A marketplace takes one payment from a buyer. At the same time it owes money to several parties: the seller, itself, sometimes a courier. That single split is the whole difference between running a shop and running a platform. Consequently, almost every payment problem a marketplace has traces back to it.
The buyer does not care. They pay once and expect the order to work. Underneath sits the rest: who holds the money, for how long, who answers when an order goes wrong. All of it is your design decision. Besides, it is easier to make deliberately than to discover later.
Three models, and what each one costs you
There are only three realistic ways to move money on a platform. Moreover, the choice between them decides your licensing, liability and workload.
Payments go straight to the seller. Each seller has their own
merchant account, the platform only passes the buyer along. Simplest to start, but you have no control. You cannot hold funds until delivery or pay yourself a commission automatically. Meanwhile, a bad seller damages your brand while you watch from the sidelines.
The platform collects everything and pays sellers out. Money
lands on your account, then goes to sellers on a schedule. You get control over commissions and timing, which is why most marketplaces end here. However, the moment you hold other people’s money, regulators treat you differently. Therefore your merchant account has to be set up for it from the start.
Split at the moment of payment. One buyer transaction is
divided between recipients automatically. The platform never holds the seller’s
share, which keeps the regulatory load lighter, while commissions still settle
without manual work. This is what most providers mean by «marketplace payments». Besides, it is the model our processing setup is built around.
Payouts are where platforms actually break
Collecting money is the easy half. Paying it out is where marketplaces lose sellers. After all, the seller experience is defined almost entirely by timing and predictability.
Decide three things before launch. First, the holding period. Paying out instantly is a gift to fraudsters. Paying out in thirty days drives honest sellers to a competitor. Most platforms settle somewhere between delivery confirmation and
the end of the return window. Second, the frequency: weekly batches are cheaper
than daily transfers, and sellers care more about predictability than speed.
Third, the method. Sending money to a business account, a card and a wallet are three different flows with three different costs. Our payouts page sets out what runs where.
If seller balances sit with you between collection and payout, keep them
somewhere you can account for cleanly. A dedicated business IBAN makes that reconciliation possible. Conversely, mixing platform revenue and seller money makes it painful.
Who answers for a dispute
When a buyer disputes a charge, the card scheme asks whoever took the payment.
On a marketplace that is usually you, even though the goods came from a seller you
have never met. This is the part founders consistently underestimate.
Practically it means three things. You need evidence per order: what was sold, when it shipped, what the buyer agreed to. Furthermore, store it in a form you can produce months later. You need a seller agreement that lets you recover a loss from future payouts. Otherwise every dispute is yours alone. And you need a dispute rate per seller. Platforms rarely have a dispute problem. Instead, they have two or three sellers with a problem that shows up as a platform-wide number.
Checking sellers before they sell
Card schemes expect a platform to know who trades on it. The depth of that check scales with the money involved. So a seller doing occasional small sales and one doing tens of thousands a month need different files. Still, neither can be anonymous. Identity, bank details in the same name as the account, and a plausible
description of what they sell are the minimum.
Build this into onboarding rather than bolting it on later. Retroactively verifying a thousand sellers who already trade is a project nobody enjoys. Typically it happens under deadline pressure from an acquirer who has noticed something.
What to prepare before you apply
A platform application asks more than a shop application, because the acquirer
is underwriting your sellers through you. Expect questions about the categories you allow and how you check sellers. Then about the payout schedule and who carries the loss when an order fails. Having written answers ready shortens the review
noticeably.
Connection takes from 5 days once documents are complete, and rates for
middle-risk platforms start from 1.8%. The structure, rather than a single number, is on our pricing page. That is because a marketplace rate depends on what the sellers actually sell.
The steps in order are laid out on how it works. There you can see what gets asked at which stage.
One last thing worth saying plainly: a marketplace has no fixed risk category.
Acquirers score it by what trades on the platform. As a result, the same technical setup is cheap for one catalogue and expensive for another. If you plan to open a category that is harder to place, raise it at the application stage. Otherwise changing providers after launch costs you sellers.
Connection from 5 days. Fees from 1.8% — transparent terms, no hidden charges.
Leave a request or book a consultation. We will put together the right setup for your niche and risk profile.