Four weeks after we wrote about the bad buyer experience of eBay's third-party checkout system, eBay UK and eBay.com said they would ban them - next year. eBay has been moving in this direction since 2008 but has yet to institute a total ban due to pressure from third-party developers.
eBay had announced in 2008 it would do away with third-party checkout, but in 2009, it made the decision to allow only certain approved providers to continue to offer third-party checkout. It did require them to update the user interface to be consistent with eBay's own checkout, and eliminated the ability for merchants to cross-sell and up-sell items from the checkout flow.
As this July AuctionBytes article reported, some third-party checkout systems have been serving up error messages and incorrect shipping charges to buyers attempting to checkout.
According to the eBay UK announcement that was published on Tuesday, "As of 30th June, 2011, eBay Checkout will be the only checkout process for buyers on eBay. The single eBay checkout experience will enable further innovation on the site in areas such as mobile commerce, which is becoming increasingly popular."
eBay UK is testing a shopping cart ("basket") that would allow buyers to place fixed-price and auction listings into a cart and pay for multiple items from multiple sellers, another reason the company would like to ban 3P checkout.
eBay.com also announced on Tuesday morning it would ban 3P checkout.
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