Seems they are tyring to tempt sellers into "Managed Payments" I've had some messages asking me to set it up, including that offer, and the implication that I won't be able to sell if I don't. Inerestingly there is nothing yet absoultly saying you must use it so I'm going to hang on without as long as possible. It's possibe that legally they can force it's ue in the UK so are trying obtuse messages and bribery.
Yeah, classic use of "Dark Patterns" in the user interface. Using dark patterns is the software equivalent of the behaviour of a confidence trickster. It sends a clear signal to anyone watching that you aren't to be trusted and are no better than some itinerant criminal trying to con an old lady into getting her drive tarmaced for a "bargain price". The State of California are making this illegal, hopefully the rest of the world will sit up and take some legislative notice.
As far as the legality of mandating some particular payment method is concerned I suspect that it's the same as if the owner of a shopping centre were to say "You can only accept VISA for payment, nothing else, and only via our nominated payments processor" to their tenants. You'd certainly fall foul of the Unfair Contract Terms Act because of the implied contract it created for all the consumer customers of that shopping centre but we know that would have little effect because the regulators who ought to do something about it seem to like to sit around with their thumbs up their arses until something hits the headlines. The real threat would be the team of lawyers from one of the big customers saying something to the effect of "You're 'aving a laugh ain't you son?*". The same for eBay, with the likes of Argos (Sainsburys) and other big name brands as vendors on the platform.
* For those not at home with the argot of East End London this is what you'll hear from one of the locals to indicate that he believes you are trying to mislead him to his detriment and, if you do not swiftly take the social escape of pretending to have just been having a joke with him, will shortly provide you with an opportunity to enjoy the splendour that is NHS hospital food. For those that think dialect is poor English I might point out that that dialect says, in seven words, what it took me 46 words of standard English to convey. Cushty!
Not dark patterns with this one. They sent an email about a year ago telling everyone they were going to be doing this, how and why and when.
On the sales side of things, it's nothing like a shopping centre. That analogy doesn't really apply to merchant services. In this case ebay is literally a federated ecommerce front end that has a merchant integration. You are being paid by the merchant at the end of the day. They are replacing paypal with Adyen, that is all. That allows more integrations like Apple Pay, Google Pay etc which paypal have been slow to the market with. Also Adyen's transaction fees are far lower than paypal which makes it a better option for large and volume sellers who ebay is trying to appeal to.
If you want a better analogy it's like a department store, which
does facilitate payments for its internal branding customers. It also provides customer service for them etc.
The thing is that if you've ever done any actual real merchant integrations and seen how this all works, you'll realise the turnaround from Adyen is remarkably fast. Most merchants can hang on to cash for days at a time.
On this I've dealt with £650 sized returns as well and it's as smooth as butter. I am impressed. Paypal can be a right shit show resulting in days of arguing with 3 parties all with different opinions to you. On the software and finance side of things I am incredibly difficult to impress. I have torn new arseholes in many products and projects pitched to me with no remorse whatsoever. I even brought a CTO to tears once. But this, I have very few complaints about.