eBay CEO Jamie Iannone said the company has no plans to stop charging fees to U.S. sellers and bill buyers instead, when asked by analysts on the August 5 earnings call whether the European approach would work at home. He said on the call:
“As it relates to the U.S., we have no current plans to change the fees as it relates to eBay. Depop already has a buyer fee model, which is complementary to kind of that discovery-led type of experience. And so that’s kind of built into that pricing change. They made that change quite some time ago. And so overall, we feel like we’re in a very strong competitive position.”
Why in the world would you charge buyers instead of sellers?
It’s a trend I could never quite wrap my head around, but several marketplaces have made the move in recent years including eBay UK & Germany and Depop U.S. and UK. Others have tried and failed, including Mercari, which eliminated seller fees entirely in March 2024 and pushed everything to buyers, but then reversed the move in January 2025. Then there was Poshmark, which for some reason didn’t learn from Mercari’s disaster in the U.S., and attempted its own fee shift in October 2024, before reversing it less than three weeks later.
Vinted, a Lithuanian peer-to-peer marketplace for secondhand clothing, kicked off the trend when they launched in 2008, never charging sellers from day one and instead building a “Buyer Protection” fee into their business model. I can see how the fee structure works when built into the business model from the beginning, but I also see how it’s a very hard pivot when a marketplace already has an established buyer and seller base. Personally though, as a buyer, I don’t want to be charged a visible fee for the privilege of shopping on a marketplace, even if it works out the same in the end.
Either way, it seems to be working for Depop, so more power to them. And as the new owners, eBay gets the best of both models.
