Once your customer has paid for their order you will owe a commission to the vendor(s) for the products in that order. How you pay out your vendors is up to you. The payment methods to vendors depend on how and when you want to pay your vendors. You have two options for paying your vendors.
- Using the multi-vendor marketplace payment system
- Externally of the marketplace, via manual payments
Use the marketplace to pay out your vendors
If you choose to use the marketplace payment system then your options are limited to supported gateways and payout systems. These payment gateways are required to support split payments to be compatible with a marketplace payment solution.
Use external systems to pay out your vendors
There are no limits to how you pay your vendors using this method. We provide the ability for you to export all commissions for the vendors to give you a list of the payments you are required to pay. You can pay them via bank transfers, checks, scheduled payments or cash.
Pay out your vendors
The decision on how and when you want to pay your vendors will define your payment solution. You can choose to pay your vendors instantly or you can choose to pay them on a schedule or manually. This is a business decision for you, however, I will outline the advantages and disadvantages for each.
Paying vendors commission instantly when the customer purchases
Advantages
- Saves time
- Vendors are paid instantly
- Easier for your vendors and for the marketplace
- Don’t have to track and then payout your vendors
Disadvantages
- Limits which payment solutions you can choose
- Refunds and disputes can become an issue
- Need to trust your vendors to deliver their products
- You can be responsible for any disputes
Paying vendors on a schedule or Manually
Advantages
- Can ensure vendors have shipped their products before paying their commissions
- Save on fees when sending payments
- Can bulk pay your vendors via any method you choose
- You can pay each vendor using different methods
- You can use any payment gateway you like
- You are able to handle disputes easier with customers
Disadvantages
- More work for your business to track and pay vendors
- Vendors may not like your payout schedule
From our experience, most marketplaces choose to pay their vendors on a schedule and off the marketplace as this gives them far greater control over the business.
Pay out solutions
If you choose to pay your vendors on your marketplace then you have the following solutions available. These options are only related to paying out your vendors commissions, this is not related to your customer payments, although some of them are.
Manually paying your vendors
If you choose to manually pay your vendors, you can do this by getting a report from the commissions screen. You can access the commissions screen from WC Vendors > Commissions in the WordPress Admin.
From here, you can export all commissions into a spreadsheet to manually process the pay-outs to the vendors. We provide filters to export exactly what you require
- Date range: export commissions only between a specific date range.
- Commission status: only show and export commissions with the status you require
- Export to CSV: export each individual entry into a CSV, this is the same view as the page itself
- Filter by vendor: Show only a specific vendor’s commissions.
- Export Totals : This will calculate the totals due to each vendor and provide a single total due for each vendor. (Recommended option)
Once you have manually paid your vendors off-site, you will need to mark those commissions as paid.
WC Vendors Stripe Connect
Take credit card payments from your customers and pay your vendors all at the same time. Using Stripe’s Connect platform makes this quick and easy. This option is only available to those that have Stripe and Stripe Connect in their country. At the moment that is just 32 countries available.
Supported Pay outs: Automatic
Payouts for WC Vendors
Since the depreciation of PayPal Adaptive payments there has been no easy solution available for paying your vendors via PayPal. Now, this new extension from The Plugin Pros is a Commission only marketplace payment solution. This is not a payment gateway but rather a way for you to pay your vendors on a schedule or instantly via PayPal’s new Payouts system. This still requires that you install and configure a regular PayPal gateway, such as the one that ships with WooCommerce.
Supported Pay outs: Automatic, scheduled, manual
MangoPay WooCommerce
MangoPay is an option for our European users as this provides a Gateway and Commission payment in one that is compatible with WC Vendors. They have worked with me to ensure that it is compatible with WC Vendors. This allows you to process credit card payments using an alternative method. This also will only pay the vendors when they have marked their items as shipped. Giving you extra peace of mind with possible disputes.
Supported Pay outs: Scheduled
Escrow for WooCommerce
The developers over at Escrow.com have worked to make their payment gateway compatible with WC Vendors. This is another alternative to taking payments from customers. This is available wherever Escrow.com is available.
Supported Pay outs: Escrowed, scheduled, manual
Mollie Connect for WC Vendors
Mollie Connect for WC Vendors allows your vendors to use their Mollie account to sell products/services on your WooCommerce marketplace. Mollie is the most popular payment gateway in West Europe and trusted and used by more than 40.000 WooCommerce store owners.
Supported Payouts: Scheduled
Square Payment for WC Vendors
This plugin integrates Square Payment Gateway with WCVendors allowing admin to connect a Square account and Authorize a Vendor through OAuth functionality in a Square application.
Supported Pay outs: Automatic
PayPal Multi-Account for WooCommerce
This plugin allows you to have payments go directly to your vendors’ PayPal accounts. This allows you to configure multiple PayPal accounts within WooCommerce which are paid based on rules that you create.
Supported Payouts: Automatic, pay vendors directly