eBay Announcement - PayPal will be required on all listings

So eBay have announced that as of May/June 2008 virtually all auctions will have to be paid for by PayPal. (See http://pages.ebay.com.au/useprotection/changes.html)

Looking on the positive side, given my recent experience with fraud on eBay, this change will certainly make transactions safer.

But I wonder if eBay have any plans to reduce PayPal fees now that everyone will be forced to use PayPal. Will they include PayPal fees as part of the estimate calculated when you preview a new item listing I wonder?

As I am also involved with a business that lists around a thousand items at any one time on eBay, I am not happy that we can no longer offer our usual forms of payment. We would certainly like to continue to offer accepting credit cards directly (much cheaper than accepting credit cards through PayPal). I would say that credit cards are at least as secure form of payment as PayPal so not allowing them unless through PayPal goes against eBay's claims of this being for the protection of eBay customers.

They will stand to make a lot more profit in PayPal fees which is most certainly some motivation for the change.

Hopefully this change will give some people the impetus to look at some of the alternatives such as Oztion.