Trademe drops success fees but adds payment fees

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#3466952 5-Mar-2026 10:48

In over 20 years on Trade Me I've paid/received bank transfers or cash for >90% of my trades with no incidents. Not sure why I want to pay extra for Ping TBH but have offered it as an option if I'm the seller with so-so uptake. If I'm the buyer I normally just go down the bank transfer route if offered by the seller. With today's name confirmation feature and between-bank transfers being done in less than an hour nowdays I'm actually more confident in using bank transfers than I used to be in the old days of overnight transfers and no idea whether I was paying into the right account.

I think the old way of simply offering options wasn't broken so why fix it. If sellers/buyers want Ping they can use it.

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#3466953 5-Mar-2026 10:55

They are supporting Ping, Afterpay, or Cash so 3 payment methods, one without surcharge. Sounds like it meets the rules to me?

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invisibleman18

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#3466959 5-Mar-2026 11:26

I've only ever had bank transfer for things I'm sending or cash on pickup for thing things that were picked up. Typically have only just sold 2 higher value (by my standard) items - price in the hundreds of dollars so a reasonable success fee, after having no success with them on marketplace. First sales via TM for over a year.

As a very occasional seller, how do I register for Ping or receive payments from it? Surely it's not just going to go the Tradme account where you can't withdraw it?

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#3466961 5-Mar-2026 11:33

KiwiSurfer:

In over 20 years on Trade Me I've paid/received bank transfers or cash for >90% of my trades with no incidents. Not sure why I want to pay extra for Ping TBH but have offered it as an option if I'm the seller with so-so uptake. If I'm the buyer I normally just go down the bank transfer route if offered by the seller.

Funnily enough I'm a bit lazy and hate doing manual bank transfers (see my thoughts on Paywave, love it 😂) so quite like seeing PING as an option. I just win the auction, select PING and forget about it until it turns up on my doorstep.

Bit like Shop online or whatever it's called, find the thing, buy it and I don't have setup up an individual account with the company I'm not likely to ever use again.

mattwnz

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#3466965 5-Mar-2026 11:46

i don’t use ping to sell because of the fee. But also because of the risk the the buyer decides they no longer want the item and tries to get a refund by perhaps claiming it wasn’t as advertised etc when they have damaged it etc. I’ll just sell by cash which is less safe. But would probably just send bank details.
the other issue for sellers is that the buyer may dispute receiving a sent item and just apply for a refund. So it will mean sellers will always need to get a signature and have it tracked to ensure that they have evidence that items get received.

cddt

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#3466972 5-Mar-2026 11:59

invisibleman18:

As a very occasional seller, how do I register for Ping or receive payments from it? Surely it's not just going to go the Tradme account where you can't withdraw it?

I don't think you need to register, and you can withdraw it whenever you want. It's a separate balance to your TM account balance.

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#3466974 5-Mar-2026 12:08

The Morgan family got out of Trademe when it was worth something big!

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invisibleman18

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#3466976 5-Mar-2026 12:15

cddt:

invisibleman18:

As a very occasional seller, how do I register for Ping or receive payments from it? Surely it's not just going to go the Tradme account where you can't withdraw it?

I don't think you need to register, and you can withdraw it whenever you want. It's a separate balance to your TM account balance.

Thanks, found the info on the Trademe website.

It seems a bit of faff when you don’t know the shipping in advance though – ie, it could be for pickup or delivery and the shipping may differ depending on where in the country it’s being sent to. The FAQ says you’ll still have to ask for shipping costs via bank transfer. In which case, why is requiring 2 different payments via 2 different methods a better way? Or alternatively it talks about creating a new listing for the buyer with shipping included (but not sure how you prevent someone else potentially buying it before the original buyer has had a chance to get to it) so they can buy it again and get the first payment refunded. Seems a lot more hassle. Should you now just include a shipping amount that may be a bit more than needed so it can all be done in one payment even though it would overcharge?

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#3466982 5-Mar-2026 12:31

nztim:

The Morgan family got out of Trademe when it was worth something big!

Sort of,

They flipped it to Fairfax for $700 in 2006,

5 years later Fairfax floated part of it it for $700m and them flipped the rest a year later for about the same, so they doubled their money in 6 years,

6 years later (2018) a British PE crowd went big and offered $2.6b to buy up the stock, ( Kiwis who bought in on the IPO took the money and ran)

So yes the Morgans got out with $$$, but in hindsight they left $$ on the table

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#3466989 5-Mar-2026 13:23

wellygary:

So yes the Morgans got out with $$$, but in hindsight they left $$ on the table

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#3467032 5-Mar-2026 15:50

KiwiSurfer:

In over 20 years on Trade Me I've paid/received bank transfers or cash for >90% of my trades with no incidents.

I've only had one bad experience, that was an "in trade" account with 10k+ sales and a physical presence in Tauranga... didn't send the item (no tracking link either) and didn't provide a refund. When followed up they posted negative feedback claiming they had both sent the item and provided a refund... TradeMe removed the feedback for me but of course I was out the $26.

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mattwnz

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#3467038 5-Mar-2026 16:05

I wonder if this is the reason they have made these changes and removed bank payment as an option... Basically from what I can tell the new service fees shift the costs from the seller onto the buyer, which I guess is fair, and also means prices people list goods for should drop a bit to compensate that they no longer pay a fee. I think it is all a positive move and means more people should use it over facebook.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360947202/trade-me-scraps-bank-transfers-after-stuff-reporting-revealed-scam-losses

RunningMan

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#3467051 5-Mar-2026 16:48

The fees will no doubt put some buyers off. Should make it an option for the seller to absorb the fee as it currently is.

mattwnz

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#3467055 5-Mar-2026 16:55

RunningMan:

The fees will no doubt put some buyers off. Should make it an option for the seller to absorb the fee as it currently is.

Do they pay a fee though if they choose to pay cash? It looks like it could be tied to ping payments according to their FAQ, because it says a service fee will be refunded when a ping payment refund is processed. If cash is free, then it has the same cost for buyers and sellers as using Facebook but potentially safer due to the feedback system. Trademe benefits from more people visiting their platform which they need for the property listings which is where their business seems to be heading.

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#3467161 5-Mar-2026 22:20

The one and only time I sold an item with Ping as a payment method was an utter disaster. I didn't realise that the Ping payment method defaulted into the listing, so I was initially surprised when I got the email from Trademe stating " your item has sold via Ping". It was an expensive item (ie over $1000) so the Ping fee was not insignificant for something that was picked up in person and could have been paid for in cash at no cost to me. Combined with the success fee, Trademe's cut of the sale was around 11%.

Annoying, but Trademe has always touted "Ping - the quick and easy way for sellers to get paid" so at least I had instant access to the money right?

Yea nah. That same day I logged into my Ping account and attempted to transfer the proceeds to my bank account. Queue an email from the Trademe Trust Department a few hours later asking me to verify some security details - which I promptly responded to. No further contact or reply from them and no money despite me replying to them again. Several days later, my query via the contact us button on the website also went unacknowledged.

I finally used their chat function to ask where my money was (at this stage it was over a week since the trade). I was told a "special" department would reply asap - that also never happened. I fumed as I thought how much money in interest Trademe must be creaming if they are doing this to thousands of Ping users every day - taking money from their Ping accounts, putting it on ice in Trademe's own interest bearing account for as many days as they can get away with, before finally paying it out.

The money finally landed in my bank account around 2 weeks after the sale, with no explanation from Trademe. Never again....

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