Payment solution for b2b website

[pikle]

We are developing a b2b website which connect buyers and manufacturers (sellers) of a certain product.

The seller has the ability to list their product on our site and the buyer to search for these products and purchase them.

Each product offering listed on the site is custom manufactured and has an expiry date by which it has to be bought and manufactured. If a buyer does not purchase the product by this date the listing expires.

We plan to allow the seller to collect 0-100% of the product sale price upfront as a booking fee to secure the manufacturing of the product.

We will charge a fee to the seller to list their product on the website.

Hence there are 2 possible financial transactions through the website;
1. the listing fee the seller pays to us
2. the booking fee (if one is set by the seller) the buyer pays to the seller to secure the manufacturing of the product - ideally this would go directly from the buyer to the seller

What payment solution(s) would you suggest for such a service?

[Jason]

It sounds similar to the way ebay works. For ebay, you pay your listing fees to ebay through a standard payment method, such as paypal, or a credit card (such as authorize.net w/ a merchant account, or you could use 2checkout or worldpay).

As for payment from the buyer to the seller, ebay requires the seller to collect thier own payment, usually the sellers will provide the buyer's with their paypal address, or sometimes checks or money orders are accepted by the seller, but you should allow for the seller to provide this. If you decide to accept payment from the buyer on behalf of the seller, and then pay the seller from the funds you collected, you could end up losing money from any chargebacks made by the buyer, fraudulent orders made by the buyer, or any disputes that happen between buyer and seller. If your website reach any significant size, these 3 things will happen often, so I would suggest letting the seller specify their own payment method.

Lastly, not to be too pedantic, but it sounds like you are actually running a b2c (business to consumer) site, not a b2b site (business to business), unless the buyers are purchasing the products to resell in their own stores or for their own commercial purposes.