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Program news

We hope everyone is well. We want to take this time to share with you some updates that have occurred within the eBay Developers Program over the last quarter (October - December 2022). 

eBay Connect 2022 Recap

The virtual eBay Connect 2022 conference occurred on October 17 and 18. October 17 focused on Selling APIs and features, and October 18 focused on Buy APIs and features. 

Sell API highlights 

The following topics were discussed on October 17:

Buy API highlights

The following topics were discussed on October 18:

The full list of PDF presentations and video recordings can be accessed from the eBay Connect 2022 page. 

Update on Digital Signature requirement

Due to EU & UK Payments regulatory requirements, an additional security verification via digital signatures will start being required on January 31, 2023 for certain API calls that are made on behalf of EU/UK sellers. These APIs include all methods of the Finances API, the issueRefund method of the Fulfillment API, the GetAccount call of the Trading API, and six methods of the Post-Order API. The digital signature headers are already supported now on affected APIs, and once we hit the due date, calls to these methods made on behalf of EU/UK sellers will fail if digital signatures are not used after the deadline. 

The new Key Management API is required to create the digital signatures. The createSigningKey method generates and returns the private and public keys that are necessary to create digital signatures.

Please refer to the Digital Signatures for APIs guide for full details, including how to create the digital signatures to be included in the HTTP request for affected methods. 

API updates

The following updates have been made to our APIs over the last few months.

API support for Sneakers Monetization and eBay shipping

To help encourage sellers to list more sneakers that qualify for the Authenticity Guarantee program, eBay will now provide a free shipping label to the seller that will be used to send the item to the authentication partner. eBay will charge a flat-rate shipping cost to the buyer at checkout time to cover the shipment from the authentication partner to the buyer’s location.

The following updates were made to the Trading API to support this new feature:

The following updates were made to the  Fulfillment API to support this new feature:

Finances API updates

Through three separate releases of the Finances API in Q4, the following enhancements were added:

Translation API updates

In the October release of the Translation API, the following enhancements were made:

  • Polish to German and German to Polish translations are now supported
  • The maximum length of a listing description to be translated has been increased from 20,000 to 100,000 characters. The character max threshold includes HTML/CSS markup tags. 

Max pictures increased from 12 to 24

The maximum number of pictures that can be included with each listing free of charge has increased from 12 to 24. This change applies to all eBay marketplaces and all categories within those marketplaces except for motor vehicle categories. Motor vehicle categories also support up to 24 pictures, but the amount of pictures you can include per listing will vary based on the motor vehicle listing package that you have purchased. See the Package pricing for vehicle listings help topic for more information.

Trading API, Inventory API, and other relevant picture-related documentation have been updated to reflect this change.

Expanded marketplace and category support for Sell Marketing API

Promoted Listings Advanced functionality through the Sell Marketing API is now available on the two Canadian marketplaces (ebay.ca and cafr.ebay.ca). However, there are seller requirements and not all sellers on these marketplaces will be eligible. The getAdvertisingEligibility method of the Account API can be used to see if a seller is eligible for Promoted LIstings campaigns. 

Promoted Listing campaigns were expanded to 43 more categories over seven eBay marketplaces. The full list of categories supported for each eBay marketplace can be found in the Promoted Listings supported categories topic. is now available for use on the marketplace, and has also been opened up to the following new eBay categories:

eBay shipping now supported in Order v1 API

The Order v1 API was updated to indicate orders that are eligible for eBay shipping. The shippingOptions.ebayShipping boolean field of getCheckoutSession and the shippingDetail.ebayShipping boolean field of getPurchaseOrder will be returned as true if the order is eligible for eBay shipping. With eBay shipping, the buyer directly pays eBay for the shipment of an Authenticity Guarantee item from the authentication partner to the buyer’s location.

Account API enhanced to support Shipping Discount rules

The Fulfillment Policy methods of the Account API now support Calculated, Flat, and Promotional Shipping Discounts. Shipping Discount rules can be created and managed through the SetShippingDiscontProfiles and GetShippingDiscontProfiles calls in the Trading API, or through My eBay. 

A calculated or flat rate shipping discount rule can be applied to a Fulfillment business policy by passing in the unique identifier of that rule through the shippingDiscountProfileId field of a createFulfillmentPolicy request. A promotional discount rule can be applied to a Fulfillment business policy by passing in a value of true through the shippingPromotionOffered boolean field of a createFulfillmentPolicy request.

Two new topics supported in Notification API

The following two new topics were added to the Notification API:

  • ITEM_AVAILABILITY: subscribers to this topic will receive a push notification when an item's availability type changes. 
  • ITEM_PRICE_REVISION: subscribers to this topic will receive a push notification when an item's price changes.

Please note that these are restricted notifications that will not be available to all developers.

Deprecation and Decommission updates

The following APIs/methods/fields have recently been announced as deprecated. Please see the Deprecation Status page for detailed information.

The following APIs/methods/fields were recently decommissioned:

  • The BuyerRequirementDetails container, used by the AddItem family of calls in the Trading API, was decommissioned on October 7, 2022. Listing-level buyer requirements are no longer supported, so any seller-initiated Buyer Requirements can only be set at the account level. 

We hope everyone had a great year in 2022, and we are looking forward to working with the community in 2023! Happy holidays!

 

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