eBay purchase on account – What exactly does this mean? eBay merchants will soon be able to offer their customers the option of purchasing on account as an additional payment method.
What does this mean for me as a retailer?
As a merchant, you can offer this option to all customers who are registered on eBay with an address in Germany and who have also selected a German delivery and billing address. In addition, it must be a purchase of goods for which the invoice amount may not be less than EUR 1.50 and not more than EUR 1,500. It is irrelevant whether the purchase was an immediate purchase or an auction.
In the case of so-called “digital goods”, however, purchase on account is excluded due to the lack of a return option.
What needs to be taken into account when invoicing?
You yourself must use eBay with a business account and have a VAT ID on file with eBay. As the customer’s payment in this case is not made to you as the merchant, but to PayPal, it is also necessary to have a PayPal business account.
The buyer does not need a PayPal account for this, as payment is made by bank transfer to an account specified by PayPal, which differs from purchase to purchase. Only a risk check carried out by PayPal must be positive. During this check, credit information may be obtained. If the buyer is rejected by PayPal for the purchase on account, they have the option of selecting another payment method.
Incidentally, PayPal bears the entire credit risk and also handles the dunning process. So if there is a payment default for which the buyer is responsible, you as the merchant keep your money.
Is easybill able to display the ebay invoice purchase correctly?
It is the seller’s responsibility to provide the buyer with the payment details on the invoice. In addition to the PayPal account details and the payment term, this also includes an assignment note, which must read as follows:
“[Seller name] has assigned the claim against you to PayPal (Europe) S.à.r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. as part of an ongoing factoring agreement. Payments with debt-discharging effect can only be made to PayPal (Europe) S.à.r.l. et Cie, S.C.A..”
All necessary adjustments have already been made in easybill for processing the data transmitted via the eBay interface. This means that there is hardly any effort for you as a merchant to set up your easybill account for purchase on account.
You only need to make a small adjustment to your invoice text in the easybill Import Manager, as we have created a placeholder with the name {{ebay_pui_text}}, which automatically formulates the text specified by eBay and PayPal and replaces it with the transmitted data.
The standard text that is stored in each account would look like this after the changeover:
If you are using an individual text, our support team will be happy to help you make the appropriate adjustments.
In order to avoid direct payments or confusion on the part of buyers, eBay recommends that merchants hide their own bank details on the invoice forms in the event of a purchase on account. If you would like to implement this, our support team will also show you how to do this easily with easybill.
You can find further topics relating to eBay at any time in our Hilfe-Center (german).
