All:This question undoubtedly exposes my lack of experience in the field of eCommerce and payment processing, but can anyone tell me if there's a good way (payment processor / point of sale provider / shopping cart, etc) to handle a three party transaction? A model I'm looking to support:Within my website Buyer pays total purchase amount. From that purchase amount a % commission is deposited into my merchant account. The remainder of the purchase amount goes to the seller of the product. (I'd rather not have the whole purchase amount go into my account where I would then have to subsequently deduct my "commission" and pay the seller. ie I'd like to stay out of the buyer/seller part of the transaction altogether, avoid the chargeback hassle, etc.) I'm essentially a "facilitator", but I need to ensure that once buyer and seller come to agreed upon terms, that the seller has confidence the buyer will pay and the buyer has confidence the item can be purchased at the agreed upon discount price. I'm assuming this means I need to have the transaction triggered within my website (at the agreed upon price) rather than passing the buyer over to the sellers website or standard payment portal. I don't want a model where I have to collect my commission post-transaction later on with some type of accounts payable approach. Plenty of great business models go under because they don't have a good way of collecting on accts receivable; I'd much rather have the buyer to seller payment and my commission happen all at once.Not sure if that makes any sense...is something like that even possible?Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! -especially references to possible vendors that can support this sort of thing.
Amazon and Paypal were both working on a 3 way API. It would be extremely limited in what you can do and I imagine their risk guidelines are going to be very strict. Otherwise, you need to get an aggregating merchant account. There's a bunch of offshore providers that do these. There may be some US companies that do them as well. In either case they typically will require a substantial reserve to be maintained because these types of accounts create a large liability gap. The company that holds liability for the transactions has a disproportionately low income from them.
Very helpful info to know. Much appreciated. Sounds like I hold extra liability with this model and consequently a lower income. I'll continue to investigate this but sounds like I'll need to come up with some alternative models where I may need to handle the commission and the seller amount separately. Either way, does anyone know the names of these aggregating Merchant account vendors (I'll do some due diligence in that direction regardless...) Also, any other suggestions on alternatives would be sincerely appreciated. Regards, Waybe
Hi Wayne77. This is a model we operate. If you would like to discuss, please contact our sales guys on 08432 890 109. Hope this helps, - Peter (I work for Nochex)
Hi Wayne77. We support UK based businesses only. However, they can receive transactions from all over the world - including the US. Hope this helps, - Peter - (I work for Nochex)
For credit card processing check out squareup.com (Square). Also check out the new PayPal Here for mobile devices. 2 great payment processors!