Online payments provider PayPal, Inc. Tuesday said it has created the Auction Seller Advisory Board composed of leading sellers in the online auction community.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which works with major auction sites like eBay and Yahoo! Auctions says it intends to use the as a key source for gaining PayPal auction product and policy feedback, as well as for gathering ideas for future product development.
"Understanding what the auction seller community needs and delivering it quickly has been a key to PayPal's success," said PayPal Auctions Product Manager JoAnne Rockower, and a former auction seller. "This advisory board takes that commitment to a new level by providing some of the most successful auction sellers online with a direct communication channel to PayPal's product development team. Formalizing this board is the best way for us to get solid feedback from sellers and to let them know that we're listening."
Creation of the advisory board stemmed from the work of a PayPal employee known on Internet message boards as "PayPal Damon," who for two years has perused postings to gather product suggestions from users of the service. Some of the insight resulted in creation of the PayPal shopping cart, PayPal's Seller Protection Policy, and the popular "refund" button.
The company has worked informally with some online auction sellers for years. But to make an official body, the company said it solicited additional members for the advisory board from throughout the United States based on criteria such as the individual's length of time using the PayPal service and feedback rating on popular auction Web sites.
All of the advisory board members are regular participants in online message boards, where online payment product ideas are frequently discussed among sellers.
PayPal, which recently went public, has more than 15 million member accounts, including more than 3 million business accounts. In 2001, company said it had processed more than $3.5 billion in payments.
The company is currently in a legal battle from a group that claims that PayPal is prone to restricting, freezing or closing customer accounts without good reason.
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