On November 28th, 2024, we introduced a change to how providers' bank account numbers are collected in your marketplace. Review your Stripe Connect Onboarding settings to make sure the transition did not negatively affect your marketplace.
What has changed
Before the change, users entered their bank account number directly in your marketplace's user interface, either during listing creation or in their payout settings.
From November 28th, 2024, users adds their bank account number in Stripe's Connect Onboarding interface. This is the same interface that users were already using to verify their identity and share required details about their business with Stripe.
This change only affects users who haven't connected a bank account before the update. There is be no change for users who have added their bank accounts earlier.
Review your bank account collection settings
The update to bank account number collection was enabled automatically in your Sharetribe marketplace.
To guarantee that bank account collection works seamlessly in your Sharetribe marketplace after the update, you only have to check that you've enabled the correct settings in your Stripe Dashboard. These settings are a step in our default Stripe setup instructions but we recommend double-checking them nonetheless.
Here's how:
Go to Settings > Connect > Payouts in your Stripe Dashboard.
Check that "Require at least one bank account?" is set to "Yes". This is the first setting on the page.
Check that "Collect external account information for Custom accounts" is toggled on. You'll find this setting at the bottom of the page.
Change the settings, if needed. You can leave other settings as-is.
This is how your external account payout settings should look like:
What happens if these settings are not enabled
If you don't have the setting "Collect external account information" enabled in your Stripe settings, users will not be able to add their bank account details to accounts following the update. As a result, payouts to these users will fail.
Why this change
This update brought many benefits:
Stripe is a well-known, secure payment provider. Users are likely to be familiar with it and feel more comfortable sharing their bank account number in Stripe Connect Onboarding than directly on your platform. This is a great way to borrow Stripe’s reliability, especially if your marketplace is still in its early days and still building user trust.
Stripe takes care of validating the bank account number format.
A user's country of residence and bank account country no longer need to be the same. Users are able to add a bank account that's in different country than their address.