eBay is requiring global sellers to increasingly accept its PayPal payment service. In the U.S. eBay is forcing sellers who ship internationally to accept international PayPal transactions under Section 4.3 of the PayPal users agreement that goes into effect July 9, 2008.

All sellers in the UK are required to accept PayPal in all of their listings and eBay is challenging government regulators in Australia over its plan to move to a PayPal only system in that country.

The requirement of accepting PayPal in the UK does not allow shoppers there to view international listings. According to an AuctionBytes reader, “What eBay appears to have done is to prevent every listing that doesn’t offer Paypal being copied onto the ebay.co.uk servers. So if you do a Worldwide or EU search from ebay.co.uk, then it no longer shows those international listings that don’t offer Paypal.”

“So if you’re a German seller who only offers Bank Transfers, or a US seller that only offers Money Orders & Cashier Checks, then potential buyers in the UK will never ever see your listings.”

eBay is also introducing policies that require sellers to have a single payment policy for all sales, both domestically and internationally.

eBay sellers who sell internationally prefer to limit payment methods on foreign transactions due to geographic reasons and to reduce risk.