How we compare marketplace payments
We list 5 providers on this hub, and a published rate card exists for 3 providers. Platform pricing is quoted rather than published by 2 providers, and where that is the case we show that it quotes instead of printing a figure invented on its behalf.
The calculator runs on monthly GMV, average order value, your platform commission and the number of sellers you pay out to. Those four decide the answer, because this category charges on more than a percentage of turnover. Ranking is arithmetic on the published rates at the figures you enter, a commercial relationship with us never moves a row, and we do not sell placement.
This hub is for a business that collects money from a buyer and owes part of it onward, to the seller who listed the item, the tradesperson who did the job, or the creator whose work was bought. If you keep the whole payment yourself, you want ordinary payment processing and probably do not need anything on this page yet.
The rows describe product capability: whether funds can be split, whether seller signup and identity checks are hosted for you, how payouts can be scheduled, whether funds can be held before release, and how many currencies can be collected and settled. What they deliberately do not state is anyone's regulatory status. Nothing here says which money transmitter licenses a company holds, or which entity is the payment settlement entity for tax reporting. Those belong to the provider's contract and your own advisers.
Form 1099-K, W-9s and the reporting side of marketplace payments
This is the part with no equivalent in most other countries, and the part small US platforms discover late.
When a platform settles card payments to third party sellers, the entity doing the settling generally has an information reporting obligation to the IRS and to the payee. That is Form 1099-K, filed by the payment settlement entity for the payees it settles to. Whether that entity is your provider or you depends on how the arrangement is structured, so get the answer in writing before you launch.
Two things to settle at the same time.
Who collects the W-9. You cannot report on a payee you cannot identify, so a taxpayer identification number has to be collected up front and it has to match IRS records. A missing or mismatched TIN can put a payee into backup withholding, meaning money is held back from someone expecting to be paid in full. Collect and validate it before the first payout, not after.
What the current threshold is. The dollar threshold at which a 1099-K must be issued, and the tax year each version applies to, have been changed and delayed repeatedly. Do not build a rule from a figure you read anywhere, including here. Confirm the threshold for the year you are filing with the IRS or your accountant, and confirm with your provider which of you files.
Settle this before you write code, because reporting is downstream of onboarding. If you did not capture the right details at signup, you cannot report at year end without going back to thousands of people to ask.
State money transmitter rules and the licenses behind marketplace payments
Moving other people's money in the US can require licensing state by state, and there is no single federal license covering it. Getting licensed nationwide is a multi year, multi million dollar exercise no small platform undertakes, so small platforms avoid the question in one of two ways. Either the regulated activity sits with the provider, which holds the licenses and contracts with each seller as its own customer while your platform acts as a technology layer instructing payments. Or the question does not arise, because you are the merchant and your sellers are your suppliers, which is the model in the next section.
The rows here speak to reach and commitment, not to status. Payout reach reads 200+ payout countries on Airwallex, 200+ markets on PayPal, 46+ countries on Stripe, 50+ countries on Checkout.com and 40+ countries on Adyen. Contract terms differ just as much: Stripe lists No lock-in, pay as you go, PayPal lists No lock-in and Airwallex lists No lock-in on entry plans, where Adyen lists Enterprise agreement and Checkout.com lists Enterprise agreement.
None of that is legal advice, and none of it is a license. Ask each shortlisted vendor to state in writing which entity holds the customer relationship with your sellers and on whose licenses the flow of funds relies, then take that to your own counsel. A vendor that will not put it in writing has told you something useful.
Who is the merchant of record when marketplace payments move through your platform
Every vendor here handles the onward obligation with a split at the point of payment. That row reads Automatic split payments via destination or separate charges on Stripe, Split payments via API with balance accounts on Adyen, Split payments via connected accounts on Airwallex, Marketplace payouts and fund splitting on Checkout.com and Split payments with seller onboarding on PayPal. What differs underneath is who the law and the card networks consider the merchant, and choosing between the two structures decides more about your business than any fee will.
The seller is the merchant. Each seller holds their own account with the payment provider, agrees to that provider's terms, passes identity checks in their own name, and receives funds into their own balance. Your platform takes a commission from each payment, while disputes, refunds and the sales tax on the underlying sale belong to the seller. You carry less risk and less control: the provider can decline or suspend a seller you wanted to keep.
You are the merchant. The buyer transacts with you, you take the full payment into your own account, and you pay sellers as suppliers on your own schedule. You own the customer relationship and the consequences: every chargeback lands on you, every refund comes out of your balance, and the sales tax analysis is yours, which in the US means economic nexus across the states you sell into rather than one national rule.
The plumbing rows for each are onboarding and fund holding. Hosted onboarding reads Stripe-hosted or embedded onboarding on Stripe, Hosted onboarding component on Adyen and Hosted onboarding for sub-entities on Checkout.com. The ability to hold funds before release reads Hold funds in wallets, delayed capture on Airwallex, Balance accounts support holding and delayed capture on Adyen and Delayed disbursement and auth then capture on PayPal.
A rough rule: if your sellers are established businesses transacting in their own name, the first structure keeps risk where the sale happened. If buyers think they are buying from you, and would come to you when something goes wrong, you are already the merchant of record in their mind and should be it in the contract too.
Approving sellers before marketplace payments can reach them
Seller onboarding is where most of the build time goes, and it is consistently underestimated because it looks like a signup form. It is an identity check under anti money laundering rules: a business seller typically provides legal entity details, a taxpayer identification number, beneficial ownership information and bank details, and an individual provides identity documents. Some will fail, some will be asked for more paperwork days later, and some will simply abandon it. A marketplace that cannot onboard its supply side does not have a marketplace.
What the vendors offer is a hosted or embedded version of that flow, so the checks run inside their compliance program rather than yours. The row reads Embedded KYC via Stripe Identity, hosted or custom on Stripe, Automated KYC with hosted onboarding on Adyen, Connected accounts with hosted KYC and AML on Airwallex, Sub-entity onboarding and KYC on Checkout.com and PayPal-hosted seller signup on PayPal.
Three things to test in a sandbox before you commit:
The drop off point. Run a real seller through the flow on a phone and count the screens and the documents. Every extra field is supply you will not sign up.
The pending state. Ask whether a seller under review can list, transact and accumulate a balance while they wait. That decides whether a slow check is an inconvenience or a lost seller.
The rejection path. Ask what you are told when a seller is declined, and what you are allowed to tell them. Often it is very little, and you need a support script ready.
Developer surface matters more here than in most categories, because none of this is off the shelf. API documentation reads Industry-leading docs with interactive examples on Stripe, Comprehensive but complex, enterprise-focused on Adyen and Strong API docs and SDKs on Airwallex, while sandbox access reads Yes on Checkout.com and webhooks read Yes on Stripe.
Settlement timing: how long marketplace payments sit before a seller sees the money
Payout speed here is not one number, because two clocks run at once: how quickly funds settle to the platform, and how quickly you release them to the seller. The second is usually yours to set.
Scheduling reads Daily, weekly, monthly or manual payouts on Stripe, Scheduled and on-demand payouts (PayPal Payouts) on PayPal, Programmatic and scheduled payouts on Airwallex, Configurable payout schedules on Adyen and Configurable payouts on Checkout.com.
Holding funds is the other half. Delayed release reads Delayed payouts and manual transfers on Stripe and Delayed capture supported on Checkout.com. A holding period is the window in which a buyer can complain, a job can go undone, or a fraudulent order can be spotted, all before the money has left. Pay out instantly and you have paid a fraudster before the chargeback arrives, and you fund the reversal.
The schedule is therefore a risk decision dressed as a settings page. A longer hold protects you and irritates your sellers, and where people expect to be paid weekly it is a competitive disadvantage rather than a prudent policy. Fraud tooling is what lets you shorten it safely: that row reads Stripe Radar machine-learning fraud tools on Stripe, RevenueProtect fraud tools on Adyen and Built-in fraud and risk screening on Airwallex.
If you pay sellers outside the US, settlement currency becomes part of the timing question too. Collection reads 170+ currencies on Airwallex and 135+ presentment currencies on Stripe, while settlement reads 20+ currencies, like-for-like on Airwallex and 20+ settlement currencies on PayPal. A conversion buried inside the payout is a cost that never appears on the rate card.
Your take rate, and where marketplace payments fees actually land
The configuration that decides your unit economics is easy to state and easy to get wrong: when a payment splits, whose share does the cost come out of?
Take it off the seller's proceeds and your commission is clean, while the seller absorbs a variable cost they may not have modeled. Take it off your commission and your take rate is the advertised percentage minus the cost of accepting the card, which on a thin commission is most of your margin. This is usually settable per payment, so it is a decision rather than a default, and it belongs in your seller terms either way.
On top of the card cost sit platform charges. Stripe lists 0.25% + $0.25 per payout (if you set pricing), $2 per active account and PayPal lists Partner can set fees via API, while Adyen lists Custom platform pricing, Airwallex lists Custom pricing for Platform API and Checkout.com lists Custom platform pricing. Read those separately from processing, because a charge levied per connected account or per payout scales with your seller count and payout frequency rather than with revenue. Many small sellers paid often is a completely different cost curve from a few large sellers paid monthly.
The fixed component matters for the same reason. The per transaction charge reads $0.30 on Stripe, $0.30 on Airwallex and $0.49 on PayPal. Where the basket is small, a fixed charge per payment eats a large share of a small commission, and it often decides whether a low value marketplace can work at all.
Then the shape of the deal, which the pricing model row describes as Flat rate on Stripe, Published card rates, custom for platforms on Airwallex, Interchange-plus (IC++) on Adyen and Custom (flat-rate or interchange++) on Checkout.com. Monthly commitments differ too: the minimum reads No minimum on Stripe, No minimum on Airwallex, No minimum on PayPal, Not published on Adyen and Contact provider on Checkout.com.
Published numbers get you a shortlist and no further. Build a model on your own average basket, commission percentage, seller count and payout frequency, then ask each vendor to quote against it. In this category the quote is the price, and a platform deal is negotiated far more often than bought off a page.