topic Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance in Payments

keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

garrisonengineeringie — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:28:35 GMT

I recently started selling on ebay, and haven't fully sorted out my repayments yet. i have had an ebay balance for well over a month now and it has not been automatically repaid to my bank (revolut) as there were some issues with revolut international (not important). If this is not resolved, will the ebay balance just stay there forever, or until i spend it on other ebay items?

I know ebay used to let you keep your balance indefinitely and use it whenever you wanted, and I would like to see this option return (it would save transaction and currency conversion fees both ways)

PS. I posted this on Ebay.com also

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

jckl1957 — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:42:36 GMT

Ebay make automatic payments four times a year if you have a positive balance. Payments are made on the first Tuesday of every January, April, July, and October.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

marco@ebay — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:15:01 GMT

Hi joeykron, thanks for your post.

Yes, the funds will remain in your account until you add a bank account we can use to send you your funds. We may try sending them automatically at certain dates, but if you have no bank account or something like that, they payout will fail. However, we recommend having a working bank account on file to prevent any delays or issues with your payouts.

Thank you,

Marco

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

nik_moore — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:55:05 GMT

Interestingly, no payment this April - have they cancelled this procedure?

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

jckl1957 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:34:30 GMT

Apparently so although I don't think there was an announcement.

It has been discussed in other threads - on the date the payment was expected - if you want more info.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

retroman303 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:02:56 GMT

As of 8th April 2026, eBay has now done away with automatic quarterly payments, and any funds in your balance will remain there until you withdraw them manually (or use them for a purchase, obviously). The replies you received in posts 2 & 3 were correct at the time of posting, but are now outdated.

From the email I received on 8th April, titled 'Update to your eBay balance':

"Starting today, available funds will stay in your eBay balance, instead of being sent to your bank account automatically every quarter. This makes it easier for you to build up your funds, set money aside for a future purchase or withdraw whenever you like."

I was about to say that the message should also be in everyone's eBay Messages, but I've just checked my account, and the message is not there (with a date of 08/04 or any other date) - so if I hadn't received the email, I'd be none the wiser.

What's odd (for me personally) is that it's usually the other way round, i.e. I don't get the email, but the announcement is in eBay Messages.

So it looks like the eBay genie has granted your wish, although I imagine other members will not be in favour of this change.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

retroman303 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:05:29 GMT

I also think some members will have sonething to say about the way that eBay is positioning this change as a benefit to sellers.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

papso22 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:07:20 GMT

Thank you for that information. I received nothing from ebay!

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

tressygirl — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:09:43 GMT

Yep thanks from me too @retroman303 , no message , hmmm ! 🤔

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

retroman303 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:48:30 GMT

@papso22

@tressygirl

Neither of you got an email OR a message in your account? That's worrying.

I've posted before about how I very rarely receive emails about important changes, and usually find out about the them on these boards and/or in my eBay Messages. Now it turns out that all three of us (at the very minimum) have not received the announcement in eBay Messages (maybe others have said there's nothing in their eBay Messages either, but I haven't read the other posts on this subject yet). Given that the norm in my case is to NOT receive important announcements via email, that does not instil much confidence that eBay will keep me fully informed of changes. Maybe my getting the email on the 8th was an exception, or maybe whatever was preventing me getting the emails (assuming eBay sent them in the first place) has changed, and I will now start receiving them again - it's too early to tell.

If you weren't informed by email OR a message in your account, I'd say that's worth raising in a weekly chat.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

tressygirl — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:53:45 GMT

Nope not a scooby @retroman303 in my messages and I do usually get them, will raise the question why we all have not received that message. I'm sure someone would have raised a new thread for peeps to be aware if they'd received it.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

retroman303 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:34:53 GMT

"I would like to see this option return (it would save transaction and currency conversion fees both ways)".

May I ask, is this tried and tested, i.e. you used your balance to pay for an item in a currency other than GBP, and paid no transaction and conversion fees? So far, I've only used my balance for purchases in GBP.

If this is so, then this is obviously a benefit of paying with your balance (as well as the occasional discount), and one which eBay should be highlighting.

I've also been thinking some more about the change, and am now less cynical about it, especially if what you say about not paying transaction and conversion fees is the case (sorry if I sound doubtful, I'm just looking for a clear positive declaration that this is so).

Given that we're stuck with the eBay Balance - whether we like it or lump it, eBay no longer pays out sale proceeds automatically and directly to our bank accounts - and assuming you are correct, the fact that the money stays there until we use or withdraw it is a clear boon for those like yourself, as an automatic quarterly payout may - depending on the timing - deprive you of the opportunity to make a fee-free non-GBP purchase. You'd either have to build up enough in a new balance (by which time it may be too late to make the purchase) or use a bank like Monzo that doesn't charge transaction or currency conversion fees.

The only members for whom this change might be unwelcome are those that were relying on the automatic quarterly payouts. But why rely on them anyway? Our funds are far better off in our accounts than sitting idle in our balances, so why not withdraw sales proceeds as they become available to withdraw? The only valid reason (other than indifference) for leaving the funds there, in the light of the opening post, is that one might wish to use the balance for a non-GBP purchase (and doesn't have a bank account like the one mentioned earlier). So, the only ones I can imagine this having a negative impact on are the (hopefully small) minority who are both extremely forgetful AND who fail to check their balance on a regular basis (or - if they even exist - those who, for some reason, don't realize they can withdraw their balance manually, and mistakenly believe that they have to wait for the automatic payout). And even then, they haven't actually lost any money (unless you count interest that could potentially have been earned had it been placed in a savings account instead of being left in the balance).

So, despite my initial cynicism, I'm now more positive about this change. It's definitely a bonus for those who wish to use their balance for non-GBP purchases (again, assuming the claim about fees is correct), it won't matter for those who routinely withdraw their funds anyway (not waiting for an automatic payout), and will only possibly be an issue for the highly forgetful few (who arguably have a case to make if they say that eBay should get rid of the eBay Balance and go back to paying sale proceeds directly to the seller's bank account, but as mentioned at the start of this post, that seems unlikely to happen).

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

nik_moore — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 10:47:40 GMT

Ah, that explains it. I hadn't been informed by ebay!

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

jckl1957 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:07:08 GMT

Check your emails from April 8th in the private email account linked to your Ebay account.

Generally, I don't read those emails as there are hundreds. However, I have just had a read through and there was an email with this title:

Get more from your eBay balance

and this content:

You can now enjoy better flexibility and control when managing your earnings on eBay.

Starting today, available funds will stay in your eBay balance, instead of being sent to your bank account automatically every quarter. This makes it easier for you to build up your funds, set money aside for a future purchase or withdraw whenever you like.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

retroman303 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:49:19 GMT

Hi, can you please clarify, by "the private email account linked to your Ebay account", are you referring to what I've been calling 'eBay Messages', i.e. the in-account messages from eBay and (possibly) buyers and sellers?

Reading your post, I'm now worried that, as well as 'proper' emails (to an Outlook or Gmail account, for example) and what I call 'eBay Messages', there is a third method by which eBay communicates with members, one which I'm unaware of, and which eBay has never used to communicate with me!

I suspect we're talking about the same thing, though, just using different terminology. And it does look from tressygirl's and papso22's posts that they received neither an email nor a message in their eBay account.

At the risk of repeating myself, I got the email (Outlook) on the 8th, but there's definitely no such message in my eBay account, not with a date of 8th April, and not with any other date. You'd think that everybody would receive that, even if - for whatever reason - they didn't receive an email.

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

jckl1957 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:50:35 GMT

I mean what you would call 'proper email'.

So, not an email I access when I log into my Ebay account but an email account that is separate to Ebay but is the one registered as my email contact address in my seller account and personal details.

(The one Ebay use for those 'you've made the sale' emails and 'time to relist that thing' emails.)

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

retroman303 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:04:43 GMT

Thanks for that. I'm having a very strange eBay day today - I saw a notification email in my Outlook inbox with your above reply just seconds after submitting my post. You must be a time traveller or, at the very least, incredibly fast at typing!

Right, so I got it the wrong way round, but what I call 'emails' and what you call 'emails' are one and the same thing. So there are just the two means of communication, emails and eBay Messages.

@papso22 and @tressygirl - Sorry to tag you both again, but could you please clarify whether you received neither the email nor the in-account message? It seems that both of you received neither from your posts (and you are both experienced members, so I'm sure you already know that eBay sends emails and in-account messages), but I'd like to be sure. Thank you!

Re: keep repayments indefinitely on ebay balance

papso22 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:33:00 GMT

I have two ebay accounts, one for selling and one for buying. I can confirm that I received no emails and no messages relating to this change in either account. It would make sense if the one that is not set up for selling didn't get anything, but neither did.

@retroman303