How to take a commission on our marketplace? Paypal? Wallet system?

Hi.

This has been confusing me for a little while now. We're looking to allow our members to take payments. Our website allows members to list items and we take a % (commission).

What's the best way to do this?

My first idea was to have a wallet system, i.e. members pay straight to our bank account/paypal account, the money is added to their virtual wallet and when they want the money, they simply withdraw and it will go into their bank or paypal account. The problem with this is that we'd have to look after all of our members' money, and if anything happened, if we accidentally overspent, if there was a debt, we'd lose their money. Additionally, our bank would charge a fee to send money overseas.

Another idea is to allow users to type in their Paypal address to receive payments (if someone doesn't want to pay with a paypal account, they can just use a debit/credit card via Paypal instead). This would work well, but if someone pays in £, and the user that receives the money is from USA, will they receive the money in $? Also, how can we take a commission this way? As I understand it, we can't - other than sending the user an invoice for the % after the sale, similar to eBay.

Are there any other viable options? If you help, I'll give you a thanks & best answer!

Thank you to everyone.

 

Paypal you can accept different currencies from buyers. You can use Paypal adaptive/chain payments to collect the payment from the buyer in £, take your % commission in £ and pay the seller the remaining funds in the £ currency then let the seller worry about exchanging funds afterwards in their local currency. It will be a total mess trying to have the buyers pay in their currency then you're paid a % commission in £ and then exchanging the remaining funds to pay the seller in their local currency. You would increase your operating expenses because of the currency exchange rate & Paypal processing fees not to mention the bank wire transfer fee. You can opt to pay the sellers through Western Union if they accept this month or sign up for a Payoneer business account then you can disburse funds to the sellers prepaid debit card and the seller can withdrawal the funds at an ATM in their local currency. You can opt to have the buyer pay a bank transfer fee when they make the payment to a seller also.

 

Thanks for the adaptive/chain payments suggestion Muffet, this is exactly what we're after. You have no idea how much you've helped!

We're happy to take whatever currency the payment is as a commission, but we're worried that users from the US will be paid £ instead of $ and vice-versa. I guess they'll receive the money in whatever currency they are paid in, and have to change it round themselves as you mentioned.

Thanks again.

 

I am running 2 sites that have people pay/get paid: a job marketplace (http://topadmin.net/jobs/) and a new ad network (http://www.dojoad.com). Both have USD as the ONLY allowed currency and we're using an escrow system: the buyer (advertising or services) is paying for the job, the money is collected in MY paypal account and then it's released to the seller, once the job/campaign is complete. This way no one can scam anyone, since both systems release funds only when it's the right time to do. The sellers can then withdraw money to their accounts by having me send it via PayPal (am only using paypal so far). would work with other payment gateways.

 

I choose paypal. Here the policy would be like this, you need to enter the price and description of the services. For example, if you earn $10 in commission for every product that you sell and you sold 100 products, you would enter “100” under quantity. The description could be given as something like “Encyclopedia sales commission,” and the unit price would be $10. Once you’ve filled in all of the information, PayPal will calculate the total amount being invoiced. It depends on how much detail your client requires, you could just list the quantity as “1,” the description as “Commission for the month of X” and the amount that you are charging. Good luck to you.

 

You should post this question to the prospective payment gateways' customer service or technical support. I mainly use Paypal but I'm sure other payment gateways allow you to accept payments in the buyer's currency (or USD in your instance) to pay the advertiser depending on which payment processor's API you choose to accept payments on your site.

 

Thanks for this.

Does the money automatically release to the seller once the 'job' is complete? How can this be programmed, for example, do the buyer and seller have to click 'complete'? Can you keep a commission this way?

 

Check my response in your other thread please. I gave you a very interesting approach which would allow you to use PayPal without having to work with third party systems.

 

Thanks, SentoWeb.

 

You're welcome. Feel free to PM me if you need help with the APIs (we can build the system for you however I wouldn't charge anything to offer you guidance regarding certain PayPal APIs)

 

Yes, the platforms are programmed to release funds once the buyer agrees that the job was properly done. Similar to other freelancing sites in the end.

 

Take a look at BitPay (Google it) Allows accepting payment through bitcoins and other currencies.