Engineering · 10 min read
Stripe Connect for Marketplaces: Account Types, Charge Types and Fees in 2026
Stripe Connect for marketplaces in 2026: Accounts v2, direct vs destination charges, application fees, refunds and what payouts cost.
Zain Khalid MalikCTO & Co-founder, Innovation Insight·Published 
Short answer
For a new marketplace in 2026, Stripe recommends Accounts v2 with configurations (merchant, customer, recipient) instead of choosing Standard, Express or Custom. Use destination charges when the platform owns the customer relationship and handles refunds, direct charges when sellers are the business customers see, and separate charges and transfers only for one-to-many splits. If Stripe handles pricing, Connect has no platform fee; if you set your own, it costs $2 per monthly active account plus 0.25% + 25¢ per payout (US, checked October 2026).
What Connect does
Stripe Connect lets a platform take payments from buyers and pay out to sellers, service providers or creators, with Stripe handling onboarding, identity checks, tax forms and payouts for each connected account. It is the default choice for marketplaces, booking platforms, gig apps and SaaS products that let their customers get paid. We have built it into TamTracker, where white-label agency partners receive revenue through Stripe Connect payouts, and LogFish, where fishing guides and charter captains sell trips and get paid through Stripe beside Apple and Google in-app subscriptions.
Accounts: v2 configurations replace Standard, Express and Custom
Older guides tell you to choose between Standard, Express and Custom accounts. As of October 2026 Stripe marks that page as a deprecated feature kept for existing platforms, and recommends the Accounts v2 API for new ones. Instead of a fixed type, you give each account one or more configurations and set who has dashboard access and who carries fees and losses.
| Setting | Options | Typical marketplace choice |
|---|---|---|
| Configuration | merchant (accepts payments), customer (is charged by the platform), recipient (receives transfers) | recipient for sellers paid via destination charges; merchant when sellers take payments directly |
| Dashboard access | full, express or none | express: sellers see payouts and update details without you building screens |
| Fees collector | Platform or connected account | Platform, so sellers see one clean net amount |
| Losses collector | Platform or connected account | Platform for destination charges; plan a reserve for disputes |
Accounts v2 does not yet cover everything (OAuth, the recipient service agreement, Treasury and Issuing were still missing when we checked), so check your must-have features against Stripe's v2 page before you start. Where v2 falls short, Stripe's advice is v1 with controller properties rather than the legacy account types.
Charge types: who is the merchant, who pays for refunds
| Charge type | Where the money lands | Who pays Stripe fees, refunds and disputes | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Destination charge | On the platform, then transferred to the seller | The platform; it can claw back with reverse_transfer | Marketplaces where customers buy from you (rides, rentals, services, booking) |
| Direct charge | On the connected account | The connected account (the platform can choose who pays Stripe's fee) | SaaS and store builders whose customers buy from the seller's brand |
| Separate charges and transfers | On the platform; you transfer later to one or more accounts | The platform | One payment split across several sellers, or the seller is not known at checkout |
Two parameters decide the details. on_behalf_of makes the connected account the settlement merchant: its country, statement descriptor, fee structure and payout schedule apply; without it, the platform is the business of record. application_fee_amount takes your commission: on a destination charge the full amount goes to the seller and the fee comes back to the platform, which then pays Stripe's processing fee out of it. On a refund, the platform keeps its fee unless you pass refund_application_fee. Stripe recommends separate charges and transfers only when the use case needs them, because you take on more reconciliation work.
What Connect costs (US, checked October 2026)
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Card payments | 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card charge; +1.5% international cards, +0.5% manually entered, +1% currency conversion |
| Connect when Stripe handles pricing | No Connect fees for the platform; Stripe sets what connected accounts pay |
| Connect when you handle pricing | $2 per monthly active account (one that received a payout that month) |
| Payouts | 0.25% + 25¢ per payout |
| Instant Payouts | 1% of the payout |
| 1099 tax forms | $2.99 per form e-filed with the IRS |
Worked example: a services marketplace with 400 active sellers, $200,000 a month in domestic card sales across 4,000 bookings of $50, a 15% commission and weekly payouts. Card fees are about $7,000 (2.9% of $200,000 plus 30¢ on each of 4,000 charges, $1,200). If you handle pricing, Connect adds $800 in active-account fees and about $825 in payout fees (1,600 payouts × 25¢ is $400, plus 0.25% of the $170,000 paid out, $425). Your commission is $30,000, so payments and Connect take about $8,600 of it, more than a quarter. That ratio is why many marketplaces pass the processing fee to sellers or set a minimum booking value.
The parts that take engineering time
- Onboarding: account links or embedded onboarding components, plus handling accounts that are restricted until they upload documents. Sellers who cannot get paid become support tickets, so show their status in your app.
- Webhooks: account.updated for verification status, payout events, disputes and transfer reversals, processed idempotently. Our Stripe webhooks guide covers the patterns.
- Refunds and disputes: who pays, whether the commission is returned and how a reversal is shown to the seller. Write the policy before the code.
- Ledger and reporting: an internal ledger of what each seller earned, what was paid out and what is held, reconciled daily against Stripe balance transactions.
- Payout timing: holding funds until a service is delivered (a rental ends, a lesson happens) with manual payouts or delayed transfers, without breaking the payout-schedule rules for the seller's country.
- Tax: 1099-K and 1099-NEC forms in the US, VAT on your commission in the UK and EU. Stripe can file forms; you still decide who is responsible.
What it costs to build
A Connect integration inside a marketplace MVP typically adds three to six weeks of work: onboarding, checkout, commission, payouts, refunds and a seller earnings screen. A full marketplace MVP with both sides and an admin sits in our $15k to $45k MVP range; complex platforms with escrow-style holds, multiple currencies and split payments go higher. Our marketplace app development cost guide breaks the budget down, and the marketplace development page shows how we scope one. Seek My Service, a two-sided services marketplace we built, uses Stripe for vendor credit purchases rather than Connect, which is the simpler option when sellers pay the platform rather than buyers paying sellers.
Sources
- Stripe Connect: Accounts v2: https://docs.stripe.com/connect/accounts-v2 (checked October 2026)
- Stripe Connect: charge types: https://docs.stripe.com/connect/charges (checked October 2026)
- Stripe Connect: destination charges and application fees: https://docs.stripe.com/connect/destination-charges (checked October 2026)
- Stripe Connect pricing: https://stripe.com/connect/pricing (checked October 2026)
- Stripe pricing: https://stripe.com/pricing (checked October 2026)
- TamTracker case study and LogFish case study
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Zain Khalid Malik
CTO & Co-founder, Innovation Insight
Zain owns architecture, engineering standards and the platform team at Innovation Insight. He sets the bar for code quality, security and the tooling every squad ships with.
LinkedInRelated questions.
Should I use Standard, Express or Custom accounts?
For a new platform in 2026, Stripe recommends Accounts v2, where you configure each account (merchant, customer, recipient) and its dashboard access instead of picking a legacy type. Express-style dashboard access is the usual choice for marketplace sellers.
Destination charges or direct charges?
Destination charges when customers buy from your platform and you handle refunds and disputes; direct charges when customers buy from the seller's own brand and the seller carries refunds and disputes.
How much does Stripe Connect cost?
In the US, nothing extra for the platform if Stripe handles pricing. If you set your own pricing, $2 per monthly active account plus 0.25% + 25¢ per payout, on top of card fees of 2.9% + 30¢ (checked October 2026).
How does the platform take its commission?
With application_fee_amount on the charge, or by transferring less than the full amount with transfer_data[amount]. The fee is recorded as an Application Fee object for reporting.