What do you do if you’re not invited to the party? Throw your own.
That’s exactly what Google Checkout will be doing Thursday night in Boston on the first night of eBay Live, the annual customer event for the eBay community being held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
Google Checkout, which has been banned from eBay as a payment method, was also turned away from being an exhibitor at the event. So, instead Google Checkout will throw its own “Let Freedom Ring” party at the Old South Meeting Hall.
“We’re constantly barraged with requests from eBay sellers to give them a voice on eBay,” said Tom Oliveri, head of marketing at Google Checkout.
EBay banned Google Checkout soon after it was released last year, saying that it is untested. The payment methods currently available on eBay include PayPal, which is a division of eBay, and a variety of credit cards.
However, Google Checkout has already been adopted by almost 25 percent of the top 500 U.S. retailers and billions of dollars of sales will be funneled through the system this year, said Benjamin Ling, head of the Google Checkout division.
Several class-action lawsuits have been filed claiming that eBay’s policy of restricting payment methods is anti-competitive.
There are many reasons sellers would like to see Google Checkout added as a payment method on eBay, including the fact that user choice is good for buyers, and Google Checkout offers charge-back protection for sellers and 100-percent fraud-liability protection to consumers.
