Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Etsy Pushes to Bring More Transactions In-House

Online marketplace Etsy didn’t have its own payments system until February of this year, which is pretty stunning when you consider it just passed $500 million in sales for the year so far.

Photo by Etsy user cklausen

Now that on-site payment is available — the new Etsy Direct Checkout is structured to be roughly competitive with PayPal — Etsy wants sellers to use it. So it will start selling gift cards to consumers in October that can only be used with Direct Checkout-enabled stores.

The site will also waive all credit card processing fees in September for Direct Checkout stores. Sellers still pay listing and transaction fees like normal.

Of 800,000 active shops on Etsy, 100,000 are now Direct Checkout enabled. It’s only available for U.S. stores, though, and Etsy doesn’t break out how many stores are in which region. Direct Checkout stores apparently see increased conversion and sales — in part because buyers don’t get lost when they wander off site to pay. The stores have processed $50 million so far.

Etsy hired American Express veteran Camilla Velasquez as its director of payments last year to launch the program. “It’s been a long time coming,” she said yesterday. 

Next up, Velasquez wants to add physical gift cards as well as international availability for Direct Checkout. She didn’t give dates for either.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus