eBay Goes Fee-Free For Private Sellers In France & Italy, Expands Fashion Authentication
eBay is extending its fee-free consumer-to-consumer selling model to France and Italy, just weeks after expanding Authenticity Guarantee for Fashion in both markets as part of its broader C2C and pre-owned fashion push.
Deb Stowe at Recommerce Intelligence spotted the change after eBay updated help pages September 1, showing private sellers with a registered address in the European Economic Area can now sell on eBay.fr and eBay.it without Final Value Fees or Regulatory Operating Fees.
Deb Stowe
Private sellers pay no transaction fees on sales and get 150 free listings per month, with additional listings costing €0.35 each. Fees can still apply for optional upgrades and some international transactions. eBay's new French and Italian selling pages say fees may apply for sales to buyers outside the EEA, while eBay's detailed fee schedule specifies an international fee when the delivery address is outside the Eurozone or Sweden.
Also beginning September 1, eBay is adding a Buyer Protection fee to most purchases from private sellers registered in France or Italy, shifting some of the cost of those transactions to buyers. eBay says sellers now receive 100% of their asking price, while the Buyer Protection fee is added to the price displayed to buyers rather than tacked on at checkout.
The Buyer Protection fee starts at €0.10 per item plus 7% of the first €20, dropping to 4% on the portion between €20.01 and €300 and 2% between €300.01 and €4,000, with no additional percentage charged above €4,000. Shipping is not included when calculating the fee.
Private sellers are also being moved to eBay Balance, with sales proceeds staying on the site until they are spent or manually withdrawn to a bank account. Scheduled payouts are no longer available.
That mirrors a change eBay made for UK private sellers in 2024, which drew complaints from users who found the on-demand withdrawal process unnecessarily difficult. French and Italian sellers can use their balance for purchases, shipping labels and other eBay expenses or request a withdrawal at any time.
eBay is also drawing a sharper line between private and business sellers. Starting September 1, private sellers with eBay Stores can no longer use several promotional tools, including multi-buy and order discounts, newsletters, promotional events and coupon codes, which are now reserved for business sellers.
The new France and Italy selling pages prominently promote AI-powered listing creation, with the Italian page telling sellers they can take a few photos in the app and have a listing created automatically. eBay has been expanding its Magical Listing experience to more new and reactivated sellers in other markets as it looks to make listing easier for casual sellers.
The fee overhaul comes just weeks after eBay launched Authenticity Guarantee for Fashion in those same markets. VP Global Head of Fashion Alexis Hoopes announced the France and Italy launch on LinkedIn in August, saying the timeline had initially been “considered by many to be undoable” and crediting teams across fashion, product, engineering and authentication.
eBay's newly updated France and Italy pages show eligible fashion sold through the local sites is now routed to the company's authentication center in Germany before being sent on to the buyer.
Selected new and pre-owned clothing, shoes and accessories from eligible brands qualify when listed or sold for at least €200, along with eligible handbags and sneakers. Listings are automatically enrolled and sellers cannot opt out.
Items must be sold by an EU-based seller and shipped from France, Italy or Germany, with the service available to buyers across much of the European Union. For private sellers, the buyer pays a fixed eBay shipping charge and eBay provides a prepaid label to send eligible items priced at €10,000 or less to the authentication center.
For items over €10,000, sellers choose their own shipping service. Once an item passes inspection, eBay handles the trip from Germany to the buyer.
Sellers in France and Italy were already included in a European program covering eligible sneakers, handbags and watches sold to German buyers, but the transaction had to take place on eBay.de. The existing international authentication page still describes that setup, with the service specifically tied to sales into Germany.
The new program brings authentication directly to eBay.fr and eBay.it, covers a much broader range of fashion and opens eligible listings to buyers across most of the EU.
eBay has been building this C2C strategy market by market for the last several years, starting with eliminating fees for private sellers in Germany in March 2023. At the time, eBay explicitly said fees were the biggest hurdle to getting consumers to sell and pointed out that users who sell on the marketplace also buy twice as much as those who only shop.
The UK followed in 2024, first with free selling for pre-owned fashion and then across most private seller categories, with Buyer Protection fees, eBay Balance and Simple Delivery added as eBay continued to reshape the C2C experience.
And earlier this year, eBay brought fee-free selling to Australia, again adding a buyer fee but going a step further by requiring most eligible non-Pro sellers to purchase their shipping labels through eBay.
The US has not received the same broad overhaul, though eBay did test an invite-only zero Final Value Fee promotion in select fashion, baby, home and jewelry categories in March. CEO Jamie Iannone told investors during the Q2 earnings call that eBay currently has no plans to bring the broader international fee changes to the US.
Recent data from the UK Competition and Markets Authority put Vinted at an estimated 50% to 60% of UK C2C online apparel GMV in 2025, up from just 5% to 10% four years earlier. eBay fell from 30% to 40% to just 10% to 20% over the same period.
Vinted has built its marketplace around a free-to-sell model, charging private sellers no transaction fees and instead collecting a Buyer Protection fee from buyers. eBay’s new France and Italy model now follows the same basic split, though with a different fee structure.
Internal documents reviewed by the CMA showed both eBay and Depop closely monitored Vinted's free-to-sell model and marketing investments, with the regulator saying both companies responded directly to that competitive pressure by removing seller fees. That is considerably more direct than eBay's public framing of fee-free selling simply as a way to remove friction for private sellers.
Liz Morton
The overlap extends beyond fashion fees too. Vinted already offers Electronics Verification in the UK and Germany, while eBay is now building its own Electronics Verification operations in both markets, with specialists checking used devices for functionality, condition and authenticity before they reach buyers.
eBay has since completed its approximately $1.4 billion acquisition of Depop, adding it alongside Norwegian secondhand marketplace Tise as the company puts more resources behind C2C fashion. Less than a month after the Depop deal closed, eBay also began giving its new subsidiary prime placement on the eBay homepage and in fashion search results.
Renee Paradise recently returned to eBay as Global General Manager of Fashion, putting her in charge of its $10 billion-plus global fashion business with a mandate that includes closer collaboration with Depop. Paradise started August 25, while Alexis Hoopes, who announced the France and Italy authentication expansion, continues to be listed as VP Global Head of Fashion.
Liz Morton
Core eBay C2C GMV grew more than 20% in Q2, while fashion growth was led by luxury and pre-owned inventory. eBay says its fashion business now generates more than $10 billion in annual GMV. France and Italy have also been part of eBay’s recent Live expansion, adding another area where the company has been increasing its investment in both markets.
France and Italy are not getting every piece of the model eBay has rolled out elsewhere, at least not yet. New selling pages in both countries explicitly tell private sellers they can choose local pickup, shipping or both, while separately promoting eBay labels for discounted carrier rates. Local pickup remains available, but eBay also ended cash payments for most in-person transactions September 1, requiring payment through eBay in most categories.
There is no requirement to buy an eBay label or use managed shipping to qualify for fee-free selling, unlike Australia, where most fee-free sellers must buy labels through eBay, or the UK, where a majority of C2C transactions now go through Simple Delivery.
eBay is encouraging label use, however, with some new private sellers receiving their funds sooner when they ship with an eBay-purchased label. That follows other recent moves to give sellers greater protections when they use eBay labels, while the company is also testing Managed Shipping with select C2C sellers in the US.
Authentication is the exception for most qualifying fashion sales. Private sellers of qualifying fashion items priced at €10,000 or less receive a prepaid eBay label to send the item to the German authentication center before eBay takes over delivery to the buyer.
eBay also recently put shipping and authentication under the same executive, hiring Andres Gonzalez as VP & GM Global Shipping and Authentication. Gonzalez called both areas "must-win priorities" as eBay continues expanding managed shipping and label-based programs in other markets.
