eBay Strategies

AU's ACCC will fight eBay's Paypal only plan...

I'm not a politician, but it looks like the AU's equivalent to the DOJ, called the ACCC, is gearing up to fight eBay's plan to go PayPal only in that country.

FYI, our ChannelAdvisor team in AU is reporting that the whole hoopla is causing nothing but distraction for sellers.  Personally we'd rather they focus on growing GMV....

Google loosing its Bling.

Business2 reports today that Ben Ling, aka Bling, is leaving Google for Facebook.  All I can say is we're majorly bummed at ChannelAdvisor because we've been working with Bling on Google Checkout since it was a gleam in his eye. 
The buzz is Bling is heading to Facebook to work on the platform, so we're over our sadness and happy for Bling and looking forward to the impact he can make at Facebook.  Could we finally see the marriage of Social+commerce that's been dying to be discovered?

The Payment wars are heating up (or Here comes the Q3 craziness!)

Things have been really quiet this July, but here we are at August first and its time for everyone in ecommerce-land to wake up and get cracking for the Q4 rush.

In that spirit there are several interesting announcements/leaks around the payment wars.

First, TechCrunch reports that Amazon is working on a payment system in the vein of Google Checkout (e.g. it will be a checkout system you can put on a merchant's site, vs. just sitting next to visa/mc/amex).  This is also how Paypal Express works.
Next, since raising a whopping $640m in debt financing last year, BillMeLater IPO rumors are swirling around.  Nobody knows their volume, but the speculation is that they are as large/larger than PayPal's off-ebay (merchant) business.  BML certainly is on a lot of merchants out there and is making moves to come further down to the SMB level.

Some interesting questions: 

1. Will eBay allow amazon checkout/payment system for eBay purchases (I'm guessing it's probably not proven or secure, just like gcheckout).
2. Also, a reporter asked me which one processes more: Paypal or Amazon's payment system?

Here's some quickly math from the eBay and Amazon Q207 reports.  All math is quarterly:

eBay:

• PayPal Global TPV: $11.69B - $4.92 off-ebay (merchant services)

Amzn:

• $2.89b Global Net Sales
• Amazon's net sales isn't the same as TPV/GMV because it includes 100% of the GMV for Amazon sourced goods, but only the TAKE RATE (approx 15%) for third-parties.  Amazon doesn't break that out, but they do say that 30% of orders are third parties.
• If we really swag this (the number is too high because we don't know the ASP and not counting for the fact that 30% of the orders have 15% of the revenue counted), you can get Amazon TPV of about $4-5b

So the answer is: If you count all of Paypal's TPV, they are 2-3X ahead, if you look at just off-ebay, Amazon isn't that far off.

I have a sneaking suspicion there are some more payment announcements on the horizon so stay tuned! ;-)

Update: PayPal+Y! vs. Google Checkout

As previously reported Yahoo! and PayPal/eBay are teaming up to offer a similar solution to Google Checkout.  We have some more info that readers and users have passed on:

1. We found a Y! Search result set with a badged listing:(golf shoes)->

Note: the red box was added to highlight the result with the cart.  I have to admit I'm a little underwhelmed.  I'm picturing this convo in the corridors of Yahoo:
(project manager runs into usability guru):
PM: "Hey usability guru, quick question - I'm working on this exciting new PayPal integration project and wanted your opinion on the badge."
UG: "Hmm, well we could copy the Google Checkout cart and change the color to blue?"
PM: "BRILLIANT!"

My big question is why not use the little double-p PayPal logo that eBay uses in listings?  Hmmm. I'm betting someone at Yahoo! didn't want to promote PayPal that much.

Wonder what the heck I'm talking about?  Here's the double-p in all its glory:

2. PayPal has a one-off promo site at paypal-promo.com that offers a joint program from the partners with $100 in YSM spend and free payment processing until the end of 2007.  I didn't have a chance to read the fine print, but I'm guessing this won't work for eBay transactions (urrgghh!).

If you've read the blog for a while, you'll know I'm a BIG fan of this increased competition because it's driving innovation UP and prices DOWN so suggest all merchants go ahead and sign up, pocket the $100 and enjoy some free payment processing thanks to Y!+PP (Hey who do you think is paying for this?! hmmmm).

As predicted: Yahoo! and eBay announce Paypal Checkout deal to counter Google Checkout

The Checkout Wars continued to heat up today. Yahoo! announced during the earnings conference call.  Terry Semel noted that: "Starting April 17, Yahoo's sponsored search results will feature a blue shopping cart icon linking to merchants that accept PayPal Express Checkout."

Hmmmmm.....

ChannelAdvisor Annouces Google Checkout Support in the UK!

Today we are launching our support of Google Checkout UK (pictured to the left).  It's been great working with the GC team to design the system to be flexible and handle the unique challenges of going to a new country (VAT, etc.)

Details here.  We're hosting a webinar April 23rd for our UK customers to go through the details.

Paypal's $61b mistake

According to the consumerist blog, A bug in paypal or the merchant's use of Paypal turned this $28 item into a $61b item.  Talk about going to extremes to increase TPV! 

Yahoo! and Paypal teaming up against Google Checkout?

Now that Yahoo! launched their quality-score based system (codenamed Panama) where click-through matters, the buzz is that a Google Checkout-esque system is in the works where if the advertiser takes PayPal as a payment mechanism, a paypal logo will be displayed.

I checked a couple of sources and I think this is going to happen pretty soon.

Checkout Wars Update: Body Blows

Phew, the Google Checkout /Paypal checkout wars are in full steam right now and there's lots of news to cover since mid-Jan.

• First, Google Checkout extended it's $10 rebate for  first time consumers using Google Checkout via a nifty Valentine's day promo here.

• Then Paypal just announced it is offering $15 off $30 and greater purchases here.  Purchases must be made between Feb 8 and March 31st from ebay.com or any other site that takes paypal - there's a list on the site there.  Be sure to read the fine-print on this one as it seems a little tricky.  For example, here's the excluded payments:

The following transactions are excluded from this offer: Send Money transactions, payments to Personal Accounts, eBay payments made to Personal Accounts, donations, PayPal Mobile transactions, payments for services, Virtual Debit Card payments, PayPal ATM/ Debit Card payments, payments made when you are not logged into your PayPal account, and PayPal Plus Credit Card payments not made through your PayPal account.

Wow - that's a little tricky because lots of stuff you find on eBay tends to be personal accounts.  Also, the rebate isn't real-time, it will be deposited in your account by May 28th. I don't understand why PayPal can't do these promos themselves.  They've outsourced this one to promotionexpert.com.  One concern is that the promotionexpert.com site isn't encrypted and asks you to enter your paypal ID, that can easily be sniffed and used for nefarious purposes.

Bottom line - I'd recommend only using this one if you were already buying something and don't count on the refund, but be pleasantly surprised if you get it.

• Jan 31 during Google's Q4 stock analyst call, Anthony Noto teased out of Google that 1% of their revenue was contra-revenue to pay for Google Checkout "consumer promotions".    Based on this data, analysts have calculated that GC processed anywhere from $900m in payments (Peck) to $200m which is higher than what most were expecting.
• Finally, the blogosphere is doing a good job of recording all of the experiments Google is doing with the Google Checkout "Badge".  Here's one and this one we snapped yesterday:

As predicted the Checkout Wars are turning out to be beneficial to consumers via the promos and also to Merchants who now have several choices and improving economics for the first time in a long time.

Is Microsoft set to enter the payments space?

Bill Gates dropped a potential bomb on the payments world while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  The blogosphere has been all over this already with most folks speculating that this will be some extension to the Microsoft Points program they rolled out with Zune/Xbox (I always thought their search engine would eventually offer points to try and fight Google).

In any case we now have Google in the Fray and with Microsoft entering, that leaves you wondering what Yahoo!, Amazon and IAC are going to do.  Partner, build or acquire?

Big poll for readers: Will eBay allow sellers to take Microsoft's new payment system?