EBay Incorporated shares hit a new low for 2013 on Monday as concern mounted about the impact of a new “digital wallet” fee on the company’s PayPal business, Reuters reported on Tuesday
MasterCard Incorporated, one of the largest payment networks, said earlier this year that it plans a new fee for digital wallet operators like PayPal starting in June.
The actual dollar amount PayPal ends up paying may not be that large, analysts say.
However, they are worried that this is part of a broader move by payment networks to target PayPal, which has become more of a direct competitor recently.
“Payment networks are taking the gloves off,” Bill Carcache and Brian Nowak, analysts at Nomura Equity Research, wrote in a note to investors on Monday. “The incumbents will do everything in their power to prevent PayPal from riding on their rails without extracting a toll.”
EBay shares slid 0.5 per cent to $50.18, on Monday afternoon, leaving them down about four per cent so far this year.
Since eBay mentioned the MasterCard fee in a regulatory filing on February 1, the company has lost about 12 per cent of its market value — while Amazon is down about 0ne per cent and the Nasdaq Composite is up two per cent.
Analysts put that under-performance down to this new fee and concern about rising tension between PayPal and the payment networks.