Skip to main content

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 (January - March 2023). 

Digital Services Act Updates

Multiple changes (schema and non-schema related) are scheduled to be released and supported over the next several months. These changes will affect sellers that sell in or into an EU country. Some information will be set at the account level and other information will be set at the listing level. 

A “Regulatory” container will get added to the AddItem family of calls in the Trading API and in the createOffer family of calls in the Inventory API to specify:

  • Hazardous Materials information. A new getHazardousMaterialsLabels method will be available in the Metadata API to retrieve relevant hazardous materials metadata.
  • Energy Efficiency Labels (EEK) information. A new capability being added to upload images for the Energy Efficiency Label and Product Information Sheet. 
  • Repair Score. This metric is used to indicate how easy or difficult it is to repair a product. A new getExtendedProducerResponsibilityPolicies method will be available in the 
  • Metadata API to retrieve metadata on eBay categories that require or recommend a Repair Score.
  • Economic Operator contact information. Economic operators include manufacturers, distributors, importers, or authorized representatives of products.

Currently, four types of Extended Producer Responsibility ID fields (ProducerProductID, ProductDocumentationID, ProductPackageID, and ShipmentPackageID) are set at the listing level in the ExtendedProducerResponsibility container of the Trading API and in the extendedProducerResponsibility container of the Inventory API. At a later date, Extended Producer Responsibility IDs will be specified through the seller’s account instead, and these listing-level fields will no longer be usable.

The following changes are expected for Custom Policies:

  • Custom Policies (Product Compliance and Takeback policies) will transition from marketplace-specific to “global”. Currently, the four custom_policy methods in Account API require an eBay marketplace to be specified through the X-EBAY-C-MARKETPLACE-ID header. Once Custom Policies go global, this header will no longer be required.
  • New Custom Policy “Regional” fields in the Trading API and  Inventory API will allow sellers to attach one or more country-specific policies to the listing. The existing Product Compliance and Takeback policy API fields will still be supported for policies that apply globally.

We will provide more time-specific information as launch dates come into focus.

For more information on eBay’s statement and commitment to DSA, see the Digital Services Act post on eBayinc.com.

API updates

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

Fulfillment API Updates

The following updates were made to the Fulfillment API:

  • The variationAspects container will be returned in getOrder and getOrders methods to identify the specific variation that was purchased through a multiple-variation listing. 

    If a Red, Large shirt was purchased, the variationAspects container might look like this:

    variationAspects" : [
   {
      "name" : "Color",
      "value" : "Red"
   },
   {
      "name" : "Size",
      "value" : "L"
   }
]
  • Orders dating back two years can now be retrieved with the getOrder and getOrders methods. Previously, only orders up to 90 days old could be retrieved. 

New language pairings supported in Translation API

The Translation API was updated to support 13 new language pairings. These new pairings include:

  • French text may be translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish
  • Italian text may be translated into English, German, French, and Spanish
  • Spanish text may be translated into English, German, French, and Italian
  • Chinese (Mandarin) text may be translated into English

The eBay Translation Widget was also updated to support the new language pairs.

Subscription Filters added to Notification API

Three new methods (createSubscriptionFilter, getSubscriptionFilter, and deleteSubscriptionFilter) were added to the Notification API. These methods allow the user to set, retrieve, and delete filters that are applied to topic subscriptions. 

Subscription filters cannot be applied to all topics, so a new filterable field was added for each topic that is returned in the getTopic and getTopics responses.

Only one subscription filter can be applied to a topic at any given time. A user can check to see if a subscription filter is applied to a topic by looking for a filterId field in the getSubscription response. The filterId value is passed in as a path parameter of the getSubscriptionFilter method to retrieve details of the subscription filter.

All PL campaigns now support dynamic ad rates

Dynamic ad rates can now be used for all Promoted Listings Standard campaigns, including rule-based and key-based campaigns. This means that the adRateStrategy field in the createCampaign method can be set to ‘DYNAMIC’. With a dynamic ad rate strategy, the ad rate for a campaign is aligned with the daily suggested ad rate, which is calculated based on a variety of factors such as item attributes, seasonality, past performance, and current competition for each of your listings. If a dynamic ad rate strategy is used, the ‘fixed’ bidPercentage field should not be used.

When using rule-based campaigns, the seller has the option of applying the rules to only active listings or to active listings and future listings (that meet the criteria). This is controlled with the autoSelectFutureInventory boolean field.

For more information on Promoted Listings Standard, see the Promoted Listings Standard help topic.

Shipping Discounts now supported in Account API 

The Fulfillment Policy methods of the Account API now support Shipping Discount Profiles in Fulfillment business policies. 

The shippingDiscountProfileId field can be used in the createFulfillmentPolicy or updateFulfillmentPolicy methods to apply a domestic or international shipping discount profile to the Fulfillment business policy. The shippingPromotionOffered field can be used in the same methods to apply a shipping promotion to the Fulfillment business policy. 

Sellers can create and manage shipping discount profiles and promotional shipping discounts using the GetShippingDiscountProfiles and SetShippingDiscountProfiles calls in the Trading API or through the Shipping Preferences in My eBay.

For more information on setting/using shipping discounts, see the Shipping discounts help page.

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 getCharityOrgByLegacyId method in the Charity API has been decommissioned. This method required a PayPal Giving Fund ID, and these IDs are no longer supported by any eBay APIs.
  • All Trading API dispute calls (AddDispute, AddDisputeResponse, DisableUnpaidItemAssistance, GetDispute, GetUserDisputes, SellerReverseDispute) decommissioned. The Post-Order API should be used to manage buyer-initiated disputes, returns, and cancellations.
  • The GetApiAccessRules call is decommissioned. The Developer Analytics API  is the alternative to return Trading API call usage data.

We hope everyone has had a great start to 2023, and we are looking forward to working with the community this year!