Stripe Integration for Marketplace Platforms

The account-type decision — Standard, Express, or Custom Connect — is the single highest-leverage choice in a marketplace build, and it's expensive to reverse once sellers have onboarded. Standard hands Stripe's own dashboard to your sellers (least platform liability, least control); Custom puts you fully in the UI and compliance seat (most control, most ongoing obligation); Express sits in between and is the right default for most two-sided marketplaces.

The Payout and Dispute Questions to Answer Before Launch

• Who funds a refund when the buyer disputes after the seller has already been paid out?
• What's your payout schedule per seller — instant, daily, or a rolling reserve for risk?
• Does your platform take a fee as an application fee, or via separate transfers?
• How does KYC/onboarding friction change between Standard, Express, and Custom?

Most of the marketplace integrations we're brought in to fix weren't broken on day one — they broke when transaction volume made an unhandled edge case (a seller-funded refund with insufficient balance, a payout landing before a dispute window closes) common enough to matter. We architect for that volume from the first Connect account created, not after the first support ticket about a negative balance.