Dear Santa, Please Do it eBay?

eBay has introduced a customer-friendly feature that should make it much easier for "Doing it eBay" to go mainstream. Gift Certificates - Gift Certificate Overview is eBay's FAQ on its new gift certificate functionality.

The service enables folks to buy gift certificates that can be used to purchase virtually anything on eBay that is offered by sellers who accept PayPal.

From a seller standpoint, this functionality is easily implemented if the seller already accepts PayPal. When a customer redeems gift certificate through PayPal, the funds appear in the seller's PayPal account as though they were funded through a traditional method. The fact that a gift certificate was redeemed is essentially transparent to the seller.

One caveat that stood out for me in reading about this new functionality was that the giver needs to have the recipient's e-mail address correct when purchasing the certificate. If the e-mail address is incorrect, there is no way for the recipient to redeem the gift certificate unless the giver cancels it and replaces it with a gift certificate tied to the correct e-mail address.

It will be interesting to see the effect of this functionality this holiday season.