Be Careful Processing Credit Cards on eBay

Most eBay buyers and sellers are probably used to using Paypal for sending as well as receiving payments for eBay purchases. You may or may not know that you can also set-up credit cards alone through a merchant processor and authorize.net or one of two other payment gateways to accept credit cards directly on eBay.

I'm currently considering accepting credit cards on eBay through Authorize.net, but have been cautious about making the move as eBay buyers are somewhat known to file chargebacks or play games to get free merchandise while buying on eBay.




Paypal somewhat acts as a buffer between sellers and the credit card processors so most things are resolved before they go to a credit card chargeback. With credit cards however there is no Paypal to open a dispute with, so a buyer can open a credit card chargeback and potentially wind up with your item and their money back, as well as legitimate scams and stolen credit cards.

Not only is this a problem due to you losing money, but even worse, you stand a chance of losing your merchant processing account altogether. Worse than that, if it goes on record or you're blacklisted, good luck trying to get merchant processing in the future for under 6%. I was working with a client trying to help get them setup with merchant processing and they were being quoted 12% to 14% due to a history of chargebacks.

I was just browsing around on Youtube looking for others experiences taking cards on eBay or any tutorials or guides and stumbled upon this video. Now this seller doesn't seem all that knowledgeable in terms of how to protect yourself as a seller, but none the less he shares a story about being scammed.

I just recently as an experiment hooked up my eBay with strong fraud filters set for about a week to see what would happen. Out of a dozen or so customers who attempted to purchase, only one passed all fraud filters and did I actually wind up shipping out. Now most of these are probably legitimate transactions, I was being extra careful with my fraud filters. Only shipping to the billing address, making sure cvv code matched up as well as street address, city, zip and extended zip.

I'm still contemplating it but in the end eBay buyers tend to be more prone to open claims, inquiries and chargebacks. eBay itself also seems to be kind of a magnet for scammers as well so in the end for now I've decided not to pursue using a merchant processor on eBay.


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