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Program news

We hope everyone is well. We want to take this time to share with you some updates that have occurred within the eBay Developers Program over the last quarter (January - March 2024).

GPSR seller requirements to take effect in December

The General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) goes into effect on December 13, 2024.  To help with compliance, applicable eBay APIs will be updated to support all GPSR requirements. As GPSR approaches and rolls out, we will work to keep our developer community updated.

With GPSR, all sellers selling to EU-based buyers will need to provide the following information in their eBay listings:

  • Name and contact details of product manufacturers. 
  • Name and contact details for EU-based Responsible Person, or entity, for products manufactured outside of EU.
  • Relevant product safety and compliance information, such as safety warnings, labels and product manuals in the local language. 

All sellers will receive email communication in regards to these selling/listing requirements.

New SDKs

The following new open-source SDKs were added this quarter:

The full list of eBay SDKs for our APIs can be found here: eBay SDKs

Upcoming change to transaction IDs

Historically in legacy APIs, the transaction ID value for sales generated from auction listings has been 0 since only one sale can occur with auction listings. Starting in July, non-zero transaction IDs will start being returned for auction listings.

This change keeps transaction IDs consistent across all sale formats, and will enable easier transition to our modern APIs.

From now until July, developers should check application(s) to identify any dependencies or assumptions that auction transaction IDs will be 0. If necessary, please update your code to handle non-zero transaction IDs for auction transactions.

New regulatory operating fee

Starting April 8, a new regulatory operating fee will be charged for each sale on the following eBay marketplaces: UK, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Switzerland. This fee is calculated as a fixed percentage rate (0.35%) of the total amount of the sale, including shipping costs and taxes.

The GetAccount call of the Trading API and the getTransactions method will start returning this fee.

For more information on why eBay will start charging this fee, see the Regulatory Operating Fee help topic in the eBay UK Seller Centre.

API updates

The following updates have been made to our APIs this quarter.

Browse API updates

The following updates were made to the Browse API this quarter:

  • The itemLocationRegion filter was added to the search method. This filter allows users to expand searches to all marketplaces globally, or to expand searches to larger geographical regions, such as NORTH_AMERICA or EUROPEAN_UNION. For the full list of supported regional values, and the values supported on each eBay marketplace, see the Valid itemLocationRegion Values table.
  • The economicOperator container was added to getItem and the other three ‘get item’ methods to provide contact information for an EU economic operator (EO). An EO is the manufacturer and/or supplier of the item. The EO is a corporate entity that is related to, and has some responsibility for the product being listed for sale. For additional information, see What is an economic operator?
  • Enabled support for both the Dutch and French eBay marketplaces in Belgium. To retrieve either befr.ebay.be and ebay.be listings with the search method, the X-EBAY-C-MARKETPLACE-ID value is set to EBAY_BE, and the Accept-Language value is set to fr-BE for French, or nl-BE for Dutch. Dutch will be returned by default if an Accept-Language header is not included. Similarly, to retrieve either cafr.ebay.ca or ebay.ca listings, the X-EBAY-C-MARKETPLACE-ID value is set to EBAY_CA, and the Accept-Language value is set to fr-CA for French, or en-CA for English. English will be returned by default if an Accept-Language header is not included.
  • The auto_correct functionality for search strings in the search method was expanded to eBay marketplaces beyond the US, including most European marketplaces, Canada, and Australia.

New fields added to Buy Feed API 

The following two fields were added to feeds in Buy Feed Beta API: 

New RESTful Stores API

A new RESTful Stores API was launched in February. This new API is the RESTful alternative to the SetStoreCategories, GetStoreCategoryUpdateStatus, and GetStore calls of the Trading API.

The Stores API allows sellers to add, move, delete, and rename eBay Store categories at all three levels of an eBay Store category hierarchy. Except for the rename operation, these requests are all processed asynchronously, and the getStoreTask URI to track status of each successful operation is returned in the Location response header for add, move, and delete. There is also a getStoreTasks method that is used to retrieve the status of all recent store tasks.

The getStore method is used to retrieve information for an eBay user's store such as store name, store URL, store logo and description.

The getStoreCategories method retrieves the full eBay Store category hierarchy for the seller.

Economic Operator container added to Listing APIs 

New containers were added to the AddItem family of calls in the Trading API, and to createOffer and related offer methods of the Inventory API. An economic operator (EO) is the manufacturer and/or supplier of the item. The EO is a corporate entity that is related to, and has some responsibility for the product being listed for sale. For additional information, see What is an economic operator?

In the Trading API, EO information is supplied through the EconomicOperator container, and in the Inventory API, EO information is supplied through the economicOperator container.

New PURCHASE transaction type for Finances API

A new PURCHASE transaction type was added to the Finances API. This transaction type occurs when a seller uses available, pending sales funds that have yet to be distributed to the seller’s account through a payout. This transaction type is currently only available on the eBay US marketplace. 

The getTransactions method was updated to return transactional data for PURCHASE transactions. Like with other transaction types, a user has the ability to retrieve PURCHASE transactions by using a transactionType filter in the request as so: filter=transactionType:{PURCHASE}.

The getTransactionSummary method was also updated to return purchaseCount,  purchaseAmount, and purchaseBookingEntry fields in the response. A similar transactionType filter to the getTransactions method can also be used in the getTransactionSummary method.

Post-Order API updates

A donationAmount container was added under the actualRefund container in a Get Return response to provide the buyer refund amount associated with a charitable donation that occurred as part of the sale. A separate buyer refund transaction occurs for the charitable portion of the sales transaction, and this amount was previously captured in the itemizedRefundDetail.refundAmount container.

Additionally, there were the following updates made to the EscalateReasonEnum type, which defines the valid reasons for escalating a return request to a case:

  • RECEIVED_EMPTY_BOX: This value can be used by the seller if the buyer returned an empty box (without the return item).
  • RESOLVED_WITH_BUYER: This value can be used by the seller if the return case was resolved with the buyer.
  • The following escalation reasons are no longer valid, so can not be used as a reason in an Escalate Return request: BUYER_NORESPONSE, DISAGREE_WITH_RETURN_REASON, and TROUBLE_COMMUNICATION_WITH_BUYER

Multiple time zone support for getTrafficReport

The getTrafficReport method of the Sell Analytics API was enhanced to support any global time zone. Previously, all timestamps used in the report defaulted to US Pacific Standard Time/Pacific Daylight Time. Now, by using the ISO 8601 date/time format with offsets in the date_range filter, the user can customize the time zone that is used in the report. An example of using the date_range filter with offsets is shown below:

filter=2024-01-01T02:00:00.000-05:00..2024-01-31T02:00:00.000-05:00

A time zone offset is a positive or negative value that represents the number of hours a time zone is ahead or behind UTC time. The UTC Time Zone Converter site is a handy tool to retrieve these offset values.

eBay Deprecation and Decommission updates

The following APIs/methods/fields are deprecated, and are scheduled for decommission. Please see the Deprecation Status page for detailed information.

The following APIs/methods/fields have been decommissioned during this quarter:

  • The suppressViolation method of the Compliance API was decommissioned on January 30, 2024.
  • The GetOrderTransactions call was decommissioned on January 31, 2024. 
  • Numerous response fields in the GetOrders, GetItemTransactions, GetSellerTransactions, and GetMyeBaySelling calls of the Trading API were decommissioned on January 31, 2024. See the Deprecated Trading Order Management Fields document for the full list of fields that were removed.
  • The following four fields in GetMyeBaySelling were decommissioned on February 6, 2024: Summary.AuctionBidCount, Summary.ClassifiedAdOfferCount, Summary.TotalLeadCount, SellingSummary.AuctionBidCount
  • The UpdateReturnPolicy and UpdateSellerInfo fields in the ReviseItem call were decommissioned on February 26, 2024.
  • The CalculatedShippingRate.OriginatingPostalCode field was decommissioned on February 26, 2024. 
  • The ProductListingDetails.TicketListingDetails and Item.QuantityInfo containers were decommissioned on February 26, 2024.
  • The GetSellerDashboard call of the Trading API was decommissioned on April 2, 2024.The alternative to this call is the Seller Standards Profile methods of the Sell Analytics API.

We hope everyone has had a great start to their year, and we are looking forward to working with the community during the rest of 2024!