APIs are first-class products at eBay. We continue to add capabilities into our public API portfolio so third-party developers in our eBay Developers Program can create powerful experiences and manage their eBay business at scale. Our goal is to empower developers, enhance the ecosystem of eBay applications, and add value for our buyers and sellers.
Starting today, eBay is launching new payments API capabilities that will give our third-party developers access to eBay’s new managed payments program, creating more efficient ways to integrate their businesses. The new Finances API provides developers with a more holistic view of transactions on eBay to more seamlessly manage payouts to bank accounts for sellers enrolled in managed payments, get transaction details, and help sellers with accounting and reconciliation. Finances API is an alpha release intended for developer evaluation and feedback. The Account API adds a new capability to determine whether a seller has opted-in to the managed payments program. And, we added a new refund capability to Fulfillment API that enables managed payments sellers to issue full or partial refunds to their buyers.
We have also announced enhanced Promoted Listings capabilities with the Recommendation API. This API provides guidance for Promoted Listings to help sellers optimize their advertising strategy by leveraging trending ad rates and recommended listings. Our third-party developers can use this new capability to competitively elevate sellers’ visibility in sponsored placements across eBay. Reebok saw great success in following eBay’s Promoted Listings recommendations. They promoted more than 100 items at eBay’s trending rate for their multi-quantity inventory. Over the past 5 months, Reebok has seen a 55% lift in overall sales and a 142% lift in sales for the items that were promoted.
Additionally, we’re rolling out more new APIs to our developers to help them expand and evolve their offerings, including:
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Login with eBay - Sign in for new users can feel cumbersome if there are too many steps. We are taking away friction by allowing third-party developers to delegate authentication to eBay by simplifying their integration and improving their new user experience. No need for local authentication or managing identity moving forward, now using Login with eBay, developers will be able to tap into our authentication services to verify their user’s identity. Catch, a new shopping experience created by eBay in Germany, brings fun, inspiration and value by offering cool, trendy and unexpected products at the best prices. Catch has already integrated Login with eBay into its sign-in flow. Login with eBay is currently available for all developers.
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Volume Pricing in Marketing API - Selling more of the same thing allows sellers to save money and time, and move product more quickly. Sellers can now offer a volume discount to their buyers when they buy multiples of the same item. If sellers can sell more than one item to the same buyer, it’s a bigger win. The seller spends less time managing orders, packing items, and can save on shipping costs.
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Offers to Buyers in Negotiation API - This new capability allows Sellers to send offers to buyers that are watching their product with an exclusive discount. Buyers will instantly get notified on their mobile and desktop devices and can accept the offer or counter with the price they would like to pay to purchase. This creates more engagement and opportunities for ecommerce between our buyers and sellers. This capability will be available later this year.
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Best Offer Support in the Inventory API and Merchant Integration Platform (MIP) feed solution - Selling applications that use the Inventory API and MIP will be able to adopt and offer eBay’s Best Offer capabilities to buyers. This capability will be available later this year.
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Aspect Guidance in Taxonomy API & Trading API - eBay updated the Taxonomy API and Trading API to provide guidance on important item specifics that are required, recommended, and optional for sellers to add into their listings. Required item specifics are the most-searched-for aspects by buyers. Our guidance to sellers is intended to boost their listing visibility. Our algorithms use filled item specifics from these three classifications to power accurate search recall, create search-engine friendly links to seller’s listings as well giving those listings exposure in our search result filters on mobile and desktop. Item specific guidance takes the guesswork out of knowing which item specifics are important.
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Consumer Selling API - Earlier, we released the Buy API, that enables buyers to find and purchase inventory from the eBay Marketplace in partner experiences. This year, we are announcing a Consumer Selling API to be released later in 2019. This new API enables users on partner marketplaces to also list their inventory on eBay Marketplace, giving those sellers the additional reach of eBay’s 180M buyers.
Open Source Tools for Integration with APIs
To simplify integration with APIs, eBay has released open source SDKs and client libraries for processing feeds and integration with eBay OAuth services. These releases complement our current open-source tools, Java OAuth client library and Java Feed SDK. We are excited to see how the developer community will innovate with these tools and look forward to partnering with developers to expand our open-source offerings.
Additionally, each year we bring together our most influential and innovative third-party developers to learn about the latest APIs in our portfolio and how to integrate them into their eBay experiences. Today, eBay kicks-off its third annual eBay Connect developer conference at our San Jose Headquarters.
eBay APIs/Developers By the Numbers
Since October 2016, eBay’s Buy APIs have generated $550M in GMB globally.
eBay serves ~150 - 250M API calls per hour.
In an average week, eBay serves ~30B API calls.
In Q1 of 2019, external developers used our public Sell APIs to:
- Created more than 700,000 new listings
- Managed about 2x that number
In Q1 of 2019, external developers used our public Buy APIs to:
- Drive more than $154M GMB globally
- # of transactions: 3.2M