EBay is one of the purest icons of trust. The legendary website for home-based buyers and sellers was founded on the very simple idea: people who want to auction their goods could list and sell them to other individuals who want to buy. A trip to any flea market would show that this concept is not revolutionary. But the thing that makes eBay unique and relevant to our discussion is its foundation of trust, even online.

Their business would fall apart without cooperation between buyers and sellers. While a system is in place to deal with cases of fraud, the community is largely self-governing. When bidders win, they send their money and expect sellers to ship their items promptly. And with over 212 million registered users and more than 1.5 billion items sold each year, it seems to be working out well! If the public had not trusted eBay, if fraud were prevalent enough or disagree­ments frequent enough, buyers would have chosen to look elsewhere for their electronics and household goods. But because of their confi­dence in each other, as well as eBay’s fraud-recovery procedures, the total worth of goods sold on eBay in 2010 was $62 billion — more than $2,000 every second.

Dave, David, Ebay, Horsager, Trust in Business, Trust in Leadership, Trusted Company of the Month