eBay intends to further improve its customer experience by intermediating payments on its Marketplace platform. In doing so, eBay will manage the payments flow, simplifying the end-to-end experience for buyers and sellers. eBay has signed an agreement with Adyen, a leading global payments processor, to become its primary payments processing partner. PayPal, a long-time eBay partner, will be a payments option at checkout for eBay buyers. The transition to full payments intermediation will be a multi-year journey, and eBay will move as quickly as possible to complete this process within the parameters of the Operating Agreement with PayPal, which remains in place through mid-2020.
As a leading global commerce company, eBay believes that payments intermediation is strategically important to improve the buyer and seller experience on its platform and will enable the company to further innovate on behalf of its customers. In a rapidly changing and competitive ecommerce landscape, shoppers expect to be able to both shop and checkout on the site on which they transact. As eBay intermediates payments, shoppers will be able to complete their purchases within eBay. As a global marketplace that operates in over 190 markets, eBay also must continue to provide localized payment options for buyers and sellers that are tailored to their unique needs.
Over the past three years, eBay has transformed its business to drive the best choice, most relevance and most powerful selling platform. Building out eBay’s payments capabilities is the next step in the company’s strategy, with the goal of driving significant benefits and efficiencies for its buyers and sellers globally.
Specific Customer Benefits
For sellers:
- Lower Costs and More Control of Their Economics. Most sellers can expect their costs of payments processing to be reduced after they transition to eBay’s intermediated payments model, and benefit from a simplified pricing structure and more predictable access to their funds.
- A Central Place to Manage Their Business. eBay is working on solutions to provide sellers with information about their eBay business, inclusive of payments information, in one place so that sellers can easily track and manage all of their transactions and customer interactions on eBay.
- Greater Buyer Reach and Improved Conversion. By offering buyers more choice in how they pay and expanding payment options into more geographies, eBay believes sellers will be able to reach more buyers and improve conversion.
For buyers:
- More Payment Options at Checkout. eBay is focused on providing consumers greater choice in payment options at checkout.
- An Integrated Checkout Experience. eBay will manage the entire checkout experience, delivering a more streamlined experience for consumers.
Strategic Partners
eBay has signed an agreement with Adyen to be its primary partner for payments processing globally, including in North America. Adyen powers payment processing for a number of the world’s leading global marketplaces and brings to this partnership a broad global footprint with a flexible and scalable technology platform. Adyen’s wide geographic reach and experience at scale extends to more than 150 currencies and over 200 methods of payments.
Additionally, eBay and PayPal have aligned on terms to offer PayPal as a way to pay at checkout on the eBay intermediated model until July 2023. PayPal will remain an important partner to eBay.
Long-Term Investments
eBay has begun making significant investments across its business to build the capabilities required to intermediate payments. The company’s payments team is led by Alyssa Cutright, Vice President of Payments, and Jingming Li, Vice President of Payments Platform, to oversee the business and product development, as well as Yvette Bohanan, Vice President of Risk Management, leading the payments risk management team.
Together, these leaders bring significant payments expertise from Alipay, Google, HSBC, Square and Wells Fargo. Over time, eBay expects to have a team of several hundred business, product, and risk specialists driving its payment capabilities.
Timing
eBay will begin payments intermediation on the Marketplace platform on a small scale in North America starting in the second half of 2018, expanding in 2019 under the terms of the Operating Agreement with PayPal. In 2021, eBay expects to have transitioned a majority of its Marketplace customers to its new payments experience.
The way that sellers engage with eBay in an intermediated landscape will, for the most part, be very similar as they do today. For example, sellers will not need to change their accounts with eBay. Sellers will continue to log into eBay and manage their listings as they do today. As eBay begins to intermediate payments, sellers can expect to see new, streamlined dashboards and reports inclusive of payments – all within eBay.
Specifically:
- As eBay transitions to a fully intermediated platform, it will work closely with its sellers to ensure that its new payment capabilities reflect their needs and deliver value to them.
- To enable payments in their eBay accounts, sellers should expect to provide eBay with some additional payments-related data and transition to a new relationship with eBay that includes integrated payments capabilities.
- Sellers will be required to complete these steps in order to continue selling on eBay, and it is anticipated that this transition for sellers will occur no later than one year after the expiration of eBay’s Operating Agreement with PayPal, i.e., by July 2021.
- As eBay gets closer to the initial phase of its intermediation efforts, it will share more details about this process and next steps for its sellers. In the meantime, sellers can contact eBay now at paymentsinfo@ebay.com to stay up-to-date on eBay’s payments efforts and timing, share feedback and ask questions.
eBay’s payments initiative is expected to deliver value to customers through an improved shopping experience, enhanced selling tools and streamlined costs. The company is committed to working closely with its seller community to address the features and benefits that are most important to them and to ensure a smooth payments transition.
Forward Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the future events and future performance of the company and reflect, among other things, eBay’s expectation regarding the anticipated benefits of the company’s initiative to intermediate payments on its Marketplace platform.
Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: changes in political, business and economic conditions, any regional or general economic downturn or crisis and any conditions that affect ecommerce growth or cross-border trade; the timing and possible outcome of this initiative; the possibility that the initiative may be delayed or abandoned; and the possibility that it may take the company longer than expected to fully realize any anticipated benefits of the initiative, and those benefits may ultimately be smaller than anticipated or may not be realized at all.
More information about factors that could affect the company's operating results is included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by visiting the company's Investor Relations website at https://investors.ebayinc.com or the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. All information in this release is as of January 31, 2018. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this press release, which are based on information available to the company on the date hereof. The company assumes no obligation to update such statements.