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I'm not sure this is the right place to ask but anyway:

I have an e-commerce platform that I want to monetize based on a percentage of revenue made (eg. a store that uses my platform has an order for $100, so I get 1% or $1, while they get $99).

Currently I offer paypal and credit card payments (via my merchant bank) to all stores on the platform (ie. all payments made, regardless of the store, are through the same paypal and merchant account). I then pay these stores per month which is ok for the moment because there are only a few stores using the platform.

Moving forward I want to automate this process and ideally have it operate in real time.

Paypal have an "Adaptive Payments" API that allows chained or parallel payments on a single transaction processed in real time. This means I can skim my 1% and pass the rest of the money along my customer in real time.

I was wondering if there is a similar real-time service for Credit Card processing*? If not, is there a bank/merchant that allow API payment access so I can automate payments per day or week? OR should I just transfer all money from my bank to paypal and use this to pay my customers?

*I realise you can process credit card payments through Paypal without having to sign up, but this is less than ideal. I want the credit card processing to happen on my page as at the moment I'm seeing about 70% of orders using this over paypal.

User123342234
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I was wondering if there is a similar real-time service for Credit Card processing?

No there isn't. True merchant accounts do not allow for split payments. Only one entity can receive a payment and it must be the business the merchant account has been set up for. Receiving the payment for someone else is called factoring and is against all of the major credit card issuers' rules. If a merchant account is found to be factoring it will be closed and the merchant who owns the account will be blacklist. This will prevent them from ever having a true merchant account again. Additionally, there is no way to send money with a merchant account other then issuing a refund for prior purchases.

If not, is there a bank/merchant that allow API payment access so I can automate payments per day or week? OR should I just transfer all money from my bank to paypal and use this to pay my customers?

Other then using adaptive payments, this is definitely the easiest and most straight forward way to accomplish this.

John Conde
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  • Thanks. You just confirmed my suspicions. I think I'll push all my merchant revenue back to paypal and automate payment from there. – User123342234 Jul 03 '11 at 21:55