TOKYO: Online auctioneer eBay will return to the Japanese market after a five year absence by launching a website in alliance with Yahoo Japan.
The new site, sekaimon.com, translates its listings from the US and allows consumers to pay for goods using yen.
It hopes to appeal to the 20 million users of Yahoo Japan, the country's biggest online portal and auction site, by allowing them to bid for American items that may be difficult to get elsewhere.
The new venture will be run by Japanese company netprice.com, and the three firms will share a 15% surcharge from all purchases.
Yahoo Japan ceo Masahiro Inoue said listings from the new site would eventually be included on Yahoo's existing service.
He added Japanese goods could be offered to US consumers in the same way by the end of next year, with the possibility of the model being extended to other countries in the long term.
Data sourced from Wall Street Journal Online; additional content by WARC staff
