Ebay-Paypal immune to financial and monopoly laws?

Ebay restrains Paypal competitors by banning other payments in it's march towards monopoly.

Financial institutions should be concerned that Ebay/Paypal is entering the financial services sector without being required to adhere to the same laws as FIs. The playing field is no longer level when a major global payment player is able to ignore laws designed for consumer protection and which are strongly enforced against ordinary financial institutions.

Ebay has recently banned other payment methods for sales on the Ebay site and will now only allow Ebay-owned Paypal payments. Citing Paypal as allegedly being 'a safer payment method' despite other payment services providing evidence to the contrary and Paypal providing none at all. It is certainly more profitable for Ebay to require all payments through their subsidiary Paypal, but there is no evidence to suggest it is safer.

Ebay/Paypal has engaged in other actions which would immediately bring down the wrath of regulators, if the actions were committed by a bank.

In Australia there is payment legislation which allows merchants to apply a surcharge for payment by credit card with the purpose of lowering prices. The surcharge allows merchants to recover costs of services without pre-loading every items price with additional costs 'in case' buyers use a credit card as payment. Typically service stations and stores charge 1-2% surchargs for credit card transactions.  Ebay prohibits surcharge payments for credit cards and Paypal forcing sellers to pad prices to cover all possible payment options.

Ebay specifically 'recommends that sellers inflate their item price' in case buyers use credit cards or Paypal to pay, effectively raising prices for consumers. This is contrary to Australian law, for everyone else but Ebay. Forcing sellers to use Paypal and jack prices up is in defiance of Australian law and breaches consumer trading or monopoly laws in many countries, although in this instance Ebay appears to be becoming a law unto itself. Ebay/Paypal conveniently makes on both ends if prices are higher, earning commission on sale price and a % fee on the subsequent financial transaction which must be completed using Paypal/Ebay.

Ebay appears to be operating in the financial marketplace without the same restraints which are placed on the financial institutions. Their actions appear monopolistic and counter the interests of consumers and governments.

Perhaps a little action is required before they infringe even further into the financial arena. Ebay/Paypal is issuing debit and credit cards, providing personal loans and doing all of it with a distinct advantage over competitors. 

At the very least the monoploy regulators and consumer protection people should have a close look. 

I tried to get more details of how paypal works, however the link provided from the ebay site went to nowhere, so maybe they don't want us to know. The best I could find was:

'PayPal is going to be governed under the rules and regulation of CSSF, the Luxembourg bank authority. The CSSF has strict regulatory capital requirements for banks and will closely monitor PayPal's compliance with these requirements. Compliance with these regulations is a top priority for PayPal and is handled by a large, dedicated team within the company.'

The question is (going to?) when? 

PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A is duly licenced as a Luxembourg credit institution in the sense of Article 2 of the law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector as amended and is under the prudential supervision of the Luxembourg supervisory authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, with registered office in L-1150 Luxembourg. Since the service is limited to E-money, which does not qualify as a deposit* or an investment service in the sense of the Law, customers of PayPal are not protected by the Luxembourg deposit guarantee schemes provided by the Association pour la Garantie des Dépôts Luxembourg (AGDL).

PayPal Inc. (which is a parent company of PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A) was acquired by eBay in October 2002, and is located in California, USA.

On the 'no surcharge for paypal' issue, I note that paypal have a number of deals with retailers offering buyers 'cash back' on their paypal purchases. It seems they want all consumers to pay more. A merchant cannot know when he sets his price what form the payment will take and must therefore 'pad in' the extra ~7% in case the buyer chooses to pay by paypal. Paypal fees are higher than credit cards so the merchant has to recover them somehow and being precluded from adding a 'surcharge' on paypal buyers there must be a 'pre-charge' on all buyers.

* Paypal account holders can maintain positive balances and withdraw them using paypal debit/credit cards, since when isn't that a 'deposit'.