I came across Mercari a year ago or so, when they started pushing Yahoo Auctions in Japan. They are, admittedly, lower end atm and I’ve never found anything I wanted to buy there myself so far- though i’ve been looking for an opportunity (hence the deal). I think they / similar co’s have a lot of potential, though, because of the differences in mobile marketplace dynamics + “tons of complaints” but “stellar reviews” reminds me a lot of eBay in the early years…

Re PayPal - if this is about eBay, they are now independent co’s + eBay isn’t that big in Japan as far as I can tell. It would be interesting to see if Mercari / others can get a toehold in US the same way they did in Japan or whether eBay will do a better job then YA in the mobile marketplace segment - so far it has not been impressive, imo.