eBay rolled out its policy banning checks and money orders as payment methods in mid-October. In addition to its own PayPal payment service, eBay allows sellers to use their own credit-card merchant accounts in addition to a service called ProPay. We checked in with ProPay recently to see how the integration with eBay has been going.
ProPay Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing Bryce Thacker said eBay has integrated ProPay into its checkout flow, but setting up a ProPay account is not intuitive for sellers. One of the most important things to understand is that the seller must first set up a ProPay account, and then they must go to eBay and manually go into their settings and change the options on the "Decide how you'd like to be paid" section. While "clunky" at this stage, sellers need only go through this process once.
Here's a step-by-step set of instructions sellers need to follow in order to be able to accept ProPay on their eBay listings, according to ProPay:
1) Go to www.propay.com/ebay and set up an account (only available to eBay Silver PowerSellers and above until early next year).
2) Log in to eBay and start listing the item(s) for sale
3) Under "Create Your Listing" scroll down to "Decide how you'd like to be paid"
4) Click "Add or remove options"
5) Check the box next to ProPay and hit save
6) ProPay becomes an option along with PayPal for payment acceptance
7) Make sure the box next to ProPay is checked (box next to PayPay can be checked or unchecked)
8) Continue with the eBay listing process
We asked eBay which eBay tools support ProPay, and whether sellers could set their preferences for payment methods in the tools. eBay spokesperson Nichola Sharpe replied, "ProPay is supported by all eBay listing flows including TurboLister. For the web-based flows, the sellers would have to sign up and link their accounts at ProPay to accept ProPay on their listings. The ProPay option will not be enabled for selection if the seller has not linked their eBay accounts with ProPay. For TurboLister and 3rd party tools that support ProPay, the sellers can select ProPay at the time of creating a listing and the payment method would be dropped if the seller has not linked the two accounts."
We also asked a few third-party vendors if their tools were "ProPay-enabled." Vendio said that sellers simply input their ProPay information and it works the same as any other payment method. Infopia's Jon Jessup said it does not have much customer demand to accept ProPay yet, but would most likely work if the seller uses Infopia's eBay Checkout integration, "but we don't have anyone doing that yet." Auctiva's Jeff Schlicht said the company will be adding a checkbox on its lister page, but does not believe Propay can be used with third-party checkout.
An AuctionBytes profile of ProPay in mid-October revealed that the service is available only to eBay Silver PowerSellers and above until early next year. At that time, ProPay also expects a tighter integration with eBay than exists today.
