Ebay Set To Challenge Commission Ruling

In a statement issued on Friday June 13, online auction site eBay says it will challenge the Australian competition watchdog’s ruling to block a plan to force its users onto a PayPal-only payments system.

“There will be a period of negotiation, but what happens next, I couldn’t speculate,” an eBay spokeswoman told The Sydney Morning Herald. “We’re not ruling out anything at the moment.”

The company has delayed plans to introduce its new rules until July 15 2008, a month after they had originally planned to do so.

The ACCC (The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) issued a draft ruling blocking the ruling on June 12.

The commision ruled against the anti competitive nature of the Ebay/Paypal decision.

The original story from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Opinion

While there may be some justification in Paypal’s claim that it is a more secure method of payment service than some others, the fact is that it is not the only one.

Paymate is one of a number of other processors that offer similar services.

If this move was simply about buyer protection, Ebay would surely have allowed other payment processors on to their site.

The fact that they haven’t done so lends weight to the theory that the main motivation for the move is profit.

In the meantime, other sites such as Oztion are continuing to grow and allow more than one payment processor on their site.

While these sites obviously don’t have the size and reach of Ebay, they are continuing to eat into a market that once belonged almost exclusively to Ebay.