BidPay

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article.
Please improve it or discuss changes on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.

BidPay is an online auction payment service web site, established in 1999 by Steve Chin and Marek Bradbury that originally allowed auction buyers to purchase money orders online using their credit card. BidPay was purchased by First Data Corporation/Western Union in 2001 for an undisclosed sum. BidPay was rebranded as "Western Union Auction Payments" in 2003 which led to confusion with Western Union's wire-transfer services - popular with online fraudsters; the service reverted back to the BidPay name in 2004. BidPay ceased operations on 31 December 2005 and was purchased for USD 1.8 million in March 2006 by CyberSource Corporation , which announced its intention to relaunch BidPay. ^[1] BidPay had over 4 million registered users worldwide.

BidPay was a popular payment method for auction sellers based in North America because there was no chargeback or reversal risk, as there was with competing service PayPal. The buyer was responsible for all fees, and US sellers had the option of receiving an ACH payment direct into their bank account. However, when a buyer successfully made a charge back, BidPay ended up taking the loss.

BidPay was relaunched in June 2006 based on an operating model similar to that of a merchant account for auction sales. Sellers are now responsible for all fees, and must have a US-based bank account that accepts ACH payments, since money orders are no longer issued. Also sellers must now ship by a track and trace shipper and are liable for any chargeback instigated by a buyer.

Although eBay had banned BidPay after the service closed at the end of 2005, eBay now (29-Sept-06) lists BidPay as an example of a permitted payment on its "Accepted Payments Policy" page. ^[2]