It looks like eBay is finally taking the wraps off it's International Shipping (EIS) program which has been under, and the launch plan is for July, with eBay updating sellers over the past few months.

Over 4 years ago now, I spent about 3 years at Pitney Bowes working with their Cross-Border software. What used to be called eBay Global Shipping Program (GSP) used to be almost exclusively provided by Pitney Bowes. This has changed going forward to a set of partners.

The big challenge with cross-border on a global marketplace like eBay is data. And by that I mean, the data is 💩 . Which means all providers must work extra hard to estimate, guess, and learn, and all other manner of techniques (including manual work) to help make global eCommerce possible in such a scenario.

EIS is for the little guys of the world. And the job is to make it easy. Sellers don't do much more than enable it on their listings, and ship normally. eBay takes are of the rest, including compliance, payments, duties and taxes, and delivery -- all through an integrated network of partners.

EIS (not as catchy as GSP) will provide cross-border shipping to 200+ countries for eBay sellers, and existing sellers will be transitioned over the next few months with a hard cut-over on July 1..

• Avalara is providing compliance, classification, and landed cost pricing -- it's not exactly a surprise as Avalara has quite a number of ex-Borderfree and Pitney Bowes employees there for the past several years. So a big chunk of that heavy lifting Pitney Bowes used to do is now taken on by Avalara.

It's hard to find a company with the global scope in these kind of complex situations like Avalara. Alternatives are generally cobbling together multiple providers.

• It also looks to me like eBay is supporting not just cross-dock freight forwarding through the US, but also direct international cross-border shipments from the seller's location with providers like EasyShip, who also announced support for the initiative.

• It appears to me that (based on their press release) , Pitney Bowes retained its contract as provider of eBay's Global Shipping Program in the United Kingdom. I wonder if Gregg Zegras had a seat at the coronation and wore his finest fascinator. 😉

• In India, I read that eBay is partnering up with a solution called ShipRocket.

Here's to the next 10 years of eBay International Shipping supporting small and medium sellers across the globe.

Congrats to Megan Higgins, Manish Joneja, Jurgis Vilis and hundreds of others like Steve Bozicevic for originally pioneering all this over the years ;-)