Sooner or later this was bound to happen. As reported in Digital Trends, PayPal is no longer the only payment system for eBay: Apple Pay is coming soon.
“PayPal no longer has a monopoly on eBay payment systems. The online retailer is officially exploring other options, and soon, you’ll be able to buy home appliances, clothes, or even cars on eBay using Apple Pay.”
“Apple Pay is one of the most ubiquitous forms of payments and provides users with an easy, fast and secure way to pay,” said Steve Fisher, senior vice president of payments at eBay. “Offering Apple Pay as a form of payment on eBay is the first step in providing more choice and flexibility in payment options to our tens of millions of buyers.”
As eBay looks to fully manage its end-to-end payments experience, it will likely look to provide customers additional payment options as well. But shoppers rushing to the eBay site and looking for the Apple Pay button may be disappointed, as eBay is initially offering this option to only a small group of customers. This strategy makes sense from a technical perspective since eBay will want to make sure this new payment option when launched to its full audience provides a seamless transaction. eBay’s move to allow additional payment methods on its platform is no doubt a response to customers’ expecting merchants to be able to accept multiple types of new payment methods. It will be interesting to see how quickly eBay rolls out Apple Pay to its full customer base and includes other payment methods and if this move will increase its current customer base.
Overview by Ryan McEndarfer, Editor-in-chief at PaymentsJournal.com
