26 Marketplace Payment Solutions for Two-Sided Platforms

If your marketplace platform can't process payments safely, securely and reliably, you don't have a sustainable ecommerce business, period.

And when it comes to payment processing, marketplaces have it more difficult than your regular online shops: payments to and from vendors, split and chained payments, subscriptions, selling fee collection are just a few challenges that are unique to marketplaces.

This means the payment processor you select can easily make or break your marketplace business.

In this roundup, we look at 26 different payment solutions for two-sided marketplace platforms.

Let's get started.

This article is part of our series on starting an online marketplace business.

For every payment solution listed here, we've gathered the most important details you need to know as a marketplace owner to make an informed decision:

• Year founded – is it a new company or a more established business?
• Location and availability – which countries do they serve?
• Fees – how much do they charge? (Note that rates may differ by region)
• Features – what are the highlights and the reasons you should consider the solution?

The features we look for in marketplace gateways include, in addition to basic split payment processing:

• Subscription/recurring payments
• Custom payment flows (parallel, chained, manual payouts)
• Support for multiple currencies
• Availability of documentation
• Responsiveness and technical support
• Integrations with third-party platforms
• Fraud protection tools

We'll look at the following payment processors in this article (click to go directly to a specific chapter):

• Stripe Connect
• Mangopay
• Adyen Marketpay
• PayPal for Marketplaces
• PagSeguro
• MercadoPago
• BlueSnap
• Iyzico
• PayU
• Lemon Way
• Paybase
• Nochex Lynx
• WePay
• Dwolla
• SafeCharge
• Razorpay
• Tipalti
• Assembly Payments
• Payment Rails
• Nummuspay
• Computop
• Cashfree
• Payrix / Splash Payments
• Payture
• RBK Money
• PayAnyway / Moneta.ru
• Bonus: How do you choose the best payment solution?

Here they are:

 

Stripe Connect

Link: https://stripe.com/en-US/connect/

Year founded: 2010

Based in: United States

Availability: 32 countries

Fees: $2 per active account per month + 0.25% of account volume (for express/custom accounts). Connected accounts in countries outside your specific region an additional 0.25% cross-border charge on monthly account volume, for a total account volume charge of 0.5%. Additionally, $0.25 per payout, 1.5% for Accounts debits.

Features:

• Subscription payments
• Multiple payment flows
• Support for 135+ currencies
• Great documentation and swift technical support
• The most popular marketplace payment solution out there

You definitely know Stripe, even if you haven't been looking into payment solutions. They're one of the most popular options for receiving and paying out money. Stripe powers businesses like Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and thousands of others, big and small.

Stripe Connect offers standard, express, and custom payment options for marketplaces, so you'll find the right fit for your business model. At the time of writing, Stripe is offering to waive account fees on your first 5,000 active connected accounts.

The main drawback is that Stripe is currently mostly available in the Western world – if you're not in the supported region, you're out of luck.

 

MANGOPAY

Link: https://www.mangopay.com/marketplaces/

Year founded: 2013

Based in: Luxembourg

Availability: 125 countries

Fees: Pay-in 1.8% + 0.18€ (per transaction excl. VAT), free payouts within the SERPA zone.

Features:

• Custom payment flows
• Support for 15 currencies
• Anti-fraud and money laundering prevention tools
• Open source SDKs (PHP, Java, Ruby, Python and .Net) and decent docs

If you're running a marketplace business in Europe, you'll definitely want to check Mangopay. They offer end-to-end payment processing to crowdfunding, fintech and marketplace businesses in Europe and internationally.

Mangopay offers marketplace owners compliance with the European Union and card industry regulations as well as KYC, anti-fraud and money laundering prevention tools to make running a marketplace easier.

Among Mangopay's clients are marketplace businesses like Vinted, a European platform that allows its users to sell, buy, and swap clothing items and accessories.

 

Adyen Marketpay

Link: https://www.adyen.com/our-solution/online-payments/marketplaces/

Year founded: 2006

Based in: Netherlands

Availability: 53 countries

Fees: 0.10€ processing fee, along with additional fee depending on payment gateway (see website)

Features:

• Custom payment flows
• Support for over 250 payment methods and 187 currencies
• Anti-fraud and money laundering prevention tools
• Manual or scheduled payments

Adyen Marketpay is another payment processor based in Europe that offers payment solutions to marketplaces in 53 different countries.
Just like Mangopay, Adyen offers automated vendor onboarding and KYC, AML and other vendor screening and fraud prevention tools.

Some of the bigger platforms that use Adyen for payment processing are Spotify, Etsy, eBay and others.

 

PayPal for Marketplaces

Link: https://www.paypal.com/US/webapps/mpp/partner-marketplaces/

Year founded: 1998 (Marketplaces 2017)

Based in: United States

Availability: Limited

Fees: Not publicly available

Features:

• Multiple payment flows
• Support for up to 25 currencies

Paypal is one of the most well-known and established payment companies in the world, with more than 153 million accounts worldwide. Their marketplace solutions are designed to help businesses manage their fees, disbursements, and more.

PayPal's original marketplace solution, PayPal Adaptive, has been discontinued and replaced with PayPal for Marketplaces. Unfortunately, the latter still appears to be only available to select partners, so you'll need to contact your PayPal account manager to see if you can sign up.

By the time of this writing, PayPal for Marketplaces has been renamed twice – to PayPal for Partners and PayPal Commerce Platform – and still lacks documentation and a way for a regular marketplace owner to sign up.

So the current state of PayPal's marketplace solution is unclear.

 

PagSeguro

Link: https://pagseguro.uol.com.br/

Year founded: 2006 (Split 2016)

Based in: Brazil

Availability: Brazil

Fees: Processing fees vary by business, see website

Features:

• Split payment processing
• Recurring payment schedules
• Request payment via email

PagSeguro is part of Universo Online, the largest online platform of internet products and services in Brazil. In addition to payment processing, UOL offers ecommerce solutions, hosting and security services.

To marketplace businesses PagSeguro offers convenient payment processing with support for split payments, over 25 payment gateways and its own POS system.

 

MercadoPago

Link: https://www.mercadopago.com.ar/

Year founded: 1999 (as part of Mercado Libre)

Based in: Argentina

Availability: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Uruguay

Fees: Commission charged depending on when money is required after payment: 2.99% to 5.99%.

Features:

• Split payments between two accounts
• Accept credit cards, debit cards, and interest-free bank installment payments
• Decent documentation

As an offshoot of Mercado Libre (Latin America's most popular e-commerce site), MercadoPago was set up as a secure payment system to allow customers more payment options. It allows two-sided marketplace businesses to make collections on behalf of vendors and charge commissions on the transaction.

MercadoPago is used to manage payment collection by companies of all sizes, including Groupon, Nestle, and Hertz. The company has been growing at an impressive rate, processing 138.7 million transaction in 2016 (up 73% from 2015).

 

BlueSnap

Link: https://home.bluesnap.com/payments-for-marketplaces/

Year founded: 2001

Based in: United States

Availability: 180+ countries

Fees (quite a few!):

• Monthly fees after the first 12 months if processing <$2500/mo
• Marketplace vendor management fee based on the gross payout amount
• BlueSnap transaction processing fees based on the amount of each capture (see pricing, around $2-4% + $0.30)
• Payout fee based on your chosen payout method: ACH, wire, etc.
• Other fees as defined in your contract

Features:

• Subscription payments
• Support for cards, wallets and ACH/ECP payments
• Fraud prevention stack (Kount, Chargebacks911, Verifi and Ethoca)
• Hosted checkout/payment pages

BlueSnap is an ecommerce payment services provider that offers payment solutions to ecommerce merchants and two-sided marketplaces and SaaS platforms.

The company was founded in 2001 as Plimus and has been renamed to BlueSnap later in 2013. It serves a wide variety of ecommerce, marketplace and SaaS cloud businesses, including Autodesk, MyHeritage, CloudShare and others.

 

Iyzico

Link: https://www.iyzico.com/en/business/marketplace-payment-methods/

Year founded: 2013

Based in: Turkey

Availability: Turkey (recently expanded to 12 Eastern European countries)

Fees: 3.69% + 0,25 TL per successful payment

Features:

• Split/parallel payments
• Support for 7 currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, IRR, RUB, NOK, CHF
• Anti-fraud system

Iyzico allows you to set up a marketplace to sell your products all over the world with high-level security. The company has recently expanded from Turkey into 12 Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Greece and Hungary.

At the time of this writing, it is reported that Iyzico is being acquired by PayU (see below).

 

PayU

Link: https://www.payu.pl/en/payment-methods-business/marketplace/

Year founded: 2002-2006 (Naspers, PayU)

Based in: Netherlands

Availability: 17 countries

Fees: ~2.3% per transaction, see website

Features:

• Split payments
• Installment and delayed payments
• Payment links and mobile payments

PayU is a global fintech company that offers payment solutions to online merchants, including marketplaces. Among PayU's features are split payments for two-sided marketplaces, delayed and installment payments for higher value carts as well as custom payment pages and mobile payments.

The company is owned by the Naspers Group and has acquired a number of competing payment companies in the last few years, Iyzico being the latest acquisition.

 

Lemon Way

Link: https://www.lemonway.com/

Year founded: 2007

Based in: France

Availability: 30 countries in Europe

Fees: At request

Features:

• Automating and tailored payment flows
• Support for 10+ payment gateways and 20+ currencies
• Custom payment pages
• Anti-fraud and AML/KYC tools
• PHP, Node.JS, Ruby and Python libraries

Lemon Way is a France-based payment solution for ecommerce businesses and marketplaces. The fees and additional details about the services provided by Lemon Way are available at request only.

According to the website, the company currently supports over 1,400 businesses across Europe including October, the French Football Federation, Rendity and others. It has been included by CB Insights in its 250 FinTech List of the Fastest-Growing FinTech Startups.

 

Paybase

Link: https://paybase.io/

Year founded: 2016

Based in: United Kingdom

Availability: United Kingdom (plans for EU support in late 2019)

Fees: At request, competitive fee structure

Features:

• Flexible payments routing
• Escrow functionality
• Banking lite
• Tailored loyalty & rewards schemes

Paybase is a payment solution for online marketplaces, gig and sharing economy platforms and fintech companies. Its combines payments with compliance and risk management, allowing businesses to reach market quickly and seamlessly. Through structured flexibility, Paybase accommodates a wide array of use cases, enabling new and established businesses to build better, more competitive products.

The company was founded in 2016 in the United Kingdom and is used by clients like Vimba, Grafter and Loc8um. Paybase plans to expand into other countries in the European Union in the near future.

 

Nochex Lynx

Link: https://www.nochex.com/other-business-solutions-with-nochex/nochex-lynx-payments-platform-for-platforms/

Year founded: 2000

Based in: United Kingdom

Availability: United Kingdom

Fees: At request, around ~1-5%

Features:

• Managed payment services
• Tailored solutions available

Nochex is a 2-in-1 payment gateway and a merchant account solution. The Nochex Lynx solution is designed specifically for online marketplace businesses and multi vendor platforms.

The company was founded in the early 2000 to help small businesses based in the United Kingdom process payments online and has since then expanded its solution offering to larger companies.

 

 

WePay

Link: https://go.wepay.com/

Year founded: 2008 (Acquired by JPMorgan Chase 2017)

Based in: United States

Availability: United States

Fees:

• 2.9% + $0.30 for transaction processing
• $15.00 per chargeback
• $15.00 per ACH return
• $25.00 research fee if an account is deemed abandoned

Features:

• Support for multiple payment methods: Credit, Debit, ACH, and Chase Pay.
• Daily, weekly, or monthly payouts
• Instant vendor onboarding
• Point of sale solution to capture more revenue
• 100% coverage of your platform's exposure to fraud losses and chargebacks

WePay is a payment service provider based in the United States that offers integrated payment solutions to platform businesses, including crowdfunding platforms, marketplaces and small business software companies.

The company was founded in 2008 and has been acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2017. It powers thousands of businesses across the United States, including companies like GoFundMe, Infusionsoft and Eventzilla.

 

Dwolla

Link: https://www.dwolla.com/

Year founded: 2008

Based in: United States

Availability: United States

Fees: Not publicly available

Features:

• Supports ACH and wire transfers
• Multiple payment flows
• Automated mass payouts and returns
• Accelerated transfers

Dwolla is an enterprise payment solution that offers ACH and wire transfer automation and payment facilitation to businesses in the United States. It is used by ecommerce, mobile and other businesses like GOAT, Rally Rd, Kidfund and others.

 

SafeCharge

Link: https://www.safecharge.com/marketplace-manager/

Year founded: 2007

Based in: United Kingdom

Availability: United Kingdom

Fees: 1.2% + €0.15 per transaction for EU issued cards, 2.5% + €0.15 for non-EU cards

Features:

• Split payments
• Support for currency conversion
• Custom payouts

SafeCharge International is a payments technology company that provides omnichannel payment services and fraud prevention solutions to ecommerce businesses globally.

The company counts 340+ employees, is trading on the London Stock Exchange and has offices in 10 countries.

 

Razorpay

Link: https://razorpay.com/

Year founded: 2014

Based in: India

Availability: India

Fees: 2% - 3% per transaction depending on method, +0.25% for Routing add-on, +0.9% for subscription payments.

Features:

• Support for 100+ payment modes
• Split payments via routing addon
• Subscription payments with custom billing cycles
• Different payment modes, including fixed, quantity-based and usage based models

Razorpay is the only payments solution in India which allows marketplace businesses to automatically accept, process and distribute payments.

In 2017, Razorpay has expanded its product suite with payment routing, subscriptions and invoicing to support payment collection, reconciliation, and disbursal.

 

Tipalti

Link: https://tipalti.com/customers/how-online-marketplaces-make-payments-with-tipalti/

Year founded: 2010

Based in: United States

Availability: United States

Fees: Tipalti charges a monthly operational fee to set up and maintain an account, as well as per-transaction charges (depending on payment method/foreign exchange charges)

Features:

• Pay in the local currency of over 190 countries
• Over 26,000 payment rules and conditions

Tipalti is a payment and accounting solution that focuses on offering businesses mass payout and disbursement solutions with full tax and regulatory compliance. The platform also provides an invoice and purchase order processing workflow, as well as a supplier portal for self-service.

Tipalti is used by businesses like WP Engine, GoDaddy, Touch of Modern and others, and boasts a 98% customer satisfaction rate.

 

Assembly Payments

Link: https://assemblypayments.com/

Year founded: 2013

Based in: Australia

Availability: Worldwide

Fees: fixed fees not available, contact sales for a quote

Features:

• Support for multiple inbound/outbound payment methods (Credit card, ACH, direct debit, domestic bank transfer (EFT), international wire transfer, digital wallet, PayPal)
• Accept payments from over 150 countries and settle funds in multiple currencies
• Batch, timed and instant payouts

Assembly Payments offers payment solutions for two-sided platforms and marketplaces with support for tailored payment workflows and escrow. The solution provides marketplaces with multiple ways to accept and disburse payments and offers compliance and anti-fraud tools.

The company has 125 employees worldwide, is headquartered in Melbourne and has offices across Sydney, Manilla and St Louis.

 

Payment Rails

Link: https://www.paymentrails.com/

Year founded: 2015

Based in: Canada

Availability: United States, Canada, Europe, Australia

Fees: Free 3 month trial, then $49 - $199/mo. Transaction fees vary from $0 for Paypal to $10 for swift transfers.

Features:

• Supports payouts to 220+ countries in 135+ currencies
• Custom payment approval flows
• Automated handling of returned payments
• KYC & anti-fraud tools

Payment Rails is a Canada-based payments company that focuses on simplifying global payouts for online marketplaces, crowdsourcing and sharing economy platforms.

 

Nummuspay

Link: https://nummuspay.com/

Year founded: 2018

Based in: Greece

Availability: Not publicly available

Fees: Free plan available, with 2.5% of revenue, or paid plans ranging from $99 to $249/mo charging 0.5% of revenue only after a set amount is reached. Enterprise options available.

Features:

• Support for multiple currencies and gateways
• Subscriptions via self-service

Nummuspay is a subscription management and credit card processing platform for online businesses. It helps companies manage recurring revenue streams and offers multiple payment gateways and online invoicing.

To marketplaces, Nummuspay offers fee collection at checkout, streamlined partner onboarding and simplified tax compliance.

 

Computop

Link: https://www.computop.com/us/solutions/computop-paygate/payment-for-marketplaces/

Year founded: 1997

Based in: Germany

Availability: International

Fees: Not publicly available

Features:

• Support for over 50 payment methods
• Mail, phone & POS order processing
• KYC and anti-fraud tools

Computop is a payment service provider that helps companies streamline their multi-channel payment processes. To get the most from your marketplace, the relevant domestic payment options for every country are targeted for optimized revenue in overseas and domestic business.

 

Cashfree

Link: https://www.cashfree.com/nodal-account-marketplace-settlements

Year founded: 2015

Based in: India

Availability: India

Fees: Typically ranges from 1.95% to 3.5% + ₹ 7, with an additional 0.5% on subscriptions. Contact sales for detailed pricing for Marketplace Settlement

Features:

• Split payments with payout adjustments
• Support for offline or cash on delivery orders.
• Custom payment flows

Cashfree allows businesses in India to automate inbound and outbound bank transfers, accept card payments, and build payment flows around receiving and disbursing money.

The company currently serves over 12,000 businesses including the likes of Xiaomi and Tencent, and has raised a $5.5M Series A round from Korea's Smilegate in 2019.

 

Payrix / Splash Payments

Link: https://www.payrix.com/

Based in: United States

Availability: Not publicly available

Fees: Not publicly available

Features:

• Recurring payments
• Payframe hosted payment form

Payrix (formerly known as Splash Payments) provides payment processing to marketplace merchants. Unfortunately, you'll be hard-pressed to find any additional information without signing up, as there's only limited documentation available.

 

Payture

Link: https://payture.com/services

Year founded: 2010

Based in: Russia

Availability: Russia

Fees: 2.1% to 3% (depending on revenue)

Features:

• Support for multiple currencies
• Recurring payments and pre-authorization
• Full and partial refunds
• KYC & anti-fraud

Payture is a payment solution that offers internet acquiring and P2P payment services to ecommerce businesses in Russia.

 

RBK Money

Link: https://rbk.money/payment-solutions/

Year founded: 2002

Based in: Russia

Availability: Russia, CIS region

Fees: Available on request, ~3%

Features:

• Mass payouts & recurring payments
• Escrow payments
• Stored cards
• Anti-fraud tools

RBK.money is a leading electronic payment company in Russia and the CIS region. It offers businesses safe online payments via credit and debit cards, e-wallets and an extensive cash payments network.

For marketplace businesses, RBK.money offers split payments at checkout and payment routing between multiple receivers.

Founded in 2007 as RUpay, the company was acquired by RBK Group in 2008. It currently serves over 40,000 online stores in 60+ countries.

 

PayAnyway/Moneta.ru

Link: https://marketplace.payanyway.ru/

Year founded: 2005 (PayAnyway 2010)

Based in: Russia

Availability: Russia

Fees:

• Card payments 2.7%
• Online banking 2.9%
• Mobile phone outlets 2.9%
• Digital wallets 2.5%+
• SMS payments 4%+

Features:

• Support for multiple payment gateways
• Customer invoicing via email and SMS
• Delayed payments and holding funds
• Automatic recurring payments

PayAnyway is an ecommerce payment processing solution by Moneta.ru aimed at online stores and marketplaces. They provide a convenient way of processing payments online to ecommerce companies based in Russia using the most common local payment methods.

Moneta.ru was founded in 2005 in Russia and started offering marketplace payment processing in 2010 as part of as separate service called PayAnyway.

 

How do you choose the best payment solution?

That's a lot of payment processors! A little overwhelming, perhaps.

Selecting the right payment solution for your marketplace is crucial, but how do you choose the right one when there are so many different choices available?

Here are a few tips:

First, decide what features you absolutely need and which ones are optional. Do you really need recurring and subscription payments? Can you live without custom payment routing?

Then, find out what processors are available in your region that offer the functionality you're looking for. In most cases, this will narrow your choices down to a few processors.

Finally, make sure you can integrate the solution of choice into your marketplace platform software. The better documentation and integration options, the easier your job will be.

Here are a few helpful tips from Paybase (featured earlier in this roundup):

So, ask yourself the following questions before getting to work building your marketplace:

• What types of payments will I be dealing with as a marketplace platform owner?
• What payment solutions are available in my region that meet my requirements?
• What will payment processing cost me and how do I factor this into my business model?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you find the perfect payment processor for your marketplace.

I want to make starting a marketplace simple and help marketplace owners turn their platforms into successful businesses. If you've found this roundup useful, please help spread the word and share it.