What payment setup does a marketplace need?

A US marketplace needs five payment capabilities: collecting buyer payments, verifying and onboarding sellers, holding and splitting funds between the platform and sellers, paying sellers out, and reconciling every payment and payout. Bank payments can cover both ends of that stack, with pay by bank to collect from buyers and real-time bank payouts to pay sellers, through one integration.

A store has one flow of money: customers pay, the business gets paid. A marketplace has at least three. Buyers pay in, the platform keeps its fee, and sellers, hosts, drivers or creators get paid out. Each flow carries its own risk, and the gaps between them are where marketplaces lose money and seller trust.

What are the five layers of a marketplace payment stack?

Each layer handles one step in moving money from buyer to seller, and each one fails in its own way.

Why do splits and reconciliation break first?

Splits and reconciliation break first because they sit between two money movements that often run on different systems. Say a buyer pays $500, the platform keeps a $50 fee, and the seller is owed $450. That split exists only in the platform's ledger until the payout goes out. Every refund, return or partial payout then has to be traced back to the pay-in that funded it.

When pay-ins and payouts run through separate providers, that tracing happens across two or three reports, by hand. When they run through one integration, each payout ties to the pay-in behind it, and status updates arrive by webhook as payments settle, return or pay out. Merchants can track every Aeropay payout's status in real time through webhooks and the Aeropay merchant portal.

How funds sit between pay-in and payout also decides whether money transmission rules apply to the platform. Have counsel review that structure before launch.

Why do bank payments suit marketplaces?

• Lower cost on large orders. Card interchange is a percentage of every sale, and it averaged 2.36% on Visa and Mastercard credit cards in 2025 (The Motley Fool, citing the Merchants Payments Coalition). Pay by bank through Aeropay costs up to 50% less to process than cards. See Pay by bank vs. credit cards: which costs merchants less?
• One verified account for both directions. A seller who links a bank account once can be verified, paid and, where needed, charged fees from the same account. With Aerosync, users link and verify a bank account in under 10 seconds, and Aeropay's network connects to more than 12,000 US banks and credit unions.
• Return coverage before sellers get paid. Paying a seller before the buyer's bank payment settles is where a marketplace takes the most risk. Aeropay Guaranteed ACH covers eligible bank-initiated returns, across 50+ return types including insufficient funds, up to the merchant's agreed coverage limit. Aeropay Guard scores each payment in real time to predict fraud and return risk before funds move.
• Faster payouts. Real-time rails pay sellers in seconds, at any hour, when the seller's bank can receive them. We route Aeropay payouts over RTP or FedNow first and fall back to ACH when the recipient's bank can't receive a real-time payment. Trading platform Topstep cut trader payout times from 3 days to 9 seconds with Aeropay instant payouts (Topstep customer story). For the full payout playbook, see How should US marketplaces pay sellers instantly?
• Fewer integrations. We built Aeropay Payouts on the same integration merchants already use to accept pay by bank, so paying sellers adds nothing new to build. For the developer side, see What does a bank payment API need to handle both pay-ins and payouts?

Frequently asked questions

Do marketplaces need a money transmitter license?

Whether a marketplace needs a money transmitter license depends on whether the platform holds or controls buyer funds before paying sellers. A marketplace that receives buyer money into its own account and later pays sellers can fall under state money transmission rules. Many marketplaces instead route funds through a licensed payment provider's structure. Confirm your model with counsel before launch.

What are split payments in a marketplace?

Split payments divide one buyer payment between the platform's fee and the seller's earnings. The platform collects the full amount, records each party's share in its ledger, and sends the seller's share as a payout. The split is a ledger entry; money moves when the payout goes out.

Can a marketplace collect fees from sellers by bank?

Yes. When a seller links a bank account to get paid, the platform can debit that same verified account for fees, with the seller's authorization. One linked account then handles earnings and charges, so the platform keeps no second set of payment details on file.

The bottom line

A marketplace needs pay-ins, seller verification, funds splitting, payouts and reconciliation, and the gaps between those layers are where it loses money. Bank payments cover both ends of that stack. Running pay-ins and payouts through one provider keeps the ledger in one place and the return risk contained.

Building a marketplace? See how Aeropay runs buyer payments and seller payouts through one integration.