After shooting the lights out in 2012, it's been and up and down year for e-commerce leader eBay (EBAY 0.31%) 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.
