Add a new payment method to your marketplace

Hi <<First name>>!

Sometimes, a credit card is not the preferred payment method for your customers. Some customers might not even have a credit card. If you want to reach these customers, you need to offer them more payment options.

Stripe, the default payment processor in Sharetribe Flex, supports many other payment methods besides credit cards. The latest Flex release makes many of these accessible in your Flex marketplace.

New local and global payment methods

This release focuses on local payment methods. If your customers are in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, or China, we have great news for you! Flex now supports the following payment methods:

• Alipay (China)

• Bancontact (Belgium)

• EPS (Austria)

• Giropay (Germany)

• iDEAL (Netherlands)

• Przelewy24 (Poland).

In addition to these local payment methods, Flex also supports three globally available payment methods:

• Apple Pay

• Google Pay 

• Microsoft Pay. 

These three methods make it easy for Google, Apple, and Microsoft customers to make purchases online and with their mobile devices.

Local payment method setup

If you want to use any of the new local payment methods (Alipay, Bancontact, EPS, giropay, iDEAL, Przelewy24), you need to adapt your transaction process and customise your client app. That’s because unlike credit cards, these local payment methods do not support preauthorization. Once the customer confirms the payment, a charge is made immediately. The charge moves money immediately to the provider's Stripe Connect account.

As a result, refunds work differently with local payment methods. If a customer pays with a local payment method, a refund can be issued only after money has already moved from their bank account. In the case of a refund, the marketplace needs to cover the Stripe fees as Stripe doesn’t return them. You can take this into account in your transaction process by either disabling the ability to decline transactions or accounting for the refunds in your commission structure.

The graph below illustrates an example of such a transaction process.

In practice, taking a new local payment method into use in your transaction process happens through the Flex CLI. Flex has a new transaction process action – stripe-create-payment-intent-push – which allows using the new payment methods. A new version of Flex CLI (v1.8.0) is released with support for the new action.

To get started, first read the overview of payment methods. You should also check the article on using payment intents and Action reference for stripe-create-payment-intent-push.

Global payment method setup

The global payment methods (Apple Pay, Google Pay and Microsoft Pay) are similar to card payments in the sense that they support preauthorization, so they can work with existing transaction processes.

Taking a new global payment method into use only requires some changes to your implementation of Flex Template for Web (FTW). To enable a new payment method in your FTW, follow Stripe's instructions on Payment Request Button.

The payment method I need is not on the list, what should I do?

Are you planning to use a payment method that is not mentioned in this article (like PayPal, Venmo, or a local payment method in your country) or send money to sellers in a country that is not supported by Stripe?. You can achieve that by building a custom integration to your chosen payment gateway.

Integrating a new payment gateway requires custom development work, as you need to research the API of the payment solution and write the middleware code that handles the communication between that solution and Flex.

If you'd like to get help with estimating the cost of such an integration, let us know by responding to this email. We're happy to connect you to an experienced Flex development partner who can provide a quote.