eBay Rolls Out Cashback Program

eBay is known for its auctions site, but these days the core business is not doing so great. In fact PayPal has been greatly outperforming the auctions section and eBay has been moving to reposition the site as an online retailer. Now it’s launching a new cashback program, dubbed eBay Bucks, which would, hopefully, make people spend more on eBay.

“We’re giving eBay’s most loyal shoppers something special in return – money to spend on eBay,” Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay Marketplaces, said.

“eBay Bucks Rewards Program is free to join and easy to use, providing customers with even greater value when they shop the great selection and deals on eBay,” she added.

“With redemption rates well above industry average for comparable loyalty programs, eBay Bucks is a big hit with both buyers and sellers on eBay. It’s seamless, simple and rewarding,” she continued.

The system is relatively easy to use. Customers in the US get back two percent of any purchase on eBay made with PayPal as credit for future eBay purchases. It works for most items sold on the site, but it’s not available for real estate, cars and classified ads.

The credits are accumulated over a three-month period and are capped at $500. After each quarter, users have 30 days to spend the credits they may have acquired. The credits will be available in the user’s PayPal account so, obviously, will only work for PayPal transactions and only on eBay.

eBay has been testing the program for the past year and says that the results have been very promising. eBay is claiming that users in the eBay Bucks program spent on average five times more on the site than the regular users. Of course, that all depends on how eBay picked the ones enrolled in the program in the first place, if it only chose users who already made a lot of purchases, then the metric isn’t saying much.