Compare Marketplace Payments in the United States

How we compare marketplace payments

We list 5 providers on this hub, and a published rate card exists for 3 providers. Where a vendor negotiates platform pricing instead of publishing it, the table says so. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page.

The calculator takes your monthly GMV, average order value, platform commission and the number of sellers you pay, then applies each vendor's published rate and per-transaction charge to that order flow. Commission paid to us does not change the order.

This hub is for a business that collects money from a buyer and owes part of it to a seller, contractor or creator. If you keep the whole payment, you want ordinary payment processing.

Form 1099-K, W-9s and the reporting side of marketplace payments

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: Form 1099-K. Whether that entity is your provider or you depends on how the arrangement is structured, so get the answer in writing before you launch.

Who collects the W-9. You cannot report on a payee you cannot identify. Collect a taxpayer identification number up front and validate it against IRS records before the first payout, or the payee can land in backup withholding.

What the current threshold is. The 1099-K threshold has been changed and delayed repeatedly. Confirm the figure for the year you are filing with the IRS or your accountant, and confirm with your provider which of you files.

Reporting is downstream of onboarding: if you did not capture the right details at signup, you cannot report at year end.

Money transmitter licenses: who holds them behind marketplace payments

Moving other people's money in the US can require licensing state by state, and there is no single federal license. Small platforms avoid the question in one of two ways: the regulated activity sits with the provider, which holds the licenses and contracts with each seller as its own customer, or you are the merchant and your sellers are your suppliers (the next section). The rows here speak to reach and commitment, not to status.

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.

Merchant of record: who owns the sale when marketplace payments split

Every vendor here splits a payment at the point of sale. What differs is who the card networks and the law treat as the merchant.

The seller is the merchant. Each seller holds an account with the provider in their own name and receives funds into their own balance. You take a commission; disputes, refunds and sales tax belong to the seller. Less risk, less control: the provider can decline a seller you wanted to keep.

You are the merchant. The buyer transacts with you, you take the full payment, and you pay sellers as suppliers. Every chargeback lands on you, and the sales tax analysis is yours, across every state you sell into.

If buyers 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.

Onboarding sellers before marketplace payments can reach them

Seller onboarding is where most of the build time goes, because it looks like a signup form and is actually an identity check under anti-money-laundering rules. Some sellers fail, some are asked for more paperwork days later, and some abandon it.

Test in a sandbox before you commit. Run a real seller through the flow on a phone and count the screens. Ask whether a seller under review can list and transact while they wait. Ask what you are told when a seller is declined. Every vendor here lists a sandbox and webhook support.

Payout timing and fund holds in marketplace payments

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.

A hold is the window in which a buyer can complain or a fraudulent order can be spotted before the money has left. A longer hold protects you and irritates sellers, so fraud tooling is what lets you shorten it safely. If you pay sellers abroad, a currency conversion inside the payout is a cost that never appears on the rate card.

Platform fees, per-transaction charges and your take rate in marketplace payments

When a payment splits, whose share does the card cost come out of? Take it off the seller's proceeds and your commission is clean while the seller absorbs a cost they may not have modeled. Take it off your commission and your take rate is the advertised percentage minus the card cost. Ask whether your provider lets you set this per payment, and put the answer in your seller terms either way.

On top of the card cost sit platform charges. A charge per connected account or per payout scales with seller count and payout frequency, not with revenue. Many small sellers paid weekly is a different cost curve from a few large sellers paid monthly.

The fixed charge per transaction matters where the basket is small, because it eats a large share of a small commission.

Published numbers get you a shortlist. Build a model on your own basket, commission, seller count and payout frequency, then ask each vendor to quote against it.