Reserve Bank gives the OK to surcharge for PayPal
by Stewart Carter - eCommerceReport.com

You’ll pay more if you choose to pay by PayPal. That’ll be the result of a Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) initiative allowing Australian merchants to surcharge for PayPal transactions. Currently, PayPal rules prohibit businesses from recovering the extra costs of PayPal transactions by adding them on to the price.

But the RBA’s move is intended to get PayPal to abolish that rule, in much the same way as the RBA forced credit-card companies to accept surcharging.

And if that weren’t enough bad news for the eBay owned company, the RBA is also moving to stop eBay prohibiting customers using cheaper payment options.

The two moves were announced on the RBA’s website following a meeting of its Payment Systems Board under the heading “No-surcharge rules in PayPal.”

“Over recent months, the Board has received a number of comments on the no-surcharge and no-steering rules that apply to payments using the PayPal system as well as the mandated acceptance of PayPal on eBay’s auction site.”

Where no-surcharge and no-steering rules have existed in other systems, the Board has encouraged their removal on the grounds that these rules can diminish competition in the payments system.

Consistent with this, the Bank will shortly be holding discussions with PayPal with a view to seeking the removal of these rules.”

PayPal released a statement to eCommerce Report on behalf of PayPal CEO, Andrew Pipolo, pointing out that it couldn’t really say anything ahead of the talks with the RBA. “We do not intend to speculate, nor comment pre-emptively, on what the outcome of these discussions might be.” Pipolo’s statement also said PayPal would continue to be a good and co-operative corporate citizen. “PayPal will continue to cooperate with the Reserve Bank of Australia during discussions relating to PayPal’s no surcharging policy. 

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