Collect payments then pay out

When a seller or service provider signs up on your marketplace, you need to create a user account (referred to as a connected account) so you can move funds to their bank account. Connected accounts represent your sellers or service providers. In our T-shirt marketplace example, the connected account represents the artist making the shirts.

Step 1.1: Create a connected account onboarding link

• Go to the accounts overview page and click +Create to create a new connected account.
• Select Express for account type and select the country where this connected account is located. Stripe allows platforms in supported countries to create connected accounts in other Stripe-supported countries.
• Click Continue to generate the onboarding link that you can then share with your seller or service provider over email, SMS, or other private means. Don’t share this link publicly.

Create an onboarding link

This link directs sellers and service providers to a sign-up form where they can provide their identity and bank account information to onboard to your marketplace. In our example of a T-shirt marketplace, share this link with the T-shirt artist to onboard them. This link expires after 90 days and is for use by a single seller or service provider. After they complete the onboarding flow, you can see their account details in your accounts list. Repeat these steps any time you need to add additional sellers or service providers.

Now that you’ve created a connected account, create a Payment Link to accept payments from your customers—no coding required. When you send this link to your marketplace customer, they’ll land on a Stripe-hosted page where they can pay you. In the T-shirt marketplace example, customers buy T-shirts through your marketplace, and you pay T-shirt artists for designing and creating the T-shirts. To set this up, click on +Create link on the Payment Links page and follow the steps.

Step 2.1: Add the product

You configure Payment Links for a specific product and price so the first step is to add the product you want to sell. Click on +Add new product to add a product.

Set your product name, description, and price, which are all visible to the customer on the Checkout page that you redirect them to. After entering the information for your new product click +Add product to add the product. In this example, we’re adding a medium-sized tree-patterned T-shirt product, so we’ll configure the Payment Link for this particular product. If we also wanted to sell small-sized T-shirts or T-shirts with other designs, we would follow the above steps to create a new Payment Link and a new product.

Step 2.2: Customize the Payment Link

You can customize your Payment Link to allow customers to enter promotion codes, adjust the quantity of the product, or enter their shipping and billing address. For our example of a T-shirt marketplace, we want to allow customers to buy a variable number of T-shirts. We also need to collect the customer’s shipping address so we can ship the T-shirts to them. To enable both of these, select Let customers adjust quantity and Collect customers’ addresses then click Next.

Step 2.3: Decide when to pay your connected account

You have two options for paying out your connected account.

• If you already know which connected account you want to pay using funds collected through this Payment Link, you can automatically pay out.
• However, if you don’t know the connected account ahead of time or need to pay multiple connected accounts, you can pay out later.

Automatically pay out

Pay out later

Select the connected account to pay

Select the checkbox that says Split the payment with a connected account. Selecting this checkbox allows a connected account to automatically get paid when a customer buys the product through this Payment Link. In our example, we want to automatically pay Jamie, the T-shirt artist, whenever a customer buys their T-shirt. To do that, we specify Jamie as the connected account.

Specify the application fee for the platform

To keep a portion of the payment for your marketplace, you can specify an application fee. This is a fixed amount for each payment that uses this payment link. It doesn’t change based on quantity, discounts, or taxes, and we cap it at the total purchase amount. In our example, our T-shirt marketplace takes a 1 USD application fee per sale and sends the remaining payment (9 USD) to the T-shirt artist. If the customer purchases two T-shirts, uses a promotion code, or needs to pay additional taxes on top of their 10 USD purchase, the T-shirt marketplace still receives a 1 USD application fee per sale. For products with recurring payments (subscriptions), you can specify an application fee as a percentage of the total transaction value.

After configuring the Payment Link to split the payment with your connected account, click +Create link to generate the Payment Link URL.

After the customer pays, Stripe transfers the entire amount to the connected account’s pending balance and then transfers the application fee amount to the platform’s account as revenue for facilitating the sale. Then Stripe deducts the Stripe fees from the platform’s application fee. Under the hood, this funds flow is called a destination charge.

Now that you’ve created your Payment Link, copy the Payment Link URL and share it publicly on your website or through social media. When a customer clicks on your Payment Link URL, they see your customized Checkout page (example below) and can enter their payment information—they can pay from mobile or desktop with a card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.

Step 4.1 View your payments

Go to the Payments page to see the list of payments your business has accepted. You can click on an individual payment to see more details about it, such as the shipping address if you chose to collect one. You can see the application fees your business collected for each payment, or go to the Balance page to see your total funds.

Step 4.2 Fulfillment

After the payment completes, you need to handle fulfillment of the product. In the T-shirt marketplace example, this would entail shipping the T-shirts to the buyer after payment.