Estate planning as a eBay account holder

An eBay account can represent significant accumulated value: seller feedback built over years, seller performance standing, an eBay Store subscription with established branding, a Managed Payments balance, active listings, and purchase and sales history. For a high-volume seller, an account with thousands of positive feedback ratings is a genuine business asset. An account can also point at physical property held elsewhere: graded trading cards sent to the PSA Vault (eBay's vault partner) are stored and insured by PSA and appear in the member's Collection on eBay, and eBay directs withdrawal questions to PSA.

After a eBay account holder dies, eBay Inc. may transfer accounts to a designated recipient, but this is handled case by case. The outcome depends on the documentation provided and is entirely at eBay Inc.'s discretion.

What happens at death

eBay publishes a deceased-member channel: the help article "Reporting the death of an eBay member" (id=5574) and a dedicated Deceased member report form at ocswf.ebay.com/deceased-account-closure. The form requires the reporter's full name, email address and phone number, the relationship to the deceased, the deceased member's full name, date of birth and date of death, and an uploaded official copy of the death certificate; the reporter's eBay ID and the deceased member's phone number, email address and eBay IDs are optional fields, and a comment box takes up to 1,000 characters. The form accepts additional documents in .jpg, .jpeg, .pdf and .png, up to 10 files of 5MB each, under the labels Certificate of Inheritance, Court Order, Testament, the reporter's identification document, and Charity Letter of Authorization. For release of a positive account balance, the help article states that a court order admitting the deceased's will into probate and/or a copy of the court order appointing the executor is required, plus the reporter's own photo identification such as a passport or driver's license with all information displayed. The same documentation is required to close the account, and the ID number, title, place of birth, nationality, date of issue, height, eye color, photo and signature may be hidden as long as the ID card remains recognisable as a valid form of ID. The form itself notes that "Closing the account is not required to resolve recent account activity." The only documented outcome is resolution of account activity and closure, not account transfer or continued operation: the User Agreement's list of things a member will not do includes "transfer your eBay account (including feedback) and user ID to another party without our consent," and eBay documents no path to obtain that consent for an estate. Per the Payments Terms of Use, where the payout entity is eCI, eCA or eCCA, eBay may keep a portion of funds after account closure to cover refunds or Disputes and returns unused amounts to the Linked Financial Account within 190 days of account closure, unless the law requires otherwise.