Mercari sent out an email yesterday saying they were no longer going to charge selling fees. Before that, they would charge the seller a 10% selling fee and then another roughly 3% payment processing fee. They are getting rid of the 10% selling fee and moving the 3% payment processing fee to the buyer. The only fee that the seller now will incur is a flat $2 to pull money out of Mercari.
I have NO idea why they are doing this and how they plan on making money. Maybe they are assuming people will just leave the money in their accounts and so Mercari would make interest off that money (like a bank?) There’s just no way that revenue will meet payroll and to keep things running. It’s just BONKERS that this would happen in 2024. Even Facebook is raising their selling fees from 5% to 10% in April. I’m just going to assume this is a temporary change until they basically steal all of the Ebay traffic and then start charging fees again. I know I’m going to be listing more on Mercari now with this change.
Addendum – well it seems that Mercari is passing on the fees to the buyer now (I didn’t see it before) so this is how they’ll make money.
The selling fees are being charged to the buyer. Swappa or Uber Eats style
at checkout you see
$100 item with free shipping
$3 card processing fee
$10 mercari fee
$8 sales tax
$121 total
Sellers still get screwed because if we lower our prices by 13% we still have to pay $2 to get our money out and we lose the 3-day seller protection
This is not correct. The buyer isn’t charged the $10 Mercari fee. I just tested a buy and don’t see it.
Three days to return hasn’t changed at all.
Invite code to share?
https://merc.li/yr6y7XWtb
Not so fast, this change isn’t all daises and daffodils. Along with the change to no seller’s fees, they are also modifying their language regarding returns; buyers now have 3 days to return an item for any reason, and 14 days if they decide it is “inauthentic or stolen”…
To be fair, if a buyer wanted to return something that badly before, they could easily do it. Plus 3 days is still seller friendly unlike Ebay’s 30 days.