Ramp-up for Paper Payments Listing Block

We wanted to give your sellers a little more time to update their listings, while still keeping eBay a safe place to shop.

The deadline to remove paper payment methods was Jan 15. We've begun to block listings that are in violation, but we are ramping up the listing blocks slowly and carefully to make sure our filters are accurate and don't have any unintended consequences.

We're starting by blocking on descriptions where sellers are most likely to still have violating text, and where we are confident our filters have high accuracy.

For example, we're first going to start blocking listings with prohibited payment methods in "additional checkout instructions," because we still see a number of sellers with violating text in this listing field, and our filters have high accuracy in this field.

Then we'll continue to slowly ramp up those listing blocks, as we refine our filters and work with sellers to change their listing templates.

All sellers should remove any remaining paper payment methods from their item description. But if your sellers should happen to still have paper payment methods in the "additional checkout instructions" section, they should put a special priority on getting those listings updated.

Some sellers have expressed concern that we will block listings for ambiguous words like "check," where there is a legitimate way of using it in a listing. Don't worry. We will not block listings that say "check out my Store."

We're making the filters as smart as possible to take context into account. For example, we might block on the phrase "personal check" instead of "check" because it is more clearly a paper payment method.

While we are ramping up this automated way of blocking listings, we are also continuing with our efforts to manually remove listings that are in violation. If your seller's listing still has paper payment methods in the item description, and it is reported, it will be taken down.