eBay revealed at their latest analyst day that it owns a 49% stake in Magento and their invest $22.5 million one year ago. Magento announced back in March 2010 about the investment in a blog post without revealing the identity of the investor. eBay officially confirmed that they invested $22.5m in Magento in return for a 49 per cent stake in the four-year-old company on Thursday and caught many by surprise.

Magento’s accomplishments over a very short period of time are astonishing, but not surprising. Magento has become the fastest growing eCommerce platform in the world, and is poised to become the largest open source software company as well. Magento provides just that – a platform that we can leverage strategically to help our clients in the difficult process of continually moving that needle.

eBay’s commitment to Magento aim to be the premier marketplace and payment provider on the Internet, but it makes sense. “ We are fortunate to have a partner that supports our strong belief in open source, community and innovation, Magento controls the remaining 51% of the company, so Magento’s operations would remain mostly independent from eBay says, Magento co-founder and CEO Roy Rubin . By investing in Magento which is one of the premier ecommerce solutions available they are cementing their position in wider online retail than marketplace business. EBay Inc. chief technology officer Mark Carges said “Combined with the power of our platform innovations, we can offer retailers an unmatched advantage as an e-commerce partner, We view our platform assets as enablers, not just for our business but for other retailers.”

We make it easier to integrate Magento’s open source shopping solutions and design integration to online retailers. For further clarifications please click here to contact our sales team for further information.

One of the best ways to make money online is to sell digital products. PayPal is the best recommended practices to use and already the leading payment methods for digital goods . PayPal has recently given sellers improved permission and requirements by officially launching its faster, safer way for consumers to purchase their favorite digital content: PayPal for digital goods. Many sellers can enjoy increased profits when working at home by selling digital goods on PayPal. Today, PayPal for digital goods comes out of Beta and is widely available to game developers, media publishers, or anyone interested in selling digital content on a global scale.

When consumers pay for online content, PayPal for digital goods allows them to pay in as little as two clicks without ever leaving a publisher’s game, news, music, video or media site. With the new implementations put in place by PayPal when it comes to digital goods and services, making money online has never been easier. PayPal for digital goods still has competitive fees for micro payments pricing of 5 percent plus 5 cents for purchases under $12. This is actually lower than fees typically charged by payment processors in the DG industry. As an extra perk, publishers and merchants are paid automatically and given immediate access to their funds, every time a customer purchases digital goods.

PayPal gives merchants global reach with more than 94 million accounts in 190 markets around the world. The company closed out 2010 with $3.4 billion of total payment volume for digital goods. However, to successfully earn money at home in this manner, PayPal makes it easy with all the resources on digital goods. Do you sell digital products online? If you need to integrate this service to your online website please click here to contact our sales team for further information.

Paypal updated it’s policy due to recent regulations from Indian government. The changes in policy is effective from March 10, 2010 stated in their upcoming policy changes. Interestingly, this is not available in PayPal, India website (www.paypal.com/in), available in US website (www.paypal.com/us). Here is the list of changes:

Amendment to the PayPal User Agreement

Section 8 (Fees) of the User Agreement is amended to state that you may not send a Personal Payment to a recipient in India. Any payment sent to India must be for a Purchase Payment and will be charged the Purchase Payment fees.

Amendment to the PayPal User Agreement

The following will be added to section 11.7 (newly numbered 11.5) as an additional example of transactions not eligible for seller protection:

“Items that are not shipped to the recipient’s shipping address on the Transaction Details Page. If you originally ship the item to the shipping address on the Transaction Details Page but the item is later redirected to a different address, you will not be eligible for seller protection. We therefore recommend not using a shipping service that is controlled by the buyer.”

Amendment to Section 13 (Protection for Buyers) of the PayPal User Agreement

Section 13.3 (Eligibility of Item Purchased on eBay) has been amended. Eligibility for PayPal Buyer Protection is now based on whether the PayPal or eBay buyer protection message is included in the eBay listing. Previously eligibility had been based only on whether a PayPal Buyer Protection message was shown.

Amendment to the PayPal Student Account Agreement

1. The following language is added to section 3.c (Parent Control):

x.: “Marketing Promotions. If the Parent Account has opted-in to receiving marketing notifications in its Account Profile, then we may send such notifications to the Child as well.”

2. The following language is added to section 3.d (Child Control):

x.: “Marketing Promotions. The Student may participate in marketing promotions or campaigns offered from time to time.”
3. The last paragraph of section 4 (Liability) will read:

“Any online agreements that are accepted by the Child, including terms and conditions of any promotion the Child participates in, are accepted by the Parent as if the Parent had taken the action. The Parent is responsible for educating the Child on internet safety.”

Amendment to the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy

Beginning March 10, 2010 the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy is being amended under the Activities Requiring Approval section to add airlines and scheduled or non-scheduled charters/jets/air taxi operators as services that require pre-approval.

Source: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?&cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/upcoming_policies_full&locale.x=en_US

We can do what we can do which we can, things can not be done/improved which is out of our control at the moment.

Objective to anyone: Keep our business run (Do not spend much time in worrying, use the time effectively into productive).

What We can Do:

• Use Buy Now buttons/Billing system to get the funds. This will not be reversed. (But do not initiate withdrawal of funds using Bank accounts until you come to know the withdrawal problems with RBI are solved)
• Importantly, arrange funds to live your life this month, assuming you will get your money at the end of this month, also prepare the backup plan for next month.
• Start keep contacting the clients to whom the money is sent back, get in touch with them, explain the situation, create a buy now buttons for them, ask them to make the payment such way. (In this case only, you will come to know what the client situation exactly now, are they willing to pay back (do not run away), whether they got the funds back etc). It is your responsibility to keep in touch with your customers, keep updated them about the issue, they should not be in a confused state. Now, most of our customers (to whom the money was sent), feels we, Indians are not good enough, doing personal business which are not legal, for that reason, PayPal is doing such things. We need to talk to the client & explain, we are legal, doing business in a good manner, saying, this is the glitch with PayPal. This will ensure the customer confidence on your business. (No one realizes indirectly it affects our customers confidence, trust towards our services). Because, they are from US/UK/somewhere, they do not have any problem with PayPal. so, they may think, we are not doing good.
• Funds withdrawal: All the withdrawals are reversed to PayPal account at the moment. You can initiate a withdrawal using “eCheck option”. This is valid & you can get your money. Please note that “You can’t encash your payment directly. You need to deposit into your account & collect them”. This process will take 8-10 days completely.
• Also try to promote the issue “PayPal holds our money, deposited into our account that is worth of millions”, not the issue ‘PayPal do the reversals’. The way media looks/projects two issues in a different way (If you say Someone ICICI/SBI/PayPal do not give us the money that is in our account, holds all the customers money due to their glitch, the total amount is worth of 1K crores, definitely, the media will turn their attention.) If We talk about reversals, the media will feel, it is happening within the bank policy changes, that we can’t do much. Promote “PayPal holds 1K crores & not responding to the customers”, it will certainly get the attention of media.

What we can’t do:

• Reversals are happening (note that the reversal time taken depends on the queue in the system & the timezone of the payment made). This is not the fault in the PayPal system. PayPal officially do this without any announcement. No matter whether it is business/premier/personal accounts,if you are from India, it happens. No matter which method you use (Service, goods, eBay, shipping address etc). The only thing the reversal do not happen is “if the payment made using Buy now buttons/billing system”.
• All the withdrawal initiated after Jan 28th is on hold by PayPal India. The funds are cleared from PayPal US & arrived to PayPal India. Due to the problem between RBI & PayPal India regarding, PayPal India can’t transfer the funds to customers account using NEFT. (This is how PayPal withdraw works: PayPal US releases the funds to PayPal India using Federal Bank in US. As soon as it is done, “the status will be changed automatically to “Completed”. This will take 24 hours maximum. PayPal India releases the funds using NEFT to corresponding Indian banks). The reason of Jan 28/29/30/31 are delayed is, they arrived to PayPal India on or before 31st. But, due to holidays of 30th & 31st, unfortunately, they can’t process on Feb 1st which is the official date of RBI to stop such processes. Update: All the funds are reversed back to PayPal account.