Another change is being phased in. Ebay used to own PayPal, so they imposed a rule requiring all sellers to accept PayPal. Although there was some grumbling, sellers and buyers largely got used to it and PayPal became the standard for on-line payments. Now most e-commerce sites accept PayPal among their payment methods.

A couple years ago Ebay spun off PayPal, creating a separate company. After making money from selling the company off, Ebay then announced it was going to get rid of PayPal as its preferred payment system. Last year they announced that a European payment processor would take over - but they didn't reveal the fees or the process.

That new system has apparently started to be integrated into the Ebay system. I was looking at phone accessories last week and noticed that 90% of the sellers were no longer accepting PayPal - they were accepting credit cards instead. I assume from the mass move that the new processor is offering better fees than PayPal, but I don't know that for sure.

The question is whether Ebay will force all sellers to abandon PayPal and only support this new off-shore credit card processor by making it the new exclusive payment system