Andrew Pipolo, managing director PayPal Australia, told ZDNet Australia , who contacted him in response to a readers' comment that the new site was only a localised front-end backed by the US PayPal system, that sites for each market had to be tailored to accommodate the needs of its eBay members.
The ZDNet Australia reader said he was not able to transfer funds into his PayPal account from his local bank account -- a feature that included in the US PayPal Web site. The reader then went on to say that he had to link his PayPal account to his credit card instead.
Pipolo said PayPal Australia had launched a number of key product features, but the provider would still have to determine when and how other features would be introduced to the Australian marketplace.
"We can understand the interest in the broad range of features but we need to assess how much is the demand for the different features before it will be introduced in due course. We understand that there are expectations for the features to be available immediately, but typically that's not how it works," Pipolo said.
One feature not yet available in Australia is the buyer and seller protection program. PayPal's seller protection policy in the US covers sellers for up to US$5,000 on any transaction that is fraudulent. The buyer protection program helps buyers who pay with PayPal buyer credit to recover the full purchase amount from eBay sellers who do not deliver the promised goods or who deliver goods which are "significantly-not-as-described" in the eBay listing.
However, PayPal Australia said they were "not holding back any features or product" on the local Web site and that they will be "looking at other potential product features in the Web site in the next 12 months".
Localised front end? About the only difference I see is in the URL!