eBay EU Payment Terms Update June 2025: Payout Schedule & On Demand Changes Coming Soon?
eBay has released an update to their Payments Terms of Use for Europe that may foreshadow potential changes to payout schedules and on demand options coming soon.
As always, sellers are encouraged to read the entire updated terms carefully, but Value Added Resource has you covered with a side by side comparison highlighting some key changes.
Disclaimer: comparisons are made using both automated and manual methods and are provided for informational purposes only - no warranty of completeness or accuracy is expressed or implied and users are advised to do their own due diligence.
The new terms were posted April 21 with an effective date of April 24, 2025 for new sellers and June 24, 2025 for existing sellers.
Notably, only one segment has major changes - Section 3 under ADDITIONAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR EBAY SARL SERVICES : Disbursement of funds.
The changes only impact sellers for whom eBay Sarl is the payment processor, which would be those located in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, and Poland.
Here's a breakdown of the old and new language from this section (translated by Google).
Old Version:
3. Disbursement of funds
If we are your payout company, we will process the payout of the proceeds received to your settlement account. Your payments are generally made either automatically according to the schedule you specify or as an "on-demand payout" based on a personalized payment instruction from you.
If your payment account is not set up for recurring payouts, we may periodically send available funds from your payment account to your linked settlement account.
The proceeds from your transactions—except for those retained in accordance with these Payment Processing Terms—will be aggregated into a single payout, which will be paid to you according to the payout schedule agreed with you.
For example, if you choose weekly payouts, you will automatically receive a payout once a week that includes all amounts available for payout on that day. If you initiate a one-time "on-demand payout," we will initiate the payout of all amounts available on that day.
You may sometimes have the option to have only a portion of your available transaction proceeds paid to your settlement account and keep the remainder in your payment account.
New Version:
3. Disbursement of funds
As your payout company, we will process the payout of the proceeds received to your settlement account. This will occur either automatically according to a schedule selected by you (if automatic payout is available for your payment account) or as an "on-demand payout" following an individual payment instruction from you.
Your proceeds—except for any payment amounts we have retained in accordance with these Payment Processing Terms—will be aggregated into one payout that includes all amounts available for payout on that day.
If automatic payout is not available or selected for your payment account, we may send available amounts from your payment account to your settlement account at certain intervals.
The new version is notable more for what it doesn't say than what it does. eBay has significantly condensed this section but in so doing, has provided less clarity and transparency for sellers.
For example, while the new version still briefly mentions automated payouts on a schedule, it no longer provides the specific example of how a weekly schedule works and it says "if automatic payout is available for your account" - which might indicate that eBay plans to limit that option or remove it from some accounts.
That could mean eBay may be setting the stage to get rid of scheduled payouts for private sellers and implement eBay Balance in Germany and other European countries, like they did in the UK last year.
Germany and the UK are the only markets where eBay has gone "fee-free" for private sellers so far, and part of the tradeoff in the UK has been that private sellers now have funds stay in their onsite eBay Balance by default with manual action required to request payouts to a bank account - a system those sellers have said is frustrating and too complex.
Liz Morton
eBay earns interest on money that stays on account, and saves the cost of processing more frequent payouts to financial institutions, so it will not be surprising if they eventually move to a similar policy in Germany as they have already instituted in the UK.
However, it's also noteworthy that this new Payments Terms of Use has removed the part which previously said "You may sometimes have the option to have only a portion of your available transaction proceeds paid to your settlement account and keep the remainder in your payment account."
It's not clear exactly what the removal means since eBay did not put any changed language in its place, but it may indicate in the future sellers will need to either leave all funds in their eBay Balance or withdraw all funds - with no option to split it up or only move a portion of available funds instead.
The rest of the language in Section 3 does not contain any major changes and neither does the rest of the policy.
While eBay US, UK, and other regional sites also noted their Payment Terms of Use pages were updated on April 21, the only changes in those policies is the addition of the same language above in their respective sections titled "ADDITIONAL TERMS FOR SERVICES PROVIDED BY EBAY SARL" - which means those terms only apply in the countries where eBay SARL provides payment processing services as listed above.
So, is anything actually changing for payment processing for those countries or is eBay just cleaning up the language to make it more concise and less detailed?
Sellers who asked eBay staff for a plain language description of what actually changed in the weekly eBay.de community chat didn't really get an answer - though they did receive some interesting details about why eBay sends update emails with trackable links.
The seller, de3trader, copied and past both the old and new versions of Section 3 into the chat and asked:
1.Why do you send something like this as a tracked link?
https://pages.ebay.de/payment/2.0/terms.html?mkevt=1&mkpid=2&emsid=e99011.m2.l1&mkcid=8&bu=445941415...
...although this is enough:
https://pages.ebay.de/payment/2.0/terms.html
Why is the user being tracked unnecessarily here? Wouldn't a simple link without tracking be sufficient? I don't see any benefit, let alone a necessity.
2.And what is the difference, in German please?
3.And why can't you exercise the necessary care with your terms and conditions and annoy your customers less often with this gibberish?
Miriam@eBay replied:
We use tracked links because it's a common method for measuring the success of our communications and ensuring our content effectively reaches its target.
This amendment to the Payment Processing Terms of Use changes the payment withdrawal modalities in Part III, Section 3 (Withdrawal of Funds).
I'll gladly take your criticism on board and pass it on to the decision-makers – thank you for that!
If you're an eBay seller in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, or Poland - let us know in the comments below if you've seen any changes to your payout schedules or on demand options!
I had a customer open THREE separate INAD cases back to back in Feb. She told a bunch of falsehoods in her comments on the case and refused to provide pictures to back up what she was saying, so I called her out on in it with proof that her statements were untrue.
Even though I knew she was trying to scam me, of course, I approved the returns [all 3] and provided a pre-paid shipping label.
She never sent anything back. I got 3 messages from eBay's system saying "We've closed your buyer's return because we have no record that they shipped the item back to you."
However, eBay's system counted all of them against me in my Service Metrics, causing my "Item not as described returns" rate to be: 0.98% even though the buyer was an obvious scammer and didn't return the items.
I didn't have to refund her since she never shipped anything back so there's not a problem there and eBay did remove her feedback, but eBay still counted the cases against me in my 'service metrics' percentage making me look bad in comparison to my peers.