Benjamin Ling is product lead for Google Checkout and spoke with AuctionBytes this week about the new service from Google and whether it's appropriate for online-auction sellers.

Google Checkout launched late last month after a year of rumors and speculation about what a Google payment service might look like, and whether it might compete with eBay's PayPal service. Ling said Google Checkout (GC) is not a competitor to PayPal because GC is all about a seamless checkout experience, not a payment service. "PayPal is a form of payment in the checkout process, what we're trying to optimize is the overall checkout process so that it's very seamless and very quick." Google is not a money transmission service, and there's no stored value in the system, he said.

Google Checkout allows buyers to pay for online transactions using credit cards but without having to enter their credit card information each time they make a purchase. As of yet, GC does not accept PayPal. Ling said, "We're open, we're looking at all sorts of forms of payment that makes sense for consumers. We're open to anything that makes sense from a consumer's standpoint."

eBay buyers and sellers don't have many online payment services to choose from, other than PayPal, as competitors have faded away over the years. c2it, a service of Citibank, ceased operations in November 2003, CheckFree stopped taking auction payments in October 2005 (CheckFree's service remains), and Yahoo shuttered its Yahoo PayDirect service in May 2005. BidPay closed January 2006 and reopened with an entirely different payment model (and a new owner) in June.

Last October, eBay users lost even more options - including cash - when eBay created a "Safe Payments" policy to tell its sellers what services they could and could not accept on eBay transactions. Shortly after Google Checkout launched, eBay added it to its prohibited payment services list (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m07/i06/s02).

eBay may have banned sellers from using GC on eBay, but many sellers have gone "multi-channel," selling on their own storefronts, websites and other marketplaces. How does Google feel about the safety of its service on merchant sites and auction marketplaces?

Google Checkout facilitates credit card transactions online and provides credit-card chargeback protections. Ling said, "Buyers do not forfeit chargeback protection rights. In addition, if your account is used without your authorization, Google absolves you of those charges. Google will actively work with the issuing bank." (http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8949).

"On the seller side, we have a chargeback protection policy in place. If sellers follow certain procedures, they are guaranteed to be protected from chargebacks." Ling pointed to Google Checkout's FAQs section for information about fraud and chargeback protection. This page (http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=38145&topic=8666) discusses fraud protection from the seller's point of view, along with links to Google Checkout's Chargeback Resolution Policy and Payment Guarantee Policy.

Ling said, "Google has developed proprietary models and systems as well as leveraged third-party data sources, and we've been collecting money and paying money for AdWord advertisements AdSense publishers for many many years - upwards of billions of dollars - so we have built up a core competency in fraud management."

When specifically asked about eBay's ban on Google Checkout, Ling talked about Google's goal of doing what's right for consumers and for sellers and said, "We think that Google Checkout is a very useful product offering for both buyers and sellers, and so it would be useful to be able to be used at any marketplace."

Part 2 of the Google Checkout interview will run later this week, and a separate article delving into issues relevant to online auction sellers is scheduled to run in the July 23rd edition of the AuctionBytes-Update newsletter.