Consumers will be directed to merge their Checkout account with their Google Wallet account. They can automatically transition their Checkout account to Google Wallet the next time they sign in or make a purchase online and their Checkout history will then be available in their Wallet account.

Thankfully Google recognise that merchants won’t take too kindly to having to change their websites a month before Christmas, so shoppers using Google Wallet will be able to make purchases seamlessly on merchant sites that accept Google Checkout. Buyers will simply be able to log in and pay with their Wallet account… assuming that they’re aware that their Google Wallet will work on sites with the Google Checkout branding.

Once Christmas is out of the way in the new year Google will begin transitioning merchants Checkout logos to Wallet logos, and doubtless there’ll be some back end tinkering to do on your website if you currently accept Checkout.

Realistically this is an admission that Checkout hasn’t caught on, otherwise Google could have built offline payments into Checkout rather than launching them as a rebranded Google Wallet. How well Wallet will catch on has yet to be seen. The big question is will you change the Google Checkout logos on your websites to Google Wallet, or will you just press the delete button and allow buyers to use other payment methods?

Saying that they “encourage you to update your feeds and follow the Commerce blog for information about Google products such as Checkout, Wallet, Offers and more, and for shopping, retailing and payments news” is really the start of a slow death for Google Checkout.

Google have plenty to bring to the table as far as driving ecommerce traffic goes, but as for being a competitor to PayPal they’ve pretty much given up. If they can’t justify a Google Checkout blog it spells the end for Google Checkout as an alternative payment processor.

A recent server update has temporarily disabled the Google Checkout merchant frontend servers. As a result, logging in to your Checkout merchant account now returns a 404 file not found error. Please note that this issue only affects the Google Checkout web interface, all other services are still functioning correctly. This issue does not affect your your user’s experience with Google Checkout or your ability to accept orders and process them via our APIs.

Since yesterday, sellers have been complaining that they were unable to access the admin area for Checkout, which was returning a 404 error. Buyers were still able to place orders and pay using Google Checkout, but merchants could not check order details nor see if the payment had been verified. Most frustrating seems to have been the lack of a quick Google announcement of the reason for the problem, and no phone support for merchants to find information for themselves.

There’s currently no ETA for the fix.

The landing page for the Checkout promotion small print says “Offers available until June 23, 2007“.

Opps, not like Google to get something like that wrong, I’d have thought they’d want to forget June 2007 after last year!

Following eBay’s response (and after the deadline for public submissions expired on 3nd May), one more 38 page anonymous report was submitted, which set out in detail why they considered eBay’s move to be anti-competitive.

It didn’t take too long though for one eBay user to expose the culprit, examining the hidden (but easily accessible) meta data of the document he found the phrase “ACCC Submission by Google re eBay”. The document has been replaced with an amended version with Google’s name removed.

This has to be embarrassing for Google, all the major banking institutions that made submissions did so publicly, and it looks much worse have your intentions revealed in this manner than it would do to be up front in the first place.

(Thanks go to Richard for spotting this story)

Topskips (yes a skip hire company) have a website, they have a blog, they even have their own online company TV channel, and back in July 2007 Topskips started to accept PayPal. The reason I like them so much is they pretty much do everything an eBay seller should be doing – website, blog, video (waves to the guys at vzaar) and online payments.

Now however the competition is hotting up in the skip payments industry – Topskips have just announced they’ll be accepting Google Checkout in addition to PayPal. That’s not something that’ll happen any time soon on eBay, but for your own website offering a choice of payment methods is one of the top ways to ensure customers don’t abandon shopping carts.

If you’ve never visited the Topskips website it’s well worth a browse. You might not be in the market for skip hire, but they could teach an awful lot of businesses just how to fully embrace the web.

A Californian man has apparently made $50,000 from opening online accounts. Like PayPal, many companies verifiy your identity (or at least your bank account) by making one or two small deposits, and then asking you to confirm the random amounts you received.

Normally this is pennies, but this gentleman opened some 58,000 accounts netting a small fortune (plus another $8,225.29 from Google Checkout which he’s not yet been prosecuted for). He said he “needed the money to pay off debts and stated that this was one way to earn money”.

Now back to my PayPal account – when I first set up my account rather than deposits PayPal used to make a small charge on your credit card, which was credited to your PayPal account when you made your first purchase. The first time I attempted this the charge failed and some time later I used a second card to verify my account. When I made a payment PayPal true to their word refunded the charges to my account, but for BOTH credit cards on that was charged and one that wasn’t.

So PayPal I’m ‘fessing up – I owe you £1.37 from years ago.

However, what might be more significant is what visitors do *after* visiting the payment site. Robin Goad says “visits do not always mean purchases. … While I can’t provide abandonment data, it is likely that people visiting another retail site after either Paypal or Google Checkout may have not completed their purchase. In other words, a lot of downstream traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds category could be used as a proxy for abandonment rates.” On that basis, GC’s 43% downstream to shopping and classifieds sites seems unfavourable in comparison to PP’s 28%: are buyers just checking out Checkout, rather than actually using it?

If you’re a merchant offering both PayPal and Google Checkout, how are sales working out for you? Which system do your buyers prefer? – leave us a comment below.

Via WebProNews.

eBay have always donated fees to charities where products are sold on the site through eBay for Charity. They match the percentage the seller donates by donating the same percentage of fees. For direct charity sellers this is 100% of fees due going to the benefitting charity. PayPal however don’t donate fees, or even waive fees for processing for charities.

Google have suddenly made their service attractive to well over one million US non-profit organisations. It’s yet to be seen if they’ll introduce a similar measure for registered charities in the UK. It’s time for PayPal to play catch up!

The events will focus on areas key to expanding your business both on and off eBay. The agenda covers topics such as eBay, Amazon Seller Central, Google Checkout, PayPal Express Checkout, Paid Search Marketing and Shopping Comparison. There’s time for networking over lunch and a further networking reception (with drinks) in the evening.

ChannelAdvisor hold many events throughout the course of the year including online seminars and the annual Catalyst Conference. The Insite Conferences are designed for small groups to encourage networking and group discussions. Spread around the country in Bristol, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Dublin there’ll be an event near you.

I attended Insite last year and it was a throughly productive day. All too often it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day running of your business. It’s well worth setting aside just one day this year to review the industry and how you can move your business forward. If there’s just one event that you attend this year’s Insite would be a great choice to make a positive impact on your business.

Judging will be based on:

• Creativity: Is the application engaging and innovative? – 30%
• Quality: Does the application work intuitively and as expected? – 30%
• Functionality: Is the application useful? Does it fulfill customer’s needs? – 40%

It will be interesting to see what the developers come up with, monitising Facebook for users will only make it more attractive, and of course if applications are developed first for PayPal it’s shutting another door in the face of Google Checkout. They’ll be playing catchup once again.

There’s one oddity with this competition, there are two “First Prizes” of $5,000, and four “Second Prizes” of $2,500. There’s also a “Grand Prize” of $10,000, but come on…… two first prizes?

Checkout aficionados shouldn’t take too much hope of that being any time soon however. The comment was made while discussing a recent survey which found only 14 percent of Google Checkout users happy with it. Saying it may be allowed on eBay if user satisfaction increases sounds more like a dig at Checkout than a forward looking statement.

Meg points out the figure for PayPal users happy with the service was over double that of Checkout. PayPal has also increased it’s lead over Checkout since Christmas sales and Meg likened it to “a huge home run,” saying “It’s the most innovative Web payment product out there and has done really well, even in the face of a little bit of a challenge from Google.”

So what should we make of her comment that eBay may use Checkout? I think the operative word is *may*. I’m pretty sure eBay have no compelling reason to allow it, in fact it only benefits sellers and will certainly cost PayPal revenue. For buyers eBay and PayPal are synonymous and very few that open an eBay account don’t go on to open a PayPal account (at least in established territories). Don’t expect Checkout on eBay this year.

eBay’s spokesman Hani Durzy said that this was “part of an ongoing experiment to look at how we market across all media channels”, though he admitted that eBay were disappointed in the Google party plans: “we don’t view that kind of activity as an appropriate activity for one partner to do to another.”

Though the party was, in the end, cancelled, eBay’s paid ads are (at time of writing) still missing from Google. Normally affiliates would step into the breach, but as of June 1st, eBay.com affiliates were no longer allowed to use paid search advertising. While eBay and Google have their hissy fits, this is costing sellers visibility, and more importantly, money.

Many thanks to Dan for the link.

PayPal have supported payments via mobile phone (cell phone for those in the US ) for some time. However their offering is more appealing for many applications as it works via SMS text messages. With PayPal you don’t need to be browsing a WAP enabled website to make a payment, you simply text the amount you wish to pay to the phone number of the recipient. PayPal already had a WAP interface when they introduced their text message payment service.

It’s good to see Checkout adding more sophisticated services, but they’re still very much playing a game of catchup.

The Bank of PayPal should gain a huge boost in momentum against their nearest competitors which in the UK are Nochex and more recently Google Checkout. Nochex has remained a smaller player, although popular – Checkout is merely a “Checkout flow for existing payment methods”. The irony is in the near future it could be possible to click through Google Checkout with your PayPal bank card – it’s already possible to use Google Checkout with your PayPal credit card (although it’s an affiliate card though GE Capital Bank Limited). Many larger retailers don’t accept PayPal services but the change from an electronic money issuer to a banking institution could make them a more attractive proposition.

The change also means that they’ll no longer be regulated by the FSA but will be regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.

It remains to be seen which services will be affected by the changes. The despised ten day clearing time for eCheques should clear more promptly. PayPal Website Payments Pro (very similar to a full merchant account) may become more attractive to large retailers. PayPal will also have more flexibility to introduce new features such as debit cards allowing you to spend funds held in your PayPal account.

You can find more information on the PayPal website.

Checkout was conceived for one reason alone – and that’s to build and protect 98% of Google’s revenue – Adwords!

Adwords allow retailers to purchase adverts triggered when a user searches Google. There are two sets of results, natural or organic results and paid for (Adwords) results. Google uses a number of algorithms to decide which retailers advert should appear at the top of the paid results, combining how much they’re paying with how many users click on and how relevant their advert is. The delightful part of adwords is that if no one clicks on your advert there is nothing to pay, you only pay when a prospective buyer is interested enough to click on your advert.

So how does that relate to Checkout? Well for every £100 you spend on Adwords Google with give you £1000 of free Checkout processing. Processing is free for retailers for 2007, but from then on the Adword incentive kicks in. It won’t actually cost Google that much, their charges are 1.5% + £0.15 per transaction. That means if you spend £100 on Adwords the £1000 of free processing will only cost them about £15. Retailers who already spend on adwords are incentivised to use Checkout and tied further into the Google brand by spending on Adword campaigns.

Adwords however are a two edged sword for Google. 98% of some $11bn pa revenue is under attack for trademark infringement, or in eBay parlance keyword spamming. A court date is set for November this year for allowing trademarks belonging to the American Blind & Wallpaper Factory to be purchased as Adwords by competitors. The case infers that Google has made profits by deliberately trading off trademarks – in reality it’s those that purchased the Adwords that are to blame. It’s simply not possible for Google to vet each and every keyword a retailer bids on to ensure it’s not a trademark. If Google lose the law suit (which will be tried by Jury) it could have a huge impact on their profitability.

I have some sympathy for Google, their situation is similar to that of eBay’s law suits with Louis Vuitton & Christian Dior in Europe and Tiffany in the US. It’s an impossible situation for eBay to verify that every article for sale on their site is not counterfeit. Similar difficulties arise for Google to verify each Adword purchased doesn’t infringe a trademark (but is still available for legitimate purchase by the manufacture and authorised retailers). Google have already been fined €300,000 for allegations that it had provided links to sites that sold counterfeit versions of Louis Vuitton products.

Adwords are the backbone of the Google brand, search is the companies strength but adwords provide their revenue. Anything that endangers this revenue will be strongly contested. Anything that can increase Adword revenue is vital to Google’s future profitability, and that’s where Checkout fits into their portfolio. Payment processing is not a goal as it is for PayPal, it’s simply a means to an end, and that end is higher Adwords spend from retailers.

Finally the two burning questions “Are PayPal afraid of Google?” and “Will Google Checkout be allowed on eBay?”:

Well the answer to the first is a resounding no! There are two sides to PayPal’s business – auction payments largely on eBay, and website payments. Google will only ever compete in the website payments arena, and PayPal have recently introduced PayPal Website Payments Pro which roughly acts as a full merchant account from the buyers perspective. It allows buyers to pay via phone, mail, fax and in person as well as online. PayPal also have worldwide coverage for buyers covering 190 countries whilst Google is still US and UK only.

Many sellers have called for Checkout to be allowed on eBay but it’s a moot point seeing as most won’t qualify anyway. Google are targeting retailers who will spend big money on Adwords. They’re set up to verify Limited companies only and many eBay sellers are Sole Traders or Partnerships and will struggle to open a Checkout account. Even if they do open an account many will not qualify for the promotions that make Checkout attractive. In addition Google themselves state Checkout is merely a “checkout flow” reliant on existing payment methods. It’s an “e-wallet” holding your credit card details. Checkout is simply not eBay friendly and according to Google themselves “not a form of payment“.

Customers using PayPal.com can now also view the site in Spanish, French and simplified Chinese as well as US English. The addition of these new languages will enable Spanish, French and Chinese-speaking PayPal users to shop online securely and simply in the language they prefer. Customers using an Internet browser in any of these three languages will automatically be offered to view PayPal.com in one of these languages when they first visit the site.

With Google Checkout blowing millions on incentives to attract business there’s a lot of catching up to support retailers who want to appeal to a worldwide customer base. PayPal with Website Payments Pro now covers a vast geographic area and one Checkout will take years to compete with.

The new markets that can now use PayPal to send money online include: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cook Islands, Djibouti, Dominica, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Greenland, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Norfolk Island, Oman, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Yemen and Zambia.

However it’s not all great for retailers struggling to attract custom and jump through the checkout hoops. On the Checkout website it states that “merchant sites are selected for inclusion in promotions based on Google Checkout sales and the overall Google Checkout experience they offer“. Signing up for a Checkout account isn’t the universal panacea for sales rolling through the door from delighted customers with an unlimited £10 discount card.

Unless you’re invited to participate (or my take is “Unless Google think you’re going to get them enough new signups to checkout”) you’ll be hard pressed to fulfil all the criteria, which are so nebulous there is no sure way to tell if you’ll qualify or not anyway. Below is a typical email being sent out to merchants requesting more information on how to promote checkout with their promotion:

Transparency and straight answers about the promotion are what retailers are calling for. If anyone has more information on how to ensure a retailer qualifies for the checkout promotions please add a comment below.

At Catalyst I had the opportunity to interview Scot Wingo, President and CEO of ChannelAdvisor and he shared his thoughts with me on many topics of interest to eBay traders and ecommerce in general. Timing for our interview couldn’t have been better – eBay released their Q1 results the night before. Scot’s take is that the results were better than expected across the board, with only the growth in active users and number of listings lagging. However if eBay can produce higher profits on fewer listings either selling prices are up or a higher percentage of listings are finding buyers – either (or both) should please sellers. With growth Internationally at 38% and within the US at 18% eBay.com continues to lag behind in it’s contribution to total revenues.

We started with questions on the differences between trading on eBay in the US and UK. Firstly I asked Scot why it appears the US are first for product launches and innovations which benefit sellers, while the UK and other eBay sites around the world appear to be used as guinea pigs for less popular site changes such as feedback 2.0. This is of interest because the US business is only about twice the size of the UK, the UK has the highest spend per head of population on eBay in the world, and the EU marketplace as a whole ($169.2bn) is larger than the US ($156.5bn).

By experimenting with marketplaces outside the US, eBay could be potentially disrupting a larger proportion of their income, than if the changes were tested on the US site. Scot explained that eBay executives naturally consider the US marketplace first as it’s close to home – most of them are US based and eBay.com is the first site they look at. In addition he said the EU market may be seen as more resilient to change, and sellers quicker to adopt change than those in the US.

When asked about the weak dollar and how that’s affected sales Scot stated many US sellers especially in categories such as golfing equipment have been quick to capitalise on selling to the EU. As sellers have seen significant increases in certain products they have started to list on the UK and other EU sites, and in fact some have even shipped stock to the UK to be distributed locally by third parties to take advantage of the situation.

The loss of US visibility for UK sellers has affected cross border sales, but Scot predicted that in the future a listing upgrade could be put in place so that those wishing US visibility for their products could regain that market. Aside from talking to Scot I spoke to several ChannelAdvisor customers who this change caused a lot of pain. The main problem they told me wasn’t the loss of visibility, it was the lack of notice given. If they had had time to adjust their selling strategies they could have minimised financial loss and compensated for loss of visibility with different listing strategies. In the short term it has been a severe disruption to business, but as with most changes on eBay, sellers are adjusting to the new circumstances.

The “Building Trust by Reducing Counterfeits” policy has affected business for ChannelAdvisor customers less than might have been expected – typically a 5% loss according to Scot. However this would vary significantly by country as English speaking markets can list across UK, US, Australia, and Canada and UK, US, and Germany can post the items worldwide. In other markets such as Spain the impact is probably much higher than 5%.

The keyword spamming policy has proved a problem for many sellers with listings removed for stating terms such as “Next day shipping” or “Delivery by Fed Ex”. Scot’s best advice is to insert your terms and conditions into auctions as an image, this way there are no misleading keywords. Scot explained that customer support reps are targeted on removing offending listings and it’s easier to remove them a page at a time than to examine each individually to verify if the listing actually breached a policy.

Scot had some interesting comments on both Amazon and Google. Amazon already have sales data on third party sellers. If they look at 10,000 products sold on Amazon they can easily take the top 1,000 and decide to sell them direct. It’s no secret, but if you make a market for your products on Amazon it’s something to be aware of. Equally with Google Checkout in the future Google will be able to amass data not only on the click through rates on both organic and paid for search results, but will know exactly what your sell through rate is on products compared to your competition. It will be interesting in the future to see what use (if any!) Google make of conversion data.

eBay Express was the only other venue mentioned, Scot stated the site would be better if it wasn’t branded as an eBay site. Possibly a shopping.com branded site would have been better, or of course (the unthinkable) if it had been an Amazon site. Scot likened eBay Express to a “Diet Donut”, it doesn’t really work – there are only so many ways you can extend a brand.

Many sellers in the UK are constantly looking for alternative sites to sell on other than eBay so I asked Scot which, if any, ChannelAdvisor may support in the future. The answer is none are planned – Amazon and eBay are already supported, as are merchants own websites. A typical ChannelAdvisor customer will have built eBay sales using TurboLister to around £20k/mth when they start working with ChannelAdvisor. They’ll build their sales to around £100k/mth and then rather than looking at smaller auction sites will use more sophisticated services such as Search and Comparison Shopping to build business further.

Scot stated that ChannelAdvisor currently have around 100 accounts in the UK, but expect to double that within the next year. Considering the number of eBay sellers in the UK without their own website it seems a realistic goal, and one that Scot appears to have no doubts that they’ll achieve.

The one thing that impressed me from talking to Scot is that he’s not out for a hard sell on ChannelAdvisor, a philosophy that carries through the ethos of his company. Scot and ChannelAdvisor hold many events throughout the year including the Catalyst conference, online workshops and seminars and of course talking at eBay University. Many of these events are at no cost, and the material is always non-specific to ChannelAdvisor. Scot waits for you to assimilate the information and ask the question “And how can I do that with my company” to which the answer is of course “With ChannelAdvisor products and services!” If however you can put in place the proposals and advice given there is no hard sell. Either way I’m always more than keen to listen to what Scot has to say as are many other sellers around the world.

Dubbed a “Paypal killer”, Checkout‘s launch wasn’t without its problems, but an agressive marketing strategy last Christmas, no seller fees throughout 2007 and giveaways to shoppers have seen its popularity increase. UK sellers will also benefit from a fee-free service this year, as well as the standard offer of £10 of orders processed free for every £1 spent on Google advertising. We predict that UK merchants will be flocking to sign up today!

With eBay having stated that it will not allow Checkout on site, that slice of Paypal’s market seems safe. Google’s target will be smaller website owners who don’t have their own merchant accounts. Until now, there has been little choice in this marketplace: stick with Paypal, or sign up with Nochex. However, problems with customers being charged extra bank fees for using Nochex have caused many Nochex merchants to think again about the service. As Google Checkout works slightly differently to both Nochex and Paypal, faciliatating ordinary card payments, it seems that they will be safe from this extra fee. So while Checkout may not be a Paypal-killer just yet, it surely marks the beginning of the end for Nochex.

Updated to add: Or perhaps not. It seems that Google will require UK merchants to have a VAT number to be permitted to register. This seems to knock out a huge proportion of Google’s potential market to me.
Updated AGAIN to add: No, apparently that’s been dropped. Non-VAT reg. is okay.

43% of those surveyed intend to use PayPal but not Google Checkout in the future (80% had heard of PayPal) while a tiny 2.3% intend to use Google Checkout but not PayPal.

The survey shows that PayPal not only has great brand awareness, but the threat of Google has so far had very little impact on it’s business. In fact if Google weren’t constantly bombarding sellers and buyers alike with cash (either free processing or cash back for paying with the service) their market share would be even less.

Google have a long way to go before they become a mainstream method of payment, or even to be a recognised alternative player in the online payments market. Google’s $10 handouts to buyers obviously aren’t buying them many friends!

Pointing out that while users who already have accounts will have no problem logging in and making a payment there’s a reluctance to use sites which constantly insist you open yet another account that you may never use again. IAG conclude that if you can accept both payment methods you should, but if you can only integrate one tool then PayPal is the one to use!