eBay provided technical information about its Managed Payments during the eBay Connect developers conference this week. eBay is taking over payment processing, which means when a buyer makes a purchase, they will pay eBay instead of the seller, and then eBay will disburse funds (less eBay fees) to sellers.
Alyssa Cutright, Vice President of Global Payments, said eBay is continuing to ramp Managed Payments in the US and Germany and has begun launching it in the UK, Australia, and Canada.
"We start to turn a corner and ramp much more quickly this summer, and we still expect to be largely complete with migrating our entire seller base as we exit 2021," she told developers. It's a great, improved experience for eBay sellers, and it offers buyers a streamlined experience, she said.
eBay Managed Payments now supports the Global Shipping Program, which Cutright called the most requested feature that had been lacking, and eBay has introduced more options for payout scheduling - previously eBay made disbursements daily, but sellers can opt for weekly disbursements instead. (Some banks charge businesses additional fees if they exceed a certain amount of transactions in a month.)
eBay has also introduced the capability to utilize the pending payout balance to cover shipping labels, she said.
In addition, she discussed the new fee structure for Managed Payments, which we had written about on the EcommerceBytes website: "We are moving to a simplified fee structure where there will be one fee that the sellers will pay to eBay inclusive of payments. So no longer will the sellers pay eBay for listing on the platform and a separate fee to a payment processor such as PayPal. It will be a single fee for all payments built-in to eBay, so one fee for all of our sellers. It will make it much easier for managing the bookkeeping and the process."
Shan Vosseller, VP of Product of Payments, got into the nitty-gritty of Managed Payments APIs. Because eBay is intermediating payments, it means it has a whole new set of responsibilities, he said, including regulatory and compliance requirements for different authorities around the world.
One is a "Know Your Customer," or KYC, requirement - and eBay had to build that into the Managed Payments process.
Vosseller said eBay will continue to offer "Immediate Payment" as an option.
eBay will also allow "offline" payment methods such as cashier's check, money order, personal check, cash, and off-platform electronic funds transfer - but just as it does now, those options are dependent on the eBay site (country) and category.
eBay built the payment dispute process into the Fulfillment API for sellers to manage buyer-initiated payment disputes. Sellers can review such details as status; amount of dispute; reason dispute was opened; and more. Sellers can respond by taking one of the following actions:
- Accepting the payment dispute;
- Contesting the dispute;
- Adding evidence and uploading evidence files
- Updating evidence
This year's eBay Connect developers conference is being held virtually over the course of the summer; you can learn more on this page of the eBay website.
Missing from this year's DevCon is Gail Frederick, vice president of eBay's Developer Ecosystem, who had re-launched the conference in 2017. Frederick left the company last month (May 22, 2020).
Hi - when I first enrolled in the sales tax system, I made sure that I contacted the gov dept directly and had a very detailed conversation as to the ins and outs. I could not get my head around the tax being charged on the item + shipping when the shipping already has the tax on it. I In typical government fashion, double dipping is ok for them. The rule is simple - the applicable sales tax is charged on the transaction total - whatever that is made up of. I want an answer from ebay confirming that their one stop fee will not include their % on the sales tax. I can't find any useful info anywhere and calling c/s is a waste of time........language barriers, poor connection quality, reading from a script with no real understanding of the question asked..........just the start! Call 3 times and get 3 different answers which only reinforces the fact the poor quality of c/s that knows nothing.
eBay Updates Developers on Managed Payments
by: purpleiris
Wed Jun 24 09:02:12 2020
I just had a thought that's kind of off topic, but not really since sales tax is a part of what's taken from our funds.
What is the true definition of a 'sale'? What part of a transaction should actually be considered a sale? We're not selling shipping; we're only charging them what it costs for us to ship. The USPS (or whoever) is selling ME the shipping, but I don't pay additional sales tax on it.
So, essentially, the USPS is the one selling the shipping and the merchant is only selling their merchandise. So, how is it that these sites (or the states, for that matter) think they can legally charge sales tax on shipping? Especially when you consider that is has ALWAYS been a known law that you cannot profit from USPS postage? If you're selling postage FOR the USPS, it must be at cost.
That raises a whole other question about flat rate shipping and whether or not the customer knows what service they're paying for. I'm not going down that road, at the moment, though, as I'm just trying to get at the root of this sales tax thing -- and the marketplace and even payment processing fees assessed on postage and sales tax.
It would seem someone or several someones are committing fraud -- and the scariest part is that many of our own states are among the culprits.
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eBay Updates Developers on Managed Payments