Cheers,
RBH

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a consumer alert about Alli, a weight loss drug currently found on multiple websites and search engines. eBay works closely with the FDA and other agencies to keep our site and our users safe. As a precaution for our users, eBay wants all sellers and buyers of Alli to be aware of the FDA’s recent alert. To ensure your safety, eBay recommends you review this information prior to making a purchase of any Alli product from any source. Also, we encourage you to review our policy page concerning the sale of Food and Healthcare items.

In a nutshell, as of last Thursday, Luxembourg’s National Data Protection Commission (CNPD) has formally approved eBay’s binding corporate rules (BCRs) for privacy compliance for both customers and employees. The data protection authorities in the other 13 EU Member States where eBay operates have also accepted the CNPD’s findings and assessment, under a mutual recognition procedure.

eBay’s approval represents a number of firsts:
• eBay is the first eCommerce company to receive this approval;
• It is the first time a company has received approval for both employee and customer BCRs in less than 12 months time;
• It is the first BCR approval led by the Luxembourg DPA.

“We are excited to have met this major European data privacy milestone and to have been the first eCommerce company to do so. We are delighted at this recognition of our commitment to high privacy standards for our employees and customers,” said Scott Shipman, the Global Privacy Leader for eBay Inc. “Data protection and privacy remains a key focus for eBay Inc. as we continue to foster users’ trust in our online platforms. The cooperation and communication eBay received from the CNPD and the other DPAs was greatly appreciated and made the project a success.”

About BCRs
BCRs are strict rules and procedures that ensure a consistent and high standard of protection for individuals’ privacy. The approval means that all the data protection authorities are satisfied that the eBay Inc. group BCRs provide an adequate level of protection for eBay customers and employees, in relation to the processing of personal data and personal information transferred by eBay Inc. group members.

The President of the CNPD, Gerard Lommel stated, “We were very pleased with the exceptional work provided by eBay, by the quality of the documents elaborated and by the constructive dialogue in the process of validation and implementation of eBay’s binding corporate rules, and are proud to have brought the international coordination procedure to a successful end.”

Although trust and safety might not seem as sexy as say, the next mobile app for iPhone, this news does stand as another clear endorsement of eBay’s efforts with regard to online privacy. Had to share.

Cheers,
RBH

“The addition of these new currencies makes it even easier to use PayPal around the world,” said Scott Thompson, PayPal’s president. “Consumers have more choice in how they pay, merchants can conduct business in more markets around the world, and developers can now create multi-currency applications built on PayPal X.”

Remember, if you want to follow my live-blogging of PayPal X, please check out my Twitter feed @ebayinkblog. I’ll continue to update Ink with news as I receive it.
Cheers!
RBH

New Capabilities for Adaptive Payments
PayPal unveiled new capabilities and enhancements for its Adaptive Payments APIs, expanding payment functionality for multiple recipients and on multiple platforms. New capabilities include:

Currency conversion: Fast, easy global payment apps, automatically converting currencies using current exchange rates.
Pay Anyone: For financial and other institutions to let their customers send money when logged in to their bank accounts. Their customers won’t need a PayPal account to use the service.
Pre-approvals: Enables developers to create reusable payments agreements between buyers and sellers. While payment approval happens online, the actual money movement can occur offline at different intervals, and through multiple devices that are not necessarily Internet-connected at the time.
Send Money: Developers can build person-to-person (P2P) solutions or business-to-business (B2B) payment applications on their platform of choice – whether it’s the mobile phone or a social networking site.
Chained Payments: Developers can take a cut or distribute funds from PayPal payments as they happen.
Parallel payments: Developers can enable buyers to send money to several people in one payment, which is ideal for purchasing multiple items from different sellers, or even for payroll applications.

Introducing Adaptive Accounts
PayPal introduced a beta of its Adaptive Accounts API to provide a streamlined signup experience for people who don’t have PayPal accounts, while maintaining security and privacy of consumer data. With the new API, developers can create PayPal accounts for their customers from within their applications.

New Pricing for Services Payments
Starting in Q2 2010, PayPal will offer pricing for developers building applications in markets that are traditionally served by cash and checks, such as rent, consulting businesses or payroll.

The introductory pricing is:
A flat fee of 50 cents for service transactions funded by a bank account or PayPal account balance, with a three-day settlement period; or a 0.75 percent fee for service transactions funded by a bank account or PayPal account balance, with instant settlement.

Mobile Embedded Payment Toolkit Beta
A key component of PayPal X will be the mobile payment software development kit (SDK), which makes it easier for developers to integrate PayPal into mobile applications to buy physical goods. With just a few lines of code, developers can add a checkout button to accept mobile payments without having to worry about collecting any financial information. The mobile SDK, which will initially support iPhone, will be available in the first half of 2010.

“Mobile transactions have been notoriously tough to monetize,” said Osama Bedier, PayPal’s vice president of platform. “With the new SDK, just tell us how much you want to get paid and what the payment is for, and the funds will be transferred in seconds, not days or weeks.”

X.com Developer Portal
PayPal also unveiled X.com, a new developer portal that contains all the information developers need to create applications built with PayPal X. All general sessions at Innovate 2009 can be viewed live from x.com, and all sessions from the conference will be available for viewing at x.com after the conference.

I’ll keep everyone posted with news from here at PayPal X Innovate 09 as it comes out.

Related Links:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/a-growing-paypal-could-soon-overshadow-parent-ebay/

http://mashable.com/2009/11/04/paypal-id/

http://venturebeat.com/2009/11/04/paypal-woos-developers-with-150k-challenge/

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/paypal-seeks-new-ways-to-use-its-payment-system/

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/11/05/paypal-on-track-to-lead-ebay-opens-doors-to-outside-developers/

http://gigaom.com/2009/11/03/paypals-partially-open-platform-to-usher-in-new-payment-models-apps/

http://tamebay.com/2009/11/paypal-x-dev-con-spawns-facebook-shopping-mall.html

http://econsultancy.com/blog/4907-paypal-turns-to-developers-in-its-quest-for-world-domination

Cheers,
RBH

- Tod Cohen, eBay VP of Government Relations will discuss eCommerce Policy
- Monroe Labouisse, PayPal’s North American Director for Marketplaces will discuss Bill Me Later
- eBay seller Beth Cherkowsky of Depression Glass Warehouse will discuss how PayPal can help your charity auctions

You can find out more about the episode on the PayPal blog.

Cheers,
RBH

“We are honored to learn that TRUSTe and the Ponemon Institute have recognized our leading practices for privacy, security and trust – all qualities we feel are synonymous with our brand,” said Scott Shipman, CPO of eBay, Inc. “At eBay, we constantly and carefully listen to customer feedback and respond with program enhancements to improve the high level of trust and satisfaction our members enjoy.”

The Top 10 companies are as follows:
1. eBay
2. Verizon
3. U.S. Postal Service
4. WebMD
5. IBM
6. Procter & Gamble
7. Nationwide
8. Intuit
9. Yahoo!
10. Facebook

I had tried to break down why I felt eBay was recognized so highly in privacy trust when 2008′s report came out back in December, 2008. You can see that break down HERE.

**What is Privacy Trust? (As defined by TRUSTe and Ponemon Institute):
Privacy trust is a process companies can implement to motivate trust and confidence in how its leaders, employees and contractors (vendors) protect and secure private information about people and their families. Privacy trust requires a company to ensure that actual practices are aligned with the public’s perception about how their personal information is used, shared and retained. The key components of privacy trust are:
• Notice – Companies should clearly communicate their privacy policies and data practices to customers. These policies must be updated to reflect any changes in practices and policy.
• Choice or Consent – Companies should respect customers’ personal data and will not share non-public personal data, except as permitted or required by law.
• Access and Redress – Customer and employees should have reasonable access to their personal information as required by law and have the ability to correct any inaccuracies or misinformation held about them.
• Prudent Security – Companies need to take reasonable measures to protect data and limit access by unauthorized parties.
• Data Minimization and Accuracy – Companies should avoid collecting information they never need or plan to use. While the cost of storage is nominal, the excess information creates data integrity, quality and accuracy problems.

Due to the many different applications being made available, solving for various different business solutions, I thought it would be neat to start featuring a different application in standalone blog posts. So without further ado, I thought I’d kick things off with our good friends over at vzaar. Enjoy!

The vitals:
SM App: vzaar
What it solves for: vzaar hosts and streams video for sellers looking to improve the quality of their listings.
Why you should care: Whether you want to show the products you sell in greater detail or explain in person the range of items you sell, adding video to your listings is simple and easy to do with vzaar.
What you can do: Upload your video to vzaar from My eBay; customize your video player; select which listing(s) you wish to add the video to.
Supported browsers: Firefox 3.5, IE 7, IE 8, Safari 4, Google Chrome
Supported languages: English
Supported eBay sites: http://ebay.com
Required eBay subscriptions: Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro
Advanced Player Settings include:
* Variety of player sizes (Small, Medium, Large or HD)
* Customize your player with border colors
* Borderless Player option
* Unbranded Player option
* Auto Play option
* Brand Text option
eBay Settings include:
* Add to listing feature – no HTML skills required
* Embed video into Single or Multiple listings
* Add to About Me page
* Replace & Delete video options

About the vzaar application:
The first approved Selling Manager application featuring video, the vzaar application allows eBay sellers to quickly and easily add video to their eBay listings for a more dynamic shopping experience. In a matter of seconds a seller subscribed to Selling Manager can now shoot a product video, upload that video to their vzaar application in My eBay and insert it into any live or scheduled eBay listing.

The standard vzaar application is available free to all Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro users on eBay.com. In addition, there are a premium set of application packages available that offer advanced features such as bulk listings of video and unbranded video players.

Here’s a short demo video:

About vzaar:
Founded by two former eBay UK employees in 2007, vzaar has focused on making it as simple as possible for eBay sellers to improve the quality and look of their listings. In 2008, the company won the runner-up award for Best Design at the eBay Developers Conference, and in July 2009, vzaar made a number of its new features available to its users that includes High Definition (HD) video and Customisable Video Players.

According to the team, vzaar powers over 50,000 eBay video listings a month.

The vzaar team:

Screen shots:

vzaar video asset:

vzaar video list:

vzaar dashboard:

homepage banner:

Related:
Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes.com sat down on the phone with Jamie Parkins, COO of vzaar, to discuss the SM Apps program and what vzaar means for eBay users. It’s a great conversation worth checking out. You can download/play the short podcast HERE.

John Lawson (aka ColderICE) has a nice blog review posted too. Check it out HERE.

So there you go. I hope you found it helpful. I look forward to sharing more apps with you soon. Next up: My.ShipRush (shipping automation).

Cheers!
RBH

From the AB post:
The biggest change to the agreement supports the new on-eBay resolution process and accompanying policy. With this user agreement update, the policy and process will offer coverage for all buyers who purchase an item on eBay.com. The policy provides guidance for sellers on how to avoid adverse claim decisions. In the event of an eligible claim it also grants eBay permission to deduct amounts from the seller’s PayPal account to refund the buyer. eBay will ask for permission to charge an alternate payment method in certain situations. (Note, most of the process details are now located in the policy, referenced in the User Agreement).

For more information, please refer to:
** ebay.com/resolutions
** FAQ
** Best Practices

Cheers,
RBH