eBay will now accept payments from Chinese shoppers through Alipay, an affiliate of Alibaba. Beginning this month, Chinese buyers will have the option to check out with Alipay, “enjoying a seamless, convenient, and familiar payment experience,” eBay announced this week.
eBay told sellers how the new agreement benefits them: “This integration unlocks new opportunities for you, as it provides access to one of the world’s largest online consumer markets, boosting conversions and helping drive more sales.”
“With over one billion users, Alipay gives you an unprecedented opportunity to tap into an enormous and highly active pool of Chinese shoppers,” eBay continued. “Integrating Alipay means you can meet the demand of Chinese buyers looking for exclusive products in categories like collectibles, luxury goods, fashion and electronics.”
While adding a significant pool of potential shoppers is an opportunity for US sellers, it also adds the potential challenges of international shipping – and may possibly result in increased sales from buyers who use freight forwarders, sometimes a source of frustration for sellers.
Since eBay now processes payments and disburses funds to sellers, there is no need for sellers to create an Alipay account – and in fact, sellers in the US cannot use an Alipay account to receive their funds from eBay.
Hey, any payment is good payment. It can’t be worse than PayPal!
They already can buy items using a buying agents.
These agent setup a small office in the U.S. to get a U.S. so as to not alert the seller that is actually a international buyer. They then allow buyers to buy items off eBay through them. The items are shipped to a freight forwarding company with a U.S. address so it looks like a U.S. buyer.
eBay has allowed Intercommerce CA Inc. to operate on its site since 2009. They were formed in South Korea and then moved to California. They have their own phone that allows South Koreans to buy items off eBay. They have items shipped to a Korean owned freight forwarding company in the U.S., typically called ACI Express.
eBay has allowed this company to operate multiple buying accounts on eBay resulting in thousands of sellers getting ripped off. Some of their accounts are listed on the BadBuyerList’s website. One of their accounts that tried to buy from me had feedback of over 48,000, but they have actually purchased hundreds of thousands of items on eBay since 2009.
Many newb sellers end up getting ripped off as due to the U.S. location listed in the profile and the U.S. shipping address.
If you don’t want international buyer then you need to add terms to your listings that state: no international buyers, no buying agents, no freight forwarding addresses, no gift addresses, no non U.S. citizen buyers, no buyers that physically live outside the U.S.
They can still try to buy your item, but now you have grounds to immediate terminate their sale and remove any feedback they leave for terminating the sale.
Just another eBay scam. When you can’t innovate you must turn to scams.
It’s a smart move by eBay, which is kinda rare. One can only hope it encourages more Chinese buyers. But as noted, shipping costs to China likely to remain a significant deterrent unless the buyer uses a US agent or forwarder.
Speaking of shipping, really hope the Trump team can continue where they left off in revamping the UPU terminal dues system to ensure costs of shipping to the US from China match the costs of shipping to China from the US. They made progress, but time to make some more.