Ecommerce giant eBay has announced that it will begin allowing sellers to accept Apple Pay as a payment option in the U.S. later this year.
The announcement was made today in Las Vegas at eBay Open, the company’s annual seller conference.
By way of a quick recap, eBay has historically leaned on PayPal as its preferred payment service, but with the two companies operating as independent entities over the past few years, eBay has been making moves to open up its payment options and manage the whole payment flow itself on-site. Part of that involved signing up Dutch payment processor Adyen, which will become eBay’s primary payment processor in the future. Adyen’s system powers back-end payments, however, so shoppers won’t see an Adyen payment button — in fact, the processor supports myriad payment options, including credit cards and Apple Pay.
Apple Pay represents the first step in eBay’s Adyen-powered payments expansion, and from this fall sellers will be able to offer buyers using the eBay iOS app or Safari browser the option to pay with Apple Pay.
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“Apple Pay is one of the most ubiquitous forms of payments and provides users with an easy, fast, and secure way to pay,” said eBay senior VP of payments Steve Fisher. “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.”
Adyen also supports Google’s mobile payment platform, Google Pay, so we can likely expect eBay to begin supporting that option at some point, though eBay hasn’t given any indication as to when this may happen.
“Managing the end-to-end payments experience on eBay’s Marketplace is a key initiative for the company,” Fisher added. “As we expand our new payments experience over the coming months, we look forward to offering our global customers many other forms of payments on our platform.”
PayPal has enjoyed life as an independent, publicly traded company since splitting from former parent eBay in 2015. Likewise, eBay is now at liberty to embrace many more payment methods, which is certainly a good thing for end users — not everyone is happy to pay by PayPal or credit card. So the direction in which the company’s heading with this payment expansion should be welcomed by buyers and sellers alike.
While eBay’s expansion beyond PayPal and credit cards kicks off this year, the full global transition won’t be complete for a few more years. Even then, PayPal will be offered as an option until at least 2023.
