---
title: "Stripe for marketplaces: Mapping commercial relationships in code"
description: "The post presents a guide to mapping marketplace relationships among buyers, sellers, and the platform in Stripe Connect, focusing on payment processing, seller onboarding, payouts, fees, refunds, and disputes. It uses Greens & Dairy Mart, a fictitious farm marketplace, to show how an unlicensed marketplace can manage payments with Stripe while meeting applicable regulatory requirements. Using the Account API, connected accounts, controller settings, KYC links, capabilities, Payment Intents, transfers, and webhooks, the implementation encodes responsibilities and money movements. Greens & Dairy Mart charges customers after farmers confirm dispatch, pays farmers after delivery confirmation, and retains 15% of the final price. The guide also shows refund and transfer reversal flows, including recovering disputed amounts from a seller’s balance, and concludes that Connect APIs can automate complex marketplace contracts and financial interactions."
---

# Stripe for marketplaces: Mapping commercial relationships in code

[Stripe](https://yomu.fyi/company/stripe) · Ana Andres · Jul 3, 2025

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

The post presents a guide to mapping marketplace relationships among buyers, sellers, and the platform in Stripe Connect, focusing on payment processing, seller onboarding, payouts, fees, refunds, and disputes. It uses Greens & Dairy Mart, a fictitious farm marketplace, to show how an unlicensed marketplace can manage payments with Stripe while meeting applicable regulatory requirements. Using the Account API, connected accounts, controller settings, KYC links, capabilities, Payment Intents, transfers, and webhooks, the implementation encodes responsibilities and money movements. Greens & Dairy Mart charges customers after farmers confirm dispatch, pays farmers after delivery confirmation, and retains 15% of the final price. The guide also shows refund and transfer reversal flows, including recovering disputed amounts from a seller’s balance, and concludes that Connect APIs can automate complex marketplace contracts and financial interactions.

## Context

Marketplaces coordinate buyers, independent sellers, and a platform without buyers and sellers typically entering a direct commercial agreement. The post focuses on how marketplaces that do not require a money or banking license in a given jurisdiction can process payments for sellers through Stripe Connect while meeting regulatory requirements, including seller KYC, risk management, refunds, chargebacks, disputes, and potential payment-network fines.

## Approach / What changed

The guide models the marketplace with Stripe Connect APIs. It creates connected seller accounts, configures controllers and capabilities, collects KYC information through hosted or embedded onboarding, and uses Payment Intents, transfers, application fees, charges, refunds, transfer reversals, and webhooks to encode commercial relationships and money movements. The example charges customers after dispatch confirmation, pays sellers after delivery confirmation, retains a 15% fee, and handles disputed or refunded payments through reversals and seller-account charges.

## Takeaways

- Stripe Connected Accounts can be configured with Transfers as the required capability, while controller settings assign fees, payment losses, and requirement collection to the marketplace application.
- Greens & Dairy Mart charges customers after farmers confirm dispatch, pays each farmer after delivery confirmation, and retains 15% of the final price for operating costs.
- Refunds and disputes can involve both a payment refund and a TransferReversal; the marketplace initially bears payment-level liability and may recover disputed amounts from a seller’s balance.

**Tags:** [Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/topic/architecture), [Onboarding](https://yomu.fyi/topic/onboarding), [REST APIs](https://yomu.fyi/topic/rest-api)

- Source: [Stripe](https://stripe.dev/blog/stripe-marketplaces-mapping-commercial-relationships-code)
- Source URL: https://stripe.dev/blog/stripe-marketplaces-mapping-commercial-relationships-code
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-28T08:59:06.209Z

[Read original post](https://stripe.dev/blog/stripe-marketplaces-mapping-commercial-relationships-code)