The option will be available for Buy It Now and approved auction purchases on eBay. It is also available at "tens of thousands" of online stores that accept PayPal Express Checkout.

"Bill Me Later is the perfect complement to PayPal and eBay," said Sam Shrauger, vice president of global product strategy for PayPal. "By offering Bill Me Later as part of the PayPal payment service, customers now have the choice to buy the items immediately and pay for them when they want with Bill Me Later’s flexible financing options."

"Bill Me Later provides a great e-commerce experience for eBay buyers and sellers, and we’re excited to give our customers an easy, safe new way to pay just in time for the busiest shopping season of the year," said Dinesh Lathi, vice president of buyer and seller experience of eBay Marketplaces.

eBay says that the Bill Me Later feature will increase sales and create higher average order values by giving consumers options like no payments for 90 days. To use it, consumers just select "Bill me Later" as their payment choice and enter information like their birthday and last four digits of their social security number.

eBay says Bill Me Later uses a real-time credit model to make decisions about credit within seconds, so consumers don’t have to complete a lengthy application prior to making a purchase. PayPal customers will be able to access their Bill Me Later statements directly from their PayPal accounts, with the option to pay their Bill Me Later balances with PayPal.

eBay bought Bill Me Later about a year ago for about $820 million in cash and $125 million in outstanding options. Now we are seeing it become integrated into eBay’s business.

They’re also spending quite a bit of cash – around $1.3 billion including Danish companies Den Bla Avis and BilBasene. Total spend comes to about $1.3 billion.

Bill Me Later is an online layaway program where you can make payments on a purchase. eBay will then use PayPal to process the payments. As of last month eBay stopped taking money orders or checks for payment in the US – essentially forcing everyone to use PayPal.

Today, Walmart.com announced that they are accepting PayPal as an option to pay for purchases on the site.

To boost third quarter results, and perhaps to help fund the new purchases, eBay will axe 10% of their workforce across the world. That amounts to around 1,000 people losing their jobs.

In the US eBay has lost out to free online classifieds like Craigslist (which it’s in legal battles with and part owner of) and are aggressively expanding into other countries.

To get more details about eBay’s announcements you can listen to an investor conference call today (Monday, October 6, 2008) at 5:30 a.m. PDT. Or you can watch a webcast live or achived at http://investor.ebay.com.

Comments

The company is also buying Denmark based online classified site dba.dk and vehicles site bilbasen.dk for $390 million in cash.

John Donahoe

"We are making aggressive moves to strengthen our leadership positions in e-commerce and payments to competitively position our company for long-term growth," said John Donahoe, eBay Inc.’s president and chief executive officer. "Bill Me Later is a perfect complement to our portfolio, a company that belongs with PayPal.

eBay has also announced it plans to cut its global workforce by 10 percent, a move that will affect 1,000 employees along with several hundred temporary workers. The company says that cutting its workforce will improve its cost structure and strengthen the overall competitiveness of its existing business.

"While never an easy decision to make, these reductions will help improve our operations and strengthen our ability to continue investing in growth," Donahoe.

eBay said its workforce reduction is expected to incur restructuring charges of about $70 million to $80 million, primarily in the fourth quarter.

The company says it expects to hit the low end of its third quarter revenue forecast of $2.1 billion to $2.15 billion and exceed the high end of its earnings forecast range of 39 cents to 41 cents per share, before items. eBay is scheduled to announce third quarter results on October 15.
 

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Amazon will be billed later, when the deal closes in the first quarter of 2008.

Ba-rum-bum-bum.

Bill Me Later calls itself an "alternative" payment provider as their service allows consumers to shop online without a credit card. Instead of using a physical card or number, customers with approved credit can make a purchase, and receive a bill for it in the mail the company.

Bill Me Later was named the sixth fastest growing companies in the US by Inc. Magazine. The company boasts a three-year growth over 8,600 percent.