Onboarding sellers who get paid directly
2 min readLast updated 16 September 2026 Read as plain text
If money for your sellers passes through your own account, you are probably a money transmitter. Connected accounts are how platforms avoid that.
The obvious way to build a marketplace is to collect every payment into your own account and pay sellers out of it. It works on day one and becomes a serious problem later, because holding and forwarding other people’s money is a regulated activity in most jurisdictions, and doing it without a licence is not a paperwork oversight.
The alternative is that each seller has their own account, verified in their own name, and the money is theirs from the moment it is paid.
What changes for you
- You take your commission rather than handling the whole amount.
- Each seller verifies themselves, so identity checks are theirs rather than a file you maintain.
- A seller’s balance is a seller’s balance, and it does not appear on your books.
- A seller who leaves takes their own account with them, which is a feature: you are not holding money for somebody you no longer work with.
What changes for them
Sellers have to complete a verification step before they can be paid, and that step is where marketplaces lose people. Make the ask proportionate to what they are earning, explain what it is for, and let them start listing before it is finished if your risk appetite allows.
Getting sellers their money
Payouts go to the seller’s mobile money account where payouts are live, or to their own bank account by wire anywhere. On a schedule you set, or triggered by you, or on delivery confirmation if you use escrow.
Show them their net at the moment of sale. A seller who has to work out what they will receive will work it out wrong and then be annoyed with you about it.
Ask the question early
Whether your model needs a licence is a question for a lawyer in the markets you operate in, not for a payments blog. Ask it before you build, because the answer shapes your architecture rather than decorating it.