# Understand differences between Global Payouts and Connect payouts

Learn which payouts integration fits your business.

Stripe offers several ways to send money to third parties, such as:

- **Global Payouts**: Send money directly to a recipient.
- **Connect payouts**: Stage payouts in a payee balance before paying out to an external account. Funds must pass through a connected account balance before being paid out to an external account.

## Compare Global Payouts and Connect payouts

Review this table to understand which use cases the integrations are best for.

|  | Global Payouts | Connect payouts |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Description | Send money directly to the bank accounts, debit cards, or crypto wallets of a third party without requiring the creation of a Stripe account. | Send money to a dedicated payee balance on Stripe before making payouts. |
| Fit |  |
| Best for | Businesses that need a direct payouts-only solution that can be decoupled from payments processing, or platforms managing cross-border disbursements. | Businesses that want a bundled solution for payments and payouts, and want to provide payee tools to track and manage earnings. |
| Use cases | - Insurance claims disbursements
- Fintech payouts, loan disbursements, and salary advances
- Rebate, warranty, and rewards payouts
- Affiliate and creator payouts
- Marketplaces using multiple payment processors or operating under their own licensing structure | - Marketplaces that exclusively use Stripe for payment processing
- Global financial services platforms
- Franchises
- SaaS platforms enabling embedded commerce |
| Cadence | One-time or recurring payouts to payees who don’t require balance tracking on Stripe. | Established relationship with payees who need real-time balance tracking, fee deductions, or payout scheduling. |
| Funding |  |
| Legal and compliance requirements | Manage your own legal and regulatory requirements. If you manage customer funds directly, your flows may require a Money Transmitter License. | Offload legal and regulatory requirements to Stripe using the Stripe Money Transmitter License. |
| Fund from payments revenue | Automatically fund payouts directly from your incoming Stripe Payments balance or revenue splits. | Fund specific transfers using [destination charges](https://docs.stripe.com/connect/destination-charges.md), direct charges, or [separate charges and transfers](https://docs.stripe.com/connect/separate-charges-and-transfers.md). |
| Fund from other payments processors | Top up your account balance from external bank accounts or secondary payment processors. | Top up your platform balance using external bank accounts. |
| Payee management |  |
| Payee balance | Stripe doesn’t maintain a balance. Funds move directly from your funding source to your payee’s designated payout method. | Maintain a dedicated balance on Stripe for each payee to track funds owed, debit fees or refunds, and manage dispute holds. |
| Risk management: Reverse payouts to payees | Initiate payout reversals to recapture funds in the event of an accidental or canceled payout (subject to availability). | Delay payouts as needed, hold funds in payee balances, or use transfer reversals to manage risk and recover funds. |
| Payee services |  |
| Payee onboarding | Collect payee details through co-branded, Stripe-hosted forms or directly using the API. Your payees can link their bank account using Financial Connections, and existing Link users can get verified fast using pre-saved details. | Onboard payees using Stripe-hosted or embedded Connect onboarding flows, which collect identity verification details. |
| Payee reports | Provide payout history to payees using Stripe-hosted components or display transaction records directly using the API. | Provide payees access to a Stripe-hosted Dashboard, or use Stripe embeddable UI components to display real-time earnings, payouts, and financial reports directly within your own app or site. |
| Enable merchant services for payees | Payouts-focused only. Doesn’t provide merchant services for your payees. | Offer integrated merchant services, including Stripe Capital or Stripe Payments to your payees. |
| Distribute tax forms to payees | Not supported. | Issue and deliver 1099 tax forms to payees directly through the Stripe-hosted Dashboard using Stripe Tax. |