Your customers and providers can transact through your marketplace. By default, payments in Sharetribe are powered by Stripe, which handles provider onboarding, payment processing, and payouts. The Stripe-powered payment system can also charge a commission from each payment. We'll learn how to set our commission rates in this tutorial.
Let's navigate to Transactions > Commission.
Test payments in the Test environment
We're using the Test environment throughout the tutorial. The Test environment comes with preconfigured Stripe credentials, which means you can test how payments work without setting up your own Stripe platform account. We tested how payments work for a customer in a previous tutorial.
When you go Live, you will add your own Stripe credentials to your Console to connect your Stripe account with your marketplace. While building, though, we can use the test Stripe credentials to save time.
Commission
Go to Transactions > Commission in Console.
Here, you set the percentage commission you want to collect from your providers and/or customers on each transaction. This commission will be charged on every paid transaction made in your marketplace. It will be deducted from the provider's earnings.
Once you set a commission percentage, this will automatically be charged from every transaction. We believe 20% is a fair provider commission fee for Biketribe.
Write "20" in Provider commission (%).
Save changes.
A customer commission would be charged on top of the transaction price. It does not affect the provider's earnings. You can charge both on your marketplace. In Biketribe's case, we'll start with just a provider commission.
Minimum transaction size
Stripe collects fees from each transaction as well. Stripe charges its fees to your Stripe account and takes them from your commission earnings. If fees exceed your earnings, then Stripe charges your bank account and withdraws the difference from there.
This means that you probably do not want to allow transactions where you earn less than you pay to Stripe. Minimum transaction size ensures there are no transactions on your marketplace below the amount you configure in Console. A good rule of thumb is that you should earn at least 50 cents from each transaction after paying payment processing fees.
Navigate to Transactions > Minimum transaction size.
In practice, you control the minimum transaction size by setting a minimum listing price.
We recommend setting a default so that your commission earnings from a minimum transaction is at least one dollar. This way, you have enough money to cover payment processing fees and still turn a profit.
In our case, with a 20% commission, we set a minimum listing price of $5.
Write 500 in "Minimum listing price in cents". The minimum listing price is in cents.
Save changes.
Next: Branding
You now have the commission set up -- great! Next, let us personalize our marketplace to fit our style and brand.
Go to the next tutorial step to learn how to change your logo and branding.