Merchant Integration Platform (MIP) User Guide

The eBay Merchant Integration Platform (MIP) is a powerful, easy-to-use application that eBay sellers can use to manage product listings and orders. See Basic description for additional information.

Important! To avoid any unnecessary fees or charges, please refer to the Best practices section of this guide before you begin using the MIP platform.

To use MIP, you should already be familiar with selling on eBay.

Purpose of this guide

This guide explains how to:

Set up MIP
Create feeds to list your products on eBay
Update your listings with price changes, quantity, and other information
Retrieve Active Inventory and Order reports

Compatibility with other management tools

Important! MIP does not detect changes that you make to listings using other tools, such as eBay web flows or Seller Hub. Do not use MIP in conjunction with any other method to make changes to an item listing.

To prevent issues such as duplicate listings, after you begin using MIP do not continue to use eBay web flows, mobile apps, or third-party tools to upload, revise, and manage your active listings and orders.

However, you can continue to use eBay.com web flows for the following tasks: feedback, returns, and responses to buyer cases.

MIP updates

Periodically, new fields are added to MIP feeds. In most cases, new fields in CSV files are appended to the end of changed feed file, and new fields in XML files are added to the end of the request/response payload or to the end of an existing container. Changes are communicated through the What's new section.

Important! All MIP users should monitor this guide to keep current on new and modified fields. For users who are programmatically using MIP, it is recommended that their integrations be coded to accommodate all updates. As a best practice, always reference the fields or columns by their names, and not by their absolute or relative position in a feed.

What’s new

The following updates have been made to the Merchant Integration Platform.

Release Date	Feature Description
October 2024	Removed Economic Operator fields from the Distribution and Combined feed requests. These fields will be ignored and silently dropped if included in feed files.
August 2024	Added the following fields to Distribution and Combined Feed requests to support GPSR-related information: manufacturer responsiblePersons productSafety documents See Distribution Feed Definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files.
July 2024	As a part of implementing enhanced security measures, eBay will migrate from Port 22 to Port 2222 for SFTP connections to MIP Sandbox (mip.sandbox.ebay.com). SFTP connections through Port 22 will start being blocked on July 30, 2024.
June 2024	Added the following fields to Distribution and Combined Feed requests to support eBay auctions: auctionReservePrice auctionStartPrice listingDuration listingStartDate format See Distribution Feed Definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files.
June 2024	A new requirement adding support for EPA approved tuning devices and software products was added to category ID 173651 (Auto Performance Tuning Devices & Software). See Distribution Feed Definitions and Tuning devices and software.
February 2024	Added support for Economic Operator fields. See Distribution Feed Definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files. Added new security algorithms to support enhanced security measures. See Feed Schema for more information.
January 2024	The following CBC mode ciphers and MD5 MACs have been deprecated: chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com Refer to the Deprecated Ciphers, MACs, and Key Exchange table for a complete list of deprecated ciphers, MACs, and key exchanges. For the list of preferred ciphers and MACs for use with the SFTP server, listed in order of preference, refer to Preferred Ciphers and MACs.
October 2023	New linkedLineItem field added to Order Report. This field will provide data on a line item that is linked to the corresponding order, but not actually a part of the order. This can be used to provide details about a component (purchased from one seller) needed for its installation (purchased from a different seller). Details can identify the linked seller and also include delivery times, item information, and order information. See Pending orders response definitions.
August 2023	This version of the MIP guide supersedes the previous version. Bookmark this page for future reference: https://developer.ebay.com/api-docs/user-guides/static/mip-user-guide-landing.html
July 2023	Condition descriptors for specific trading card categories are now supported on all eBay marketplaces. See Product Feed Definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files.
June 2023	Added support for condition descriptors to specific trading card categories. Currently available only in the United Kingdom (GB), with rollout to all other marketplaces early July 2023. See Product Feed Definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files.
May 2023	Added support for Energy Efficiency Labels, Hazmat information, and Regional Seller Disclosures for the German (DE) marketplace. See Distribution feed definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files.
January 2022	Added support for Extended Producer Responsibility and compliance policies through listing creation and orders. See Distribution feed definitions, Combined Feed Definitions, and Sample feed and response files. Use Extended Producer Responsibility to provide IDs for the producer or importer related to the new item, and compliance policies to specify custom policy IDs. A custom policy ID refers to the relevant policy created for compliance and other purposes.
August 2021	Due to security concerns with Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) and MD5 encryption when using the SFTP server, a number of CBC mode ciphers and MD5 MACs have been deprecated. See the Deprecated Ciphers, MACs, and Key Exchange table in Uploading the sample feed for details.
July 2021	Added a new eBayReferenceName field for describing VAT (Value Added Tax) for sales involving regions where VAT is applicable (see Distribution feed definitions and Sample feed and response files). The field contains an eBay Tax Number and also possesses a Name attribute, which delineates the region for which the VAT is applied.
May 2021	Added support for secondary categories and private listings to the distribution feed type (see Distribution feed definitions and Sample feed and response files). Use secondary categories to list the item under two categories. A fee may be charged when adding a secondary category to a listing. With private listings, the user IDs of buyers/bidders are only shown to the seller of the listing, and not to any other eBay users Other miscellaneous document updates.

Older releases

Release Date	Feature Description
Jan 2021	Added Category Metadata to the Inventory Management Feed Type (see About category metadata feeds, Category metadata feed definitions, and Sample feed and response files). Use Category Metadata feeds to find category specifics and their accepted values (helps complete eBay listing requirements). Specifying the correct values optimizes your product listing so it is returned in relevant search results. Other miscellaneous document updates.
Nov 2019	Added totalIncludesEBayCollectedTax to the order report to support changes to the way taxes are processed in situations where eBay collects and remits taxes on behalf of sellers. eBay is responsible for collecting and remitting internet sales tax (IST) for many US states and also collects and remits goods and services taxes (GST) for many items that ship to Australia and New Zealand.
July 2019	Added support for Promoted Listings feeds to manage your inventory marketing on eBay
May 2019	Support for catalog change requests has been removed.
Oct 2018	Increased number of attributes from 25 to 30.
Aug 2018	Added catalog request and catalog request status feeds, response files, and sample files.
Mar 2018	Added delete inventory and product search feeds, response files, and sample files Added multi-channel listing capability Added support for Product-based Shopping Experience Product feeds now include using ePIDs to identify product listings. Using the product search feed, users can specify an ePID or other criteria to search for catalog products.
Feb 2018	Added ePID, MPN, and Brand fields to product and combined-product feeds Added fulfillment capability to location feed Increased max compatibilities from 100 to 3000 in the distribution feed Increased standard image (Picture URL) quantity from 12 to 24 Increased group images (Picture URL) from 1 to 12 Multiple carriers and tracking numbers per item allowed in Order Fulfillment feeds.
Nov 2017	Added buy online, pickup-in-store sample files. Added classification and item-specifics feeds to provide detailed information and better search capabilities for buyers.
Oct 2017	Added buy online, pickup-in-store capability
Aug 2017	inventory feeds update the prices and available quantities of products already on the eBay site. Location feeds update the eBay sites where the items are listed. Description templates allow experienced users to create their own look and feel for their listings on eBay.
Jul 2017	Sample files are available for most feed types.
May 2017	A new version of channel management replaces global settings. It allows channelization operation and the ability to set a default channel.
Jan 2017	Support for unzipped feed files. You can upload feed files either zipped or unzipped. A new combined product feed that you can optionally use instead of separate product, availability, and distribution feeds. You can run different feed types in parallel for more convenient feed management. You can set response files to be in either CSV or XML format. Redesigned response file structure that is unified across product, distribution, and availability feeds. You can set the warehouse location only with the MIP user interface. When a feed contains duplicate SKUs, only the first occurrence of the SKU is processed. Subsequent duplicate SKUs are ignored. Order Ack is now supported in the feed type Order Fulfillment.