During eBay’s seller conference eBay Open Germany, eBay today announced that the company now has begun managing the end-to-end payments process on its Marketplace platform in Germany. This will drive significant efficiencies and benefits for both buyers and sellers – including giving buyers additional payment options and sellers a more streamlined way to manage their businesses.
eBay began offering managed payments on its platform in the U.S. with a select group of eligible sellers in September 2018. Germany is now the second country to introduce the new experience. The company onboarded the first German sellers over the past few days. In the coming weeks, eBay will be inviting more sellers to managed payments who use eBay features compatible with the initial experience.
In the eBay managed payments experience, buyers will have more choice and flexibility in payment options. Sellers will benefit from buyers enjoying more ways to pay and from having a central place to manage their business. Many will also see lower overall selling costs.
“Managed payments will significantly simplify the customer experience for both buyers and sellers on eBay. This is particularly important in a market like Germany where customers place a high value on a convenient and seamless shopping experience, including a preference for a variety of payment options,” said Eben Sermon, Vice President of eBay Germany. “Managed payments is one of the key pillars of our ongoing evolution to create a more managed marketplace – with the other two key pillars being the further expansion of the eBay catalogue to structure our data better and make it easier for buyers to find what they are looking for and the development of Managed Delivery to provide shoppers faster and more reliable delivery of items.”
“Expansion of managed payments into Germany marks an important milestone in our journey to transform the payments experience on eBay,” said Alyssa Cutright, Vice President of Global Payments. “We’ve made great progress in the last year with our roll out in the U.S. and, while it’s still early days in Germany, I’m looking forward to partnering with our German sellers as we continue to scale the program – improving the customer experience for buyers and sellers alike.”
Specific Customer Benefits of The New Experience
For buyers:
- Greater choice and a more relevant set of payment options at checkout.eBay will offer buyers in Germany a variety of payment options, including credit card, direct debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.
- A seamless checkout experience regardless of the way a buyer pays. By offering managed payments, eBay is able to deliver a more streamlined experience through the entire purchase and post-order process.
- Eligible purchases made in the new payments experience are covered by Buyer Protection, independent of payment method used.
For sellers:
- A central place to manage their business. Sellers will experience easier account management with all 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.
- Lower costs and more control of their economics. Most sellers can expect their costs of payments processing to be reduced with the new payments experience. They will benefit from a simplified pricing structure.
- Fast, direct payouts. Sellers will no longer be paid from buyers. Instead, payouts will be sent from eBay directly to seller’ bank accounts.
On a global level, eBay will continue to expand managed payments to buyers and sellers over time and expects to have transitioned a majority of its marketplace customers to managed payments in 2021. In the U.S., thousands of sellers are now enabled for managed payments. At the end of the second quarter of 2019, $636M in GMV had been processed through the new system.
eBay S.à r.l., a member of the eBay Inc. Group and authorized in Luxembourg as a payments institution, is providing the payment service in Germany.