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Feeling charitable? eBay unveils donation feature in latest app update

Ebay Charity App
2nix Studio/Shutterstock
eBay sellers with a charitable streak can now make donations to their favorite cause each time they make a sale.

An update rolled out this week for iOS (Android received the update recently) has brought with it a “Sell for Charity” option where you can donate between 10 and 100 percent of each sale you make.

Currently offered to eBay users in the U.S. and the U.K., the new feature for mobile is simple enough to set up:

As you go through the process of listing an item, scroll down and hit the Preferences button.

At the bottom of the list, you’ll see the Sell for Charity option. Hit that and then tap on the “make a donation” button. Here you can use the search function to find your charity of choice, and also decide what percentage of the eventual sale you’d like to give – any amount between 10 percent and the whole lot is possible.

List the item in the usual way and you’re all done.

If you find yourself donating regularly, you can save any number of charities as favorites, making it easy to look them up later.

Sellers that use the charity option will be eligible for an eBay fee credit, meaning the company will credit a portion of your basic selling fees (insertion and final value fees) back to your account.

The e-commerce site explains: “For example, if you donate 50 percent of your item’s sale price to charity, we’ll give you a 50 percent credit on your basic selling fees. The fee credit will appear automatically on your first eBay invoice after the item sells.”

The handy feature is already available via the Web version of eBay, which is the place to go if you’d like to keep tabs on your donation history. Incorporating the tool into the mobile app looks certain to bring it to a wider audience, and makes it easier than ever for sellers to send off a few bucks to their favorite charity with every done deal.

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Trevor Mogg
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