Tiny Sydney based Australian payment processor Paymate will be available as an alternative to PayPal and ProPay on eBay.com starting February 19th 2009.
“Now integrated into Checkout on www.ebay.com, sellers in the USA and Australia can offer the Paymate Express payment option to enable buyers to easily and securely pay via Visa and MasterCard without registration or password hassles!
eBay.com now requires all sellers to offer buyers only electronic payment options that are approved by eBay and integrated into eBay Checkout. Paymate has been approved by eBay as a safe and secure electronic payment method that protects buyers and sellers.”
Paymate will be offering online credit card payment services to buyers in 57 countries and sellers in the USA receiving funds into a US$ bank account held in the USA. Sellers can only accept payments in US dollars.
Sellers can pre-register for the service. After the service launches sellers will have to provide additional information on the Paymate site including a designated bank account to receive payment.
“You will need to accept our bank’s Terms & Conditions for approval of these facilities. Our bank will use these details to approve a merchant facility for you, usually within one business day. Once approved, you will be able to accept credit card payments via Visa and MasterCard on eBay.com or your website.”
Paymate has been popular in Australia and New Zealand with merchants who dislike a certain large US payment service provider.
“We receive the money the next day, with (US Provider) the money goes into a holding account that we have little control over and have to wait 3 to 4 days for it to get into our bank accounts.”
In 6 years with Paymate have never had a chargeback, indicating that the security checks are done correctly, with six months of forced (US Provider) have had 5 charge backs/Payments held that have taken complex phone calls to a call centre, where normally it takes 15 min to even get through and then only way to get it fixed is to demand to talk to a Supervisor.”
Oh really?
Sellers incur fees to accept credit card payments. Paymate makes payments, usually after one business day, directly into sellers’ bank accounts without any transfer fees or clearing delays. Our bank will deduct our fees prior to settlement of funds
Paymate’s fees and charges for the US Payments service will be announced at the launch of the service.
Y’all come back,
This is wonderful news. Thanks for the heads up!
Posted by Dede on January 8th, 2009.
I hope this is as good as it sounds. I’m wondering why Ebay would allow a competent and reasonable company compete with Paypal. We’ll see….
Posted by Lisa on January 8th, 2009.
QUOTE: “Paymate’s fees and charges for the US Payments service will be announced at the launch of the service.”
Ever since was reported in April that at the Catalyst Conference, Stephanie Tilenius “made it clear that the concept of an annual price change no longer existed at eBay and that further pricing adjustments could come at any time”, it has been clear that Ebay is discouraging the businesses on it’s site from embracing a business plan.
Why on earth are these payment companies offering themselves as an option without supplying the key information to be able to determine whether they are competitive, and how customers (sellers) can utilise their services effectively, at the time of these types of announcements? Pre-registration is fine and dandy, but is this a viable business tool for transferring US dollars in Australian bank accounts, or vice versa. Without that information, the announcement this additional service is pretty much worthless.
Kevin
Posted by Kevin_T on January 8th, 2009.
And then the penny drops,….
When I read this announcement I was surprised because PayMate was one of the entities that fought Ebay Australia’s “PayPal Only” policy hard. They made an effective submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), http://tinyurl.com/9syyx9, and, like Google checkout, is a competitor to Ebay’s PayPal service. So why would the second company to be allowed to accept payments on Ebay.com, in “competition” with PayPal, now that Ebay.com is a paperless payment system, be a small (but legitimate) payment service based on the opposite side of the world in Australia? Why on Earth would an Australian operator rate above an operator that is based in the much larger markets of the UK and Europe?
The answer may lie in Ebay’s desire to stop the bleeding of payments in Australia through bank deposits, and an undoubted desire to also make Australia into a paperless payment site as well.
When Ebay tried to make Ebay Australia into a PayPal Only site, they offered payment on pick up as being the “alternative” payment form to PayPal and claimed that this meant that PayPal was not therefore being anti-competitive in the Australian marketplace. The ACCC, rightly, saw through such claims, but one of their fundamental concerns was that such conduct would stifle the growth of the on-line payments industry (and new products) in the Australian marketplace. Today’s announcement, in spite of being short on detail, effectively gives Australia’s PayMate a step up onto the world stage as an Australian Online Payments firm. By embracing PayMate in this way, this counters two aspects of the ACCC’s concerns. It does potentially give an alternative payment option for Ebay Australia, and it does encourage a home grown online payment service, and will probably encourage them to produce new products (which the ACCC wants to see the potential for).
I personally dissagree with the removal of paper payments as an option for traders and buyers on Ebay. I believe that sellers should have the right to set their own fair, reasonable and legal payment terms, and that buyers should have the right to pay by the methods that they prefer within the sellers terms. However, the ACCC’s findings in 2008 did not seem to be concerned by the loss of paper payments, only by the loss of competition in the online payment industry. It is sad that one views every announcement that Ebay makes with an eye to ulterior motives, but I can not help but think that this announcement is aimed, in the long run, at removing as many payment alternatives as possible from the Australian marketplace, and thus not only making the Australian marketplace into a paperless payment zone, but also to stop the “unprotected” payments directly into bank accounts. For those that are currently paying by these methods, if they are forced to choose between PayPal and PayMate as their only payment options, other than those who have personally been incensed by the standover tactics of Ebay/PayPal so far, I think that the majority will start using the larger corporate payment operator.
As it is, my percentage of incoming payments through PayPal are still increasing, leaving only a small proportion of my payments coming through other sources. PayPal HAS substantially increased their marketshare in Australia over the last year, in spite of the number of people they have angered in the process.
My tip: Watch for another application to the ACCC about mid year, this year, asking that Ebay payment options be restricted to PayPal, PayMate and Pay on pick up, as a means of protecting Australian consumers from themselves.
I hope I am wrong, Kevin
Posted by Kevin_T on January 8th, 2009.
I agree with Kevin. This “announcement” is so vague that no sensible person or business can even begin to evaluate the usefulness of even pre-registering for who knows what terms of service.
Paymate may be a wonderful company to deal with but one has to question whether that is true when they let themselves be introduced in such a way by eBay.
The announcement is typical eBay non-informative (the details, when determined will kill you) by eBay MBAs (Master Bs Artist)
TomH
Posted by Tom Harris on January 8th, 2009.
There’s a good deal of speculation on Australian chat forums as to what this means. My personal current maybe-it’s-this theory is that eBay are going to essentially close eBay Australia (and their Australian PayPal shelf company) entirely and since Australian sellers can’t sell with Google Checkout or ProPay, they need something else for Aussie sellers to use.
eBay Australia has been losing money for some time now, the president (head excecutive, whatever his title was, Simon Smith) has moved on, and there are still legal troubles regarding PayPal as a payment processor.
eBay New Zealand just points to the U.S. site. I’m wondering how long it’ll be before eBay Australia does the same thing (and I’m betting they won’t make any prior announcements, either, just spring it as a surprise).
I’m not saying this is necessarily what’s happening, but it’s extremely suspect, to say the least.
Posted by bonni on January 8th, 2009.
While post-Christmas Australian listings have slumped to about 900,000, (which will be seasonal), Australian listings are usually hovering about the one million in recent months. They were fairly steady around 1.3 million listings until they tried to introduce the PayPal only policy, so that action cost them more than 20% of ongoing listings and any growth. They have minimal staff here, no stock costs, and I would assume use the same infrastructure as the larger sites. In many areas the Australian listing fees are substantially higher than the other English speaking sites. This should be a cash rich business with fairly low overheads. I don’t know how Ebay Australia can be losing money, even though their most recent manager appeared to be inept.
Bonni,can you please link to anything that confirms that Ebay Australia is losing money?
Kind Regards, Kevin
Posted by Kevin_T on January 8th, 2009.
http://www.buildaskill.com/ Build A Skill has an interesting, possibly correlating, post today regarding Hong Kong, Singapore and India eBay sites. Worth a read.
TomH
Posted by TomH on January 9th, 2009.
“I don’t know how Ebay Australia can be losing money, even though their most recent manager appeared to be inept.”
Inept? Have you ever heard of John Donahoe?
Posted by Lisa on January 9th, 2009.
I went and checked out PayMate today they are a marvel of modern technology. Only works on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above and Netscape. Guess they never heard of FireFox.
Posted by Liz on January 10th, 2009.
There is nothing on any eBay or PayPal or PayMate site to say that the PayMate US service will be available to any user outside of the USA.
There is also no confirmation available that PayMate USA will integrate with PayMate AU
To all intents and purposes PayMate USA will be a separate and non-compatible service to PayMate Australia - until such time as the Australian parent announces cross platform compatibility.
Do not get your hopes up people - there are nasty surprises coming from this one, born out of PayMate’s long-term parochial “Aussies only” history.
At least MoneyBookers has been global from day one - and no way will eBay be able to shake them of that. In Germany for example, MoneyBookers has nearly 20 times the number of accounts that PayPal have, despite being a British operation regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority.
Ed
Posted by Ed on January 10th, 2009.
Ed,
Given that US residents cannot currently register for MoneyBookers, and that the MoneyBookers Ebay.com operation appears to be controlled by a separate US entitity “Moneybookers USA, Inc.”, is there any certainty that MoneyBookers USA will integrate with the European based Moneybookers operation?
I can’t see how you can make one call without signalling the same suspicion over both. My personal suspicions lie with Ebay rather than MoneyBookers or PayMate. This may give PayMate the leverage to be an international operation, or it may not, but I suspect that this is designed to put “local” alternative online payment operators onto both the Australian and UK sites, with an intention of getting around anti-competition laws in both areas. If that is the case, I suspect that both will be useable pretty much globally on Ebay, and that Ebay is looking at this as way of restricting payment options on all other English speaking sites (they will now have an alternative payment operator in USA, UK/Europe and Australia - they have picked up an important lesson from the ACCC). If successful, this will stop the bleeding of payments from paper payments and bank deposits - never mind the loss of some buyers who do not wish to use online payment methods (and at a time of economic recession). Over the years I have had many requests for bank deposit payment from Europe, but I have never had a request to accept MoneyBookers.
The ulterior motives concern me, but there is not yet enough information to know precisely how competitive either operation will really be. Both will undoubtedly need to introduce Ebay specific buyer and seller protection policies for Ebay to keep up the charade that this is all about protection and not profits, neither already have appropriate protection policies for Ebay users specifically. One assumes that ProPay did not cause much bleeding of PayPal’s dominance on the American site, and that is why they are introducing these two payment services from other parts of the world. I hope that your optimism about MoneyBookers is founded, but for me, I will cast a cynical eye over these developments until all pertinent information is in the open.
Kind Regards, Kevin
Posted by Kevin_T on January 11th, 2009.
That is so new for us! Thanxs!
Posted by Lucia on February 10th, 2009.
Kevin (Jan 11th)
I think you’ll find if you check the Acceptable Payment Policies on all eBay sites, that MoneyBookers has been on the “approved” list for years - it has certainly been there since mid 2003, and probably long before that.
Until it was squawked that it was to be integrated into the dot com checkout, North American residents were able to sign up for accounts (as my referrals account proves). It is only since the naming of MoneyBookers as an intended checkout integree (valid word?) that suddenly North Americans could not sign up - I think, but am not sure, that word was originally leaked at eBay Live 2008, and from that time on the New World had sign up issues.
… wonders if that was part of the deal? Stop accepting North American sign-ups until you’re integrated, and we’ll let you integrate. Where’s Harold Robbins or Jeffrey Archer when you need them? There’s a great plot for a novel developing here.
LOL
Gaz
Posted by Gaz on February 17th, 2009.
It was much useful =)
Posted by Sayna on February 17th, 2009.