Ecommerce news: eBay changes and updates

eBay Payments Beta: No PayPal or GSP

More details about the eBay Payments Beta trial have emerged from eBay Open. There’ll be a number of limitations and restrictions for sellers that opt in to try out eBay Payments:

• PayPal will not be one of the payment options for buyers - they’ll only be able to pay with bank, credit card or Apple Pay. PayPal will be available as an option when eBay Payments is rolled out in full. 
  
• The eBay Global Shipping Program won’t be supported. 
  
• Fees are reportedly going to be 2.7%, a discounted rate for testers.
  

Also, once you’ve opted into the eBay Payments beta you won’t be able to change your mind and opt out.

There are a few other points that will be worthing considering before signing up to the beta: payments will be made to your bank daily but could take 2-4 days before it appears in your account, and without PayPal, eBay will be the only place to resolve any disputes.

Read more about the latest eBay Payments Beta news. 

eBay updates: Image search, ‘Accept Offers’ tab and new returns policy

There have also been a number of updates and changes to eBay over the last couple of weeks:

Image Search feature for eBay app

Shoppers using the eBay app will be able to search for products using images. An image can be dragged into the search bar, where it will be converted into a vector representation and compared against eBay listings - search results will be ranked by visual similarity.

‘Accepts Offers’ tab for eBay.com

eBay have added an ‘Accepts Offers’ tab at the top of search results for eBay.com. The tab is ahead of the ‘Auctions’ and ‘Buy It Now’ tabs. If you don’t have ‘Best Offer’ on your listings, then they won’t appear in search results when a buyer filters by ‘Accepts Offers’.

New eBay returns policy

eBay’s new returns policy came into effect on 1 August 2018. Sellers now have two business days to issue a refund once a returned item has been received. eBay will automatically issue the refund if a tracked return has been delivered and not refunded within two days.

Also, for certain categories (Fashion, Health & Beauty, Home & Garden, Sports, Hobbies & Leisure, Media, Vehicle Parts & Accessories) a 14-day returns policy will no longer be an option - sellers will have to choose to offer either 30-day or 60-day returns.