Optimizing eBay Payments through Modeling and Forecasting

eBay Mathematics, 2021–22

Liaison(s): Dr. Stephanie Moyerman ’06, Kishore Paul, Xiaolin Wang
Advisor(s): Talithia Williams
Students(s): Kyle Rong (PM), Rory Zhao, Thomas Cintra, Vivian Pou, and Yuki Wang

eBay is a technology company that connects buyers and sellers. To facilitate monetary transactions between the two parties, eBay has to disburse funds to sellers before transactions from buyers have fully settled by “floating” the required money from its own reserve accounts. This project aims to better predict the monetary amount that eBay needs to float, thereby preventing cash flow risk exposure while empowering sellers to be paid faster. We achieve this goal by developing different statistical and machine learning forecasting models.