps you would prefer to receive email updates, if so just fill in the box over on the right. Thanks for visiting!