The Managing Director of eBay Germany, Frerk-Malte Feller listed some tickets on the site, but required some unusual documentation from the winning bidder - including an electronic copy of a passport/ID. Users raised various issues: were the ticket sales legal, and questions as to whether the executive had confidence in PayPal given the documentation he required of winning bidders.
I asked PayPal yesterday about the many issues raised, and PayPal spokesperson Sara Gorman responded:
I heard back from my colleagues in Germany, and here's what happened. Malte sold some tickets for the European soccer championship. There is an official eBay category in Germany, Australia and Switzerland for the sale of these tickets (just as there was for the World Cup two years ago). The sale was perfectly legal, and in fact, Malte added the UEFA logo to his listing.
Since highly-coveted tickets such as these can have a higher risk of fraud, he asked for buyers paying with PayPal to send him a copy of their ID and proof of the financial instrument used to fund the purchase. While this is not required by PayPal, some sellers in higher risk categories do ask for additional identifying information.
Finally, while Malte did not include the statement that he is an eBay employee in the actual listing, he did inform buyers after the listing closed that he is.
