Archive for August, 2014

Australia’s most comprehensive online store blog has moved

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014
Photo courtesy of enigmabadger on Flickr

Photo courtesy of enigmabadger on Flickr

The OPMC blog has moved from this location to our home site.

At OPMC, we’re dedicated to continuing to bring you the latest news, the best advice and the most useful information for opening and running an online business in Australia.

Please continue to keep updated on what is happening in the world of online retail in Australia by continuing to follow our blog. You can find it here, on OPMC’s main website.

See you over there!

Stripe launches in Australia

Monday, August 4th, 2014
Photo credit; Marc Falardeau on Flickr

Photo credit; Marc Falardeau on Flickr

Payment startup Stripe has added Australia to the growing list of countries it services.

Started by a trio of PayPal co-founders three years ago, Stripe operates in the US, Canada, Britain and Ireland, and is beta-testing in Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Its latest international expansion came after it struck a deal with Chinese payments service Alipay, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Inc, to allow Chinese buyers to pay for purchases on the US service.

“Stripe’s mission is to grow Internet commerce by providing everything an online business needs to accept payments,” John Collison, co-founder and president of Stripe, said in a blogpost recently.

Stripe touts a simple-to-use multi-currency service as an easy way for businesses to begin accepting payments from around the world. It takes a cut of several percentage points off transactions across its platform.

To read more about this story, click here.

eBay exec slams proposed GST for goods purchased online

Friday, August 1st, 2014
Photo courtesy of Ryan Fanshaw on Flickr

Photo courtesy of Ryan Fanshaw on Flickr

Applying the GST to online purchases under $1,000 isn’t fair for people who cannot afford to travel outside the country to buy cheaper goods, an eBay executive has said.

While in Sydney for a meeting with the G20 taskforce that is looking at ways to reduce trade barriers — including taxes imposed on online sales — head of eBay’s government relations, Tod Cohen, said enacting the GST on purchases below $1,000 would turn sites like eBay and Amazon into tax collectors.

NSW Treasurer Mike Baird has pushed hard for lowering the GST threshold for online purchases and has talked about taxing global online sales above $20.

“Any time you get down to that type of threshold, you’re discriminating against Australians who can travel and those who can’t travel,” Cohen says.

“We try to maintain an opportunity for people to participate in the global marketplace and one of quickest ways to shut that down is by imposing taxes. There’s no way they’ll drop the threshold for international travellers. We’re not going to see duty-free shut down.”

Cohen says $1000 was a ­reasonable threshold, given the threshold in the United States was $800 and Europe was about the same.

To read the full story, click here.