Payment Processors’ Battle For Supremacy Gets Ugly
Is online auction giant eBay Inc’s attitude towards Google Checkout discrimatory? It would seem so from its recent action to bar the weeks-old Google Inc payment product from its marketplace. Industry speculation is that eBay, which owns rival online payment processor PayPal, wanted to protect its own product. So, what does eBay, or rather PayPal have to say in its defense? PayPal executives say that eBay’s action had nothing to do with Checkout’s competitive position with respect to PayPal.
But how I see it, reality lies elsewhere. Just days after Google launched Checkout in June; eBay added the payment type to a list of payment methods its sellers may not accept. The list of prohibited payment services includes some 36 names, most of them relatively obscure. Digitaltransactions.net reports:
Checkout offers payment processing based on credit and signature debit card accounts users store with Google. It charges merchants a straight 2% plus 20 cents per transaction, a fee that undercuts PayPal’s sliding rate scale for all but the largest merchants. Merchants that spend heavily with Google’s AdWords online marketing service can get processing for free (Digital Transactions News, June 29).
Read more: PayPal Exec Says eBay Ban Against Google Checkout Is ‘Overplayed’