Seriously, How Are Successful Carts Paying Their Vendors?

Ok, so maybe I was a bit naive when choosing CS-Cart for my platform for a multi-vendor marketplace.

My goal is to build and run a multi-vendor marketplace.
Vendors can add products to the storefront, customers can buy from multiple vendors through one payment channel, commissioned profits from sales are then paid to vendors.
Business plan is solid, and currently working manually in the real world.
Now to bring it online.
I have set up my CS-Cart Multivendor storefront. https://www.cs-cart.com/multivendor.html
Went to set up PayPal business account. They explained their position on "marketplaces" and directed me to a product called Adaptive Payments. https://developer.paypal.com/docs/marketplace-split-payments/
Then I learned about Stripe Connect which seems to be built specifically for company's like mine. https://stripe.com/connect
CS-cart Development Partners don't see to be very knowledgeable on the subject which is surprising due to the almost pre-requisite need for this functionality. Only found these "add-ons":
http://webkul.com/blog/cs-cart-stripe-connect-payment-gateway/
https://www.ecom-labs.com/ready-to-use-add-ons/stripe-connect-for-multi-vendor.html
I would be interested in know if anyone has knowledge and experience on the combination of CS-Cart and either PayPal Adaptive Payments or Stripe Connect.
If so, I would like to work with them for my business.

Our module is used on 5 marketplaces already. No complaints are received

Our module is used on 5 marketplaces already. No complaints are received

Can you provide links to those marketplaces? Or, better, provide a reference contact from one or more of the companies so that I can ask them about their experience? This part of the marketplace process is critical and I need to be very strategic in choosing the right solution.

Also I would be interested in the Managed Accounts functionality as well as Invoicing.

Thanks

Ok, so maybe I was a bit naive when choosing CS-Cart for my platform for a multi-vendor marketplace.

My goal is to build and run a multi-vendor marketplace.
Vendors can add products to the storefront, customers can buy from multiple vendors through one payment channel, commissioned profits from sales are then paid to vendors.
Business plan is solid, and currently working manually in the real world.
Now to bring it online.
I have set up my CS-Cart Multivendor storefront. https://www.cs-cart.com/multivendor.html
Went to set up PayPal business account. They explained their position on "marketplaces" and directed me to a product called Adaptive Payments. https://developer.paypal.com/docs/marketplace-split-payments/
Then I learned about Stripe Connect which seems to be built specifically for company's like mine. https://stripe.com/connect
CS-cart Development Partners don't see to be very knowledgeable on the subject which is surprising due to the almost pre-requisite need for this functionality. Only found these "add-ons":
I would be interested in know if anyone has knowledge and experience on the combination of CS-Cart and either PayPal Adaptive Payments or Stripe Connect.
If so, I would like to work with them for my business.

I agree and am currently looking for a solution. I believe that the reason there aren't solutions that will help is because developers don't understand what is needed. Only people that use CS-Cart Multi-vendor know what they need.

We're knowledgeable, but why re-invent the wheel? Ecom has the stripe payment method which will allocate payment to the various vendors in an order.

However, most businesses like to have a bit more buffering than this. I.e. they want to reserve the funds to ensure that customers get their goods and are satisfied before paying the vendor. I'd guess that Ecom's stripe payments can trigger payment to vendors on any status you choose. But I'm not familiar with their implementation.

Also note that developers tend to look at market opportunity before investing in addons. IN my experience, it generally takes 10 purchase just to pay for the cost of development before any profit is realized. So having 5 users of an addon doesn't make a lot of business sense since the development cost probably outweighs the revenue received.

Can you provide links to those marketplaces? Or, better, provide a reference contact from one or more of the companies so that I can ask them about their experience? This part of the marketplace process is critical and I need to be very strategic in choosing the right solution.

Also I would be interested in the Managed Accounts functionality as well as Invoicing.

Thanks

I will ask if someone wants to share their experience with you.

As for Managed Accounts, unfortunately we did not integrate this service.

We run a MVE and pay our vendors via Paypal's Adaptive Payments ("chained" payment format).

To the customer, they appear to pay our vendors directly, but a commission gets split out to us, the operators, simultaneously.
The banks weren't big on allowing us to hang on to funds on behalf of our vendors, so this was the ideal solution and was reasonably simple (once developed) to get approved and running.
It's been generally trouble free, but we're only a few thousand transactions in.
SimTech (CS-Cart's development arm) has the add-on "on the shelf" that they can tailor-fit to your model.

We run a MVE and pay our vendors via Paypal's Adaptive Payments ("chained" payment format).

To the customer, they appear to pay our vendors directly, but a commission gets split out to us, the operators, simultaneously.
The banks weren't big on allowing us to hang on to funds on behalf of our vendors, so this was the ideal solution and was reasonably simple (once developed) to get approved and running.
It's been generally trouble free, but we're only a few thousand transactions in.
SimTech (CS-Cart's development arm) has the add-on "on the shelf" that they can tailor-fit to your model.

How do you handle refunds and chargebacks? My concern is in the case of a chargeback issued by the credit card company, the admin of the site is liable for the full balance even if they just kept a small percentage...

I am wanting to set up paypal adaptive, however I want to limit my risk and liability and push the liability to the actual vendor. Any advice is appreciated!

We pretty much completed an addon (before customer bailed out) that uses paypal mass pay to pay vendors. We also had custom commissioning so you could determine all the various elements that might (or might not) be commissionable. Probably needs to be adapted now since they got rid of Vendor Commissions and now have Vendor Plans (haven't verified if changes are needed or not).

We implemented the payout with a timed queue (emulating an escrow process where you can have different delays for different vendors). So when an order reached the completed (or specified) status (I.e. shipped by the vendor) that you can specify how long to delay payments to the vendor.

As normal, customer sees one payment going to merchant and an invoice related to each vendor.

Unfortunately Paypal stuff is kind of lame in that you can't do a refund (chargeback) from a Mass Pay or Adaptive Payment. You can pay in different currencies but you have to have funds available IN THAT CURRENCY in your account in order to send it. I.e. you can't have $1000 USD in your account and pay out $2 CAD unless you have $2 specifically in CAD! Very annoying.

We initially tried to use Dwolla but were not able to get their Oauth methods to work for us and their technical support wasn't much help.

We pretty much completed an addon (before customer bailed out) that uses paypal mass pay to pay vendors. We also had custom commissioning so you could determine all the various elements that might (or might not) be commissionable. Probably needs to be adapted now since they got rid of Vendor Commissions and now have Vendor Plans (haven't verified if changes are needed or not).

We implemented the payout with a timed queue (emulating an escrow process where you can have different delays for different vendors). So when an order reached the completed (or specified) status (I.e. shipped by the vendor) that you can specify how long to delay payments to the vendor.

As normal, customer sees one payment going to merchant and an invoice related to each vendor.

Unfortunately Paypal stuff is kind of lame in that you can't do a refund (chargeback) from a Mass Pay or Adaptive Payment. You can pay in different currencies but you have to have funds available IN THAT CURRENCY in your account in order to send it. I.e. you can't have $1000 USD in your account and pay out $2 CAD unless you have $2 specifically in CAD! Very annoying.

We initially tried to use Dwolla but were not able to get their Oauth methods to work for us and their technical support wasn't much help.

So Is your mod for this available to purchase...? Or to view?

Thanks

We can discuss. Email me or use contact us on our site. It lacks some finishing touches and needs to be ported to the new vendor profile stuff since the older vendor commissions is now gone.

Just wanted to say I had a question somewhere in this ballpark, but this thread helped me a lot. Thanks!

We can discuss. Email me or use contact us on our site. It lacks some finishing touches and needs to be ported to the new vendor profile stuff since the older vendor commissions is now gone.

Ok great I will email you now. thanks