US Powersellers noticed over the weekend that eBay appears to have launched a shopping cart system in India. Entering Item number 110208539465 on eBay India's search box brings up a View Item page that displays a Buy It Now button and an "Add to Shopping Cart" button. The same search on other international sites, such as U.S., Germany, UK and Belgium, result in a View Item page with a Buy It Now button, but no Shopping Cart button.

The eBay India Help pages contains information on the Shopping Cart: "Your shopping cart allows you to add items to it, and then combine items from a seller into one single order. This means you pay for multiple items from the same seller only once. All Buy It Now items that offer PaisaPay (eBay India's online payment service) as a payment method can be added to your shopping cart. This makes buying with your shopping cart quick, convenient, and safe." (http://pages.ebay.in/help/buy/shopping-cart/how-to.html)

eBay had told AuctionBytes in September it expected to launch a next generation checkout system by the end of the fourth quarter of 2007 (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m10/i03/s01). But Next Gen Checkout was expected to allow shoppers to pay for all PayPal items from multiple sellers with one payment.

Update 2/18/08: eBay India's shopping cart was noted on an industry blog last July. http://www.tamebay.com/2007/07/ebay-india-launches-shopping-cart.html