Commission and service fees on sales

When buyers pay sellers by card through Stripe Connect, your site keeps a commission on every sale and Stripe pays the rest to the seller. This guide covers everything that decides how much you keep:

your commission: a percentage, plus an optional fixed fee per sale;
whether the commission is taken on the shipping too;
an optional service fee that the buyer pays on top of the price (Marketplace plan);
different rates for some categories or for individual sellers (Marketplace plan).

They all apply to every card sale through Stripe Connect: Buy Now, the shopping cart, and auction winners and offers paid through Buy Now. Sales paid with PayPal or Escrow.com go to the seller without a commission.

Where to set it

Everything is on the Commission on sales page. Open it from Make money (Manage on the Take a commission on sales card) or from the Commission on sales link in Add-ons › Stripe. The page is part of the Marketplace plan, and stays open on any site that already uses Stripe Connect. On other plans, the Commission on sales choice in Make money shows a Marketplace plan label and links to your plan page to upgrade. Where Stripe Connect isn’t available, the same page can let you collect the payments yourself and pay your sellers: see Transactions and withdrawals.

The commission settings are in step 5, Set your commission and switch on Buy now. Click Save after changing them.

Your commission

Setting	What it does
Commission (%)	The percentage of each sale you keep, from 0 to 100. The same setting as Application fee (%) in Add-ons › Stripe.
Plus a fixed fee	An amount you keep from each sale on top of the percentage. The same as Fixed application fee in Add-ons › Stripe.
Commission is taken on	The whole sale, shipping included (the default), or The items only, not the shipping.

Under the fields, the page shows what you’d keep and what the seller would get on a sale of 100.

Example: a commission of 5% plus a fixed fee of 0.50. A buyer pays 40 for an item and 10 for shipping. On the whole sale you keep 3.00 (5% of 50, plus 0.50) and the seller gets 47.00. With The items only, not the shipping, you keep 2.50 (5% of 40, plus 0.50) and the seller gets 47.50.

Stripe’s card fee for each sale comes out of your account, not the seller’s, so set a commission that covers it. Stripe also charges you for Connect itself (per active seller account and per payout): the page links to Stripe’s pricing.

The commission is never more than the sale itself. In a cart, it’s worked out on each seller’s part of the cart, and the fixed fee is charged once per seller, not once per item. It’s worked out on what the buyer actually pays, after any sale price, quantity discount or bundle discount.

Buyer’s service fee

A service fee is added to what the buyer pays, and you keep it with your commission. Marketplaces use it to share their costs between buyers and sellers instead of raising the sellers’ commission. The buyer’s service fee is part of the Marketplace plan.

Setting	What it does
Buyer’s service fee (%)	A percentage of the sale added to the buyer’s total, up to 30%. Leave it at 0 for none.
Plus a fixed fee	An amount added to the buyer’s total on each sale. Leave it at 0 for none.

Buyers always see it before they pay:

on a Buy Now checkout, under the pay button: A service fee of … is added at payment, and in the card form’s total;
in a cart, as a Service fee line in the Order summary, worked out once on the whole cart.

The seller’s part doesn’t change: the fee goes to you, and appears with your commission in the Application Fee order in Orders. No service fee is added on listings you sell yourself as an administrator. If one item of a cart is refunded, the buyer also gets that item’s share of the service fee back.

Different rates by category or seller

Below the commission settings, Commission by category or seller lets you take a different percentage in some categories, or agree a percentage with one seller. For example 3% on vehicles, 12% on clothing, or a lower rate for your biggest dealer. Commission rates by category or by seller are part of the Marketplace plan.

To add a rate for a category:

Choose the Category and enter its Commission (%).
Click Add for this category.

To add a rate for a seller:

Enter the Seller’s email and the Commission (%).
Click Add for this seller.

Your rules are listed in a table (Applies to, Commission (%)). Adding a rule again for the same category or seller replaces its rate, and Remove deletes it.

Which rate applies

For each sale, the first of these that exists is used:

the seller’s own rate (a seller rule);
the Marketplace Fee of the seller’s membership plan, so a plan they paid for keeps its promise;
the rate of the listing’s category, or of its nearest parent category with a rule (subcategories follow their parent unless they have their own rule);
your Commission (%).

Rules only change the percentage. The fixed fee, the service fee and Commission is taken on stay the same for every sale.

Good to know

You don’t take a commission on your own sales: listings you post as an administrator are paid straight into your Stripe account, and you can’t add a seller rule for an administrator.
A seller rule needs the email of an existing user (No user has that email address otherwise).
Changing a rate doesn’t change orders already paid.
Your earnings show under What you earn on the same page: Commission, last 30 days, Commission, all time and Sales. They count every kind of sale you earn from (Buy Now, the cart, sales you collect for your sellers and paid bookings, with their service fees), leave out refunded sales, and match the Marketplace sales report. Every commission is also an Application Fee order in Orders.
The same commission applies to paid bookings; their buyer service fee is set separately in Add-ons › Bookings. When a booking is partly refunded under its cancellation policy, your commission goes down in proportion, so you and the seller give back the same share.
The Buy now part of the page also holds Sale prices, Quantity pricing and Bundles (see Sale prices, quantity discounts and bundles). Below it are Digital downloads and Downloads per purchase (see Sell digital downloads), shown whenever Buy now is on, through Stripe Connect, PayPal or Escrow.com.
The same page also holds Returns and Days to ask for a return. See Returns on sales.

Stripe and Stripe Connect — set up selling for your members.
Shopping cart — one payment for items from several sellers.
Membership plans — each plan’s Marketplace Fee.
Orders and transactions — your commissions as Application Fee orders.
Marketplace sales report — your commission and take rate over any period.
Transactions and withdrawals — paying your sellers yourself, without Stripe Connect.
QuickBooks and Xero — send your commissions to your accounting software automatically.
Mangopay — card payments into sellers’ wallets and payouts to their bank, when you collect for them.