Payset gives you everything you need to manage B2B marketplace payments. With our services, you can simplify essential aspects of working with a B2B marketplace. Payset accounts allow you to accept customer payments globally, handle multiple currencies, manage platform fees, and maintain compliance with financial regulations.
How Do Payment Solutions Help Online Marketplaces?
Payment solutions help online marketplaces accept money from their customers.
These services usually provide support for a wide variety of payment methods, currencies, and countries. Typically, these products also provide some degree of customization, allowing online marketplaces to adjust features according to their own needs.
Regardless of the type of company that you operate, payment solutions for marketplaces can help you carry out simple transactions and sales. We’ll look at more details below.
Types of Online Marketplaces
There are two main types of online marketplaces: single-vendor marketplaces and multi-vendor marketplaces. In this section, we’ll compare those two models.
Single-Vendor Marketplace
Single-vendor marketplaces are online stores in which just one business or solo entrepreneur operates as a seller. This type of store might sell a variety of products including clothing, music, and merchandise — or anything else including digital and physical goods.
Single-vendor marketplaces allow your business to stand out from the rest with a unique buying experience for customers. However, single-vendor marketplaces may require you to put significant effort into operating the marketplace and providing customer support.
Multi-Vendor Marketplace
Multi-vendor marketplaces are online stores in which multiple sellers operate on a single website. Well-known examples of this include Amazon and eBay storefronts.
This approach allows customers to deal with a trusted website or marketplace platform rather than their own business website. Following this strategy may also reduce the amount of support and management required from your company. However, by passing off those responsibilities to the marketplace service provider, you may pay higher upfront costs, and you may also limit your ability to communicate with customers directly.
You do not need to choose one model or the other. It is possible to operate both single-vendor and multi-vendor marketplaces as long as you have the resources to do so.
Payment Gateways Vs Payment Processors
There are two distinct but closely related services that you can use to handle payments for marketplaces. Consider these two services.
- Payment gateways: These services allow you to accept a variety of transactions through your website including card payments, e-wallet payments, and more
- Payment processors: These services route payment data to financial institutions
Your business typically needs both types of service to handle payments. However, many services combine both products. Even if a service refers to itself solely as a payment gateway or a payment processor, it will likely provide everything you need to accept payments.
Types of Marketplace Payment Solutions
There are many types of online marketplace payment solutions and many ways to accept payment. Some may be a better fit than others depending on your exact needs.
Credit & Debit Cards
Credit card and debit card payments are standard payment methods. Customers expect card payment options, and it is likely a must for your business to accept this type of payment.
Fortunately, many marketplace payment solutions support card payments, meaning that you do not need to consider whether to provide this feature. You may nevertheless compare fees, rates, and features to choose the best service.
Blend of Online & Offline Payments
Businesses can combine online and offline payments to provide customers with a wider variety of options. For example, if you operate a brick-and-mortar store in addition to a website, you can provide in-store pickups and allow users to pay either online or at the time of pickup.
This approach is extremely flexible and allows customers to pay in any way they choose. However, offline payments are only practical for companies that have a physical location.
Digital Wallets
You can allow customers to make payments with digital wallets. This category includes web and mobile apps that contain a cash balance such as PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay.
Wallet apps are popular, and accepting them may attract users. However, not all marketplace payment solutions support all digital wallets, so ensuring widespread support may be difficult.
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Services
Your business can additionally accept Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payment methods. This type of payment allows customers to pay for products over time, usually without paying interest.
This type of payment is growing in popularity and may be attractive to customers. However, as with digital wallets, merchant payment solutions may not support all BNPL services, and ensuring that you support a wide variety of BNPL payments may be difficult.
Payments in Instalments
Buy Now, Pay Later services are sometimes referred to as payments in installments. Though there may be some differences, the two terms are generally interchangeable.
Pay-By-Link
Pay-by-link allows customers to click on a web link to complete a purchase.
Typically, this payment type still requires customers to complete a payment with another method, such as a credit card, digital wallet, or bank transfer. It merely directs users to a page that allows them to input their payment data, as with any other online purchase.
Pay by QR Code
You can allow customers to scan a QR code to complete their purchase. This option is popular in conjunction with digital wallets like Apple and Google Pay.
However, this method is mainly viable for customers with smartphones and tablets. It is not appropriate for customers who access a web store on their PC or laptop. As such, Pay-by-QR-code is typically combined with various other payment methods.
Escrow Payment Systems
Escrow payment systems allow customers to pay your business indirectly.
Under escrow payment systems, customers make payments to a neutral third party. When the customer confirms that they are satisfied, the third party transfers those funds to your business. If there is a disagreement, the third party can determine who is owed the money.
Escrow payment systems ensure that transactions are secure and guaranteed. For businesses, escrow reduces the risk that a customer will attempt to avoid payments. For customers, it reduces the risk that businesses will collect a payment without completing a deal.
However, escrow is mainly useful in transactions that involve a large amount of money or advance payments. It is not especially useful for small everyday transactions, as most companies instead offer refunds to their customers for small purchases if necessary.
Split Payments
Split payments allow customers to pay with more than one option at once.
This may involve more than one payment type, such as a combination of cash, credit cards, debit cards, and other options. Or, it may involve splitting payments between multiple credit cards. This payment option is commonplace and is convenient for in-store purchases.
This option is less common and more difficult to implement for online stores. However, if you do operate an online store, you may offer a variation on split payments by allowing customers to apply discount codes or gift cards before a purchase. In this way, you will allow customers to split a transaction between a discount amount and traditional payments.
Mass Payouts
Mass payouts, bulk payouts, and batch payouts allow customers to pay many partners at once.
This payment method may be faster and less expensive than other payment methods. However, it is mainly useful if you have payments that you can plan for. Businesses mainly use this to handle outgoing payments rather than incoming payments from customers.
ACH Transfers
ACH transfers are interbank payments that are processed by the Automated Clearing House Network (ACH) network. This type of payment is secure and usually low-cost. However, it is mainly available in the U.S. and is not especially commonplace compared to other methods.
Cryptocurrency Payments
Cryptocurrency payments allow customers to pay with crypto assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and dollar-pegged stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USDCoin (USDC).
Crypto payments have gained some popularity but are not especially widespread. As such, you may choose to support crypto if you operate in the industry itself — for example, if you operate a crypto exchange or crypto merchandise store, accepting crypto is a necessity. Otherwise, your company will likely see little demand for cryptocurrency from customers.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Marketplace Payment System
There are many important elements to consider before choosing a marketplace payment system. You should consider the needs of your business as well as its partners and customers.
Check Marketplace Needs
You should determine what types of payments your marketplace needs to handle, including all of the payment options described in the section above.
Other key considerations include support for mass payouts, ways to collect fees, support for online or in-person sales, and options for subscription-based or recurring payments.
Fees & Charges
When selecting a service, you should consider the fees that you need to pay on every transaction — including outgoing and incoming transactions.
Before choosing a service, you should determine whether the payment solution that you have chosen offers fees that are comparable to other competing services. You should also ensure that these fees are affordable to your company in their own right. Specifically, you should consider per-transaction fees, recurring account fees, and currency conversion fees.
If you are paying partners and affiliates, you may choose to deduct part of each payment to cover the cost of outgoing transactions. Similarly, if you are receiving payments from customers, you may need to add a surcharge to cover any fees.
Supported Locations
Businesses need to support global transactions. Consider the locations that your marketplace payment solution supports and the countries that your business partners are based in. Be sure to consider support for those countries’ native currencies as well.
At Payset, we support the U.S. dollar (USD), the British pound (GBP), the Euro (EUR), and dozens of other currencies. See supported countries and currencies for more info.
Number of Payment Options
Ideally, your company should support as many popular payment options as possible, including but not limited to card payments and online transfers. However, it is not always necessary to support lesser-known payment types if partners and customers show little demand.
Security Services
At Payset, we offer the highest industry-standard account protections and fraud reporting tools for maximum security. Your funds are protected through a process known as safeguarding wherein 100% of client funds are segregated from Payset’s own funds.
For more information, read our full safeguarding statement.
Every transaction is protected by added layers of security including 2-factor authentication and multi-signature capabilities.
Fraud Prevention
Fraud protection may allow you to cancel, reverse, or cover any fraudulent payments that occur. This may include fraud against your own company or fraud experienced by customers.
Payset offers a fraud reporting system. If you are a Payset account holder and have experienced fraud, contact us by following the instructions on this page.
Technical Support
Readily available technical support can help your company address payment issues as they arise. Payset offers live support during business hours and an always-online help centre.
Transaction Limits
Payment services may impose maximum transaction limits. You should ensure that your company can operate within these limits. Otherwise, you may find yourself unable to accept payments from your customers or unable to make payments to partners and affiliates.
Some services do not include transaction limits at all. With Payset, all accounts allow for unlimited transactions, though large transactions may be briefly delayed by anti-fraud checks.
Payment Gateway Integration
Some marketplace payment solutions provide plugins that integrate with other payment services and payment gateways. Integration features are convenient and can streamline your business operations, though this is only necessary if your company works with more than one service.
Smart Functionality & Add-Ons
Marketplace payment solutions may offer extra features or “smart features” such as tax tools, chargeback services, and more. These services can streamline business operations in general, even though they are not necessarily considered core payment features.
Payment Challenges for Online Marketplaces
You may face various challenges as you determine the best way to accept and handle payments. Consider these factors as you operate your business.
Partner Onboarding
Though your company may secure many partners including freelancers, contractors, and affiliates, those partners are not always long-lasting and you may see high turnover. As such, you’ll need to choose a payment method that can support rapid user-ship changes.
Your company should be able to make payments in a fast and affordable manner as it onboards new partners, even if you aim to retain those partners for as long as possible.
Scale Business
Successful businesses can expect to see growth in the number of customers and partners that they work with as well as the amount of money that they handle.
As such, a payment solution that was initially acceptable for your start-up or small business may not remain a viable option forever. Choosing a marketplace payment solution that allows you to handle larger volumes of payments and customers can help you address this challenge.
Specifically, it is important to choose a service that offers high transaction limits or does not limit transactions at all. Likewise, you should choose a service with a fee structure that remains affordable as you perform a large number of transactions.
Payment Infrastructure
It may be acceptable to solely support credit card payments and other commonplace transaction types in some cases. However, such limited transaction options are typically not sufficient if you work with a wide variety of partners and customers with varying demands.
As such, building a payment infrastructure that supports as many payment types as possible is an ideal course of action for any company that can manage this.
A strong payment infrastructure that combines many payment options will streamline payments — both for your business and for its partners and customers.
Partner Experience
Apart from offering a wide variety of payment options, you can focus on streamlining the payment methods that you already offer. For example, you can provide a straightforward user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) that partners and customers will find easy to use.
Those improvements will help you satisfy your partners, and, ideally, retain them.
Tips for Choosing a Marketplace Payment Solution
If the above considerations seem too much to take into account, be sure to think about these simple requirements when you choose a service.
- Look for a service with low fees
- Choose a service with support for many countries and currencies
- Aim to support several types of payment, including cards and payment networks
- Choose a service that complies with security standards
- Opt for a service that doesn’t impose transaction limits
- Select a service with highly available support and help features
Payset’s services satisfy all of those requirements and more. See below for more information.
How Can Payset Help?
Payset’s multi-currency account serves as a payment solution for marketplaces, allowing you to collect transactions from your customers and buyers with ease.
With a Payset account, you can receive various world currencies from your customers through a variety of payment methods and networks. You can hold, spend, or withdraw any funds that you receive in your Payset account — and you can even convert your balance between different foreign currencies via our built-in currency exchange.
We offer competitive fees, fast transactions, and free transactions between Payset customers.
To sign up for a Payset account, click here to get started. After providing the necessary information and documents, your account will be ready in 72 hours. If you’re not sure whether our services are right for you, feel free to contact our sales team.
FAQs
What Is A Marketplace Payment Solution?
A marketplace payment solution is a system that allows your business to receive money from third-party marketplaces where customers buy your products or services. A marketplace payment solution is suitable for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
The Payset multi-currency account connects to a range of marketplaces, allowing you to manage payments from all your income sources in one place.
How Does a Marketplace Payment Work?
Marketplace payments work by handling various commonplace payment methods including credit card payments. Often, marketplace payments also involve sending transactions over financial networks including SWIFT, SEPA, CHAPS, the U.K.’s Faster Payments System (FPS), EFT, and ACH. Payset supports all of these networks as well as card payments.
How Do Payment Gateways Work?
Payment gateways work by allowing you to accept various types of payment from customers, including but not limited to card payments. Payment gateways are often paired with payment processors, which transmit payment information to and from financial institutions.
What Is the Best Way to Receive Payments on a Marketplace?
The best way to receive payments on a marketplace is by supporting whatever type of payment your customers demand, meaning that you should accept a wide variety of currencies and payment methods.
Payset can help you meet those needs. Our services offer support for sending and receiving funds in more than 180 countries, holding 34 foreign currencies, and exchanging 38 foreign currency pairs. We also offer support for various payment methods for each asset. View our complete list of supported currencies and associated payment types on this page.
What Is the Safest Payment Solution for Marketplaces?
The safest payment solutions for marketplaces provide standard account-based logins, two-factor authentication (2FA), and compliance with security and privacy standards.
At Payset, we provide all basic security features on every account. We also comply with safeguarding rules to ensure that user funds are segregated from company assets, and with GDPR privacy regulations so that user data is always kept private and secure.
