Days after eBay banned Google Checkout in the U.S. under its Accepted Payments Policy, eBay banned UK payment service provider Nochex - along with Google Checkout and other payment services - in the UK.

Martin Greenbank, CEO of Nochex, characterized eBay's policy as anti-competitive, and said, "I really wonder what the EU Competition Commission will make of this move as they are already mounting an enquiry into competition within the payment cards industry. I would have thought this would be a relatively easy add-on? This move certainly reduces the payment services options available, especially if an online trader or buyer wants to use a provider with an established UK-based support service."

Greenbank called into question eBay's motivations for the policy changes, stating, "We discovered the ban, which was made without consultation with us, or our customers. It looks like a knee-jerk reaction as it was made within two days of the Google Checkout launch."

eBay says the policy, first introduced as the Safe Payments Policy in October, was launched over safety concerns. But many see the policy as a move to block Google's new payment service, which had been rumored to debut since June of last year and actually launched last week.

Nochex is a privately held company based in Leeds, England in 1999. The company's press release states that its payment system was initially adopted by UK auction website users for person-to-person payments, but is "now more active providing affordable internet merchant services and online payment services for web-shop owners, primarily for small and medium sized businesses selling online in the UK." It says it has a million registered users in the UK, and continues to increase rapidly.

Update: eBay UK has removed Nochex from it's list of prohibited payment services and added the company to eBay UK's permitted payment services list. Nochex has also been moved from the prohibited to the permitted list on eBay US.