Is a Move Into Lending the Right Play for eBay?

After shooting the lights out in 2012, it's been and up and down year for e-commerce leader eBay and its shareholders. However, the online auction pioneer recently made waves by announcing a move into lending.

And while this could seem like a strong shift away from tradition, it actually makes plenty of sense. This move beautifully complements eBay's two core e-commerce and PayPal businesses. By rolling out this program to qualifying merchants, eBay has effectively uncovered a way to provide its most loyal sellers a means of growing their online stores with capital that's often hard to come by for small businesses, while also creating another revenue stream for its payments business, to boot.

Furthermore, this also demonstrates that eBay is still the kind of company that can create new and innovative solutions to grow its business, which long-term shareholders should find extremely encouraging. In this video, Fool contributor Andrew Tonner looks at this development in greater detail.

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The article Is a Move Into Lending the Right Play for eBay? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Andrew Tonner owns shares of eBay. Follow Andrew and all his writing on Twitter at @AndrewTonner. The Motley Fool recommends Amazon.com and eBay. The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com and eBay. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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