Challenge

The transaction processes required to power a marketplace business are about as complex as online payments get. Sharetribe’s technical requirements were even more complex, since they build software for marketplace founders, who, in turn, enable payments for their sellers and service providers. Sharetribe marketplace operators also need to deduct commission from each transaction. To ensure security, marketplace operators need to be able to hold funds and delay payouts to providers.

Sharetribe needed to be sure all this happened in a way that met all legal and regulatory demands, not only in the countries the marketplace operators themselves live in, but also in all the countries of their potential customers. Sharetribe has customers in all the countries supported by Stripe Connect today.

Solution

Marketplace-specific functionality, such as pay-ins, payouts, and holding funds, was the most important factor when Sharetribe compared potential partners. Sharetribe was also looking for usability and quick and easy onboarding for its largely non-technical customer base.

After careful considerations and multiple discussions with Stripe, Adyen, MangoPay, and PayPal, Sharetribe decided that Stripe stood out as the best provider to meet its needs. Sharetribe was further convinced by the positive experience it had with Stripe’s support and clear documentation.

The initial end-to-end integration with Stripe Connect took less than one month from one developer to build from proof of concept all the way to making end-to-end payments. Sharetribe credited the speed of integration to Stripe’s easy-to-understand API and developer-focused documentation and API reference. Sharetribe’s developers also appreciated the versatile testing capabilities that allowed for creating test accounts, making test payments and payouts, and testing specific failure conditions.

Results

With Stripe Connect, Sharetribe can offer its customers a complete, powerful, and reliable marketplace payment flow that keeps its users in compliance with all local payment regulations. Connect supports Sharetribe's global customer base and their growth.

These benefits helped Sharetribe enable its customers to launch and grow new marketplaces faster than ever. The peer-to-peer car-rental platform Drive lah was launched as a custom marketplace after only a couple of months of development with Sharetribe and has since raised over $9M in funding and expanded from Singapore to Australia. Enterprise companies like Decathlon and Canon have also used Sharetribe to power their marketplace initiatives.