Frequently asked questions

In a store you sell your own stock and keep the margin between what you paid and what you charge — but you also carry the inventory and the risk of not selling it. In a marketplace you list other people’s products and earn a commission on every transaction, typically 5–15% on physical goods, with no capital tied up in stock. Growth comes from the number of vendors and orders, not from how much inventory you can buy and turn over.

B2C means professional vendors selling to consumers, C2C means individuals selling to each other, and B2B means companies selling to companies. The choice is not cosmetic: it changes what you verify at onboarding, who issues the invoice and what commission the market will tolerate. All three are supported, but decide before you configure anything, because your KYC and invoicing rules follow from it.

Solve the hard side of the market first, which is almost always supply. Recruit your first 10–20 vendors by hand, with free listing and no lock-in, and only then spend on bringing buyers to the supply you already have. A narrow niche helps enormously, because you can saturate one small category before expanding. The concrete steps are on /tehnologii/cum-lansezi-un-marketplace.

The rule of thumb is 10–20 active vendors and at least a few hundred listings on launch day. Quality beats headcount: 15 vendors who confirm and ship same-day are worth more than 200 dormant accounts. You win the first ones through relationships — calls and meetings — not paid campaigns.

Every vendor’s products land in one catalog with shared categories, filters and search — buyers look for a product, not for a shop. On top of that, each vendor gets a storefront page of their own, with their listings, rating and policies, so repeat customers can follow them. A single order can contain items from several vendors, and the buyer still pays once.

Configuration takes days, not months: you set the commission, connect Stripe Connect, define your categories and open vendor registration. Building the same feature set from scratch — onboarding, split payments, per-vendor dashboards — is months of development. What actually sets your timeline to the first order is vendor recruitment, not the technology.

You set a global rate — say 10% — then override it where it makes sense: higher on high-margin categories (handmade, services: 15–20%), lower on competitive ones (electronics: 5–8%), or special terms for vendors who bring volume. You can change it at any time, globally, per category or per vendor. A common play is a low or zero rate for your first vendors, raised gradually once the marketplace starts delivering real buyers.

On a €100 order with a 10% commission, the buyer pays once into Stripe, €90 is transferred automatically to the vendor’s connected account, and €10 stays with the platform. The mechanism is a destination charge with an application fee: the charge happens in the platform’s context and the vendor’s share is routed to their account. The buyer sees one card transaction, the vendor sees their net, you see the commission.

No — and that is precisely why Stripe Connect is used. Buyer funds never land in your personal or company account; they are split at the moment of payment. That keeps you clear of the obligations that come with holding other people’s money, and of a whole layer of accounting and legal risk.

A payout is the moment money in a vendor’s Stripe account reaches their bank account, and the schedule is configurable: daily, weekly or manual. Many marketplaces hold payouts for a few days as a buffer against returns, especially for new vendors. You can run different policies — fast payouts for vendors with a track record, a hold period for newcomers.

On a refund the money reverses proportionally: the vendor’s share is reclaimed from their account, and your commission is either returned or retained, depending on the policy you set. Card chargebacks are handled through Stripe, with explicit rules on who bears the cost. Write that policy down before you launch — otherwise every case turns into a manual negotiation over email. Details on /tehnologii/comisioane-si-plati-split.

Every vendor gets a Stripe Connect Express account and completes a short Stripe-hosted flow: ID document, company details if they trade as a business, and bank account. Stripe runs the KYC/KYB checks, not you, so the identity-compliance burden never sits on your platform. Until verification clears, a vendor can prepare listings, but payouts stay blocked. The full flow is on /tehnologii/onboarding-vanzatori.

Yes, and you decide how tight the filter is. Registration can be open while product publishing waits for your approval; alternatively, trusted vendors publish straight away and newcomers go through moderation. Individual listings can be moderated the same way, to keep prohibited items and poor descriptions out of the catalog.

The account is deactivated and their listings drop out of the catalog and out of search, so buyers never land on products nobody will fulfil. Orders already placed are seen through, and the related payout, transaction history and invoices stay on record for accounting and for any returns. Your categories and landing pages do not empty out, because they never depended on a single vendor.

As the operator you are the referee: you set the return policy, the delivery windows and the decision criteria, and the platform gives you the full order context — payment, messages, status. If you rule for the buyer, the refund executes proportionally through Stripe, with no manual transfers between accounts. Reviews and vendor ratings head off a good share of disputes before they happen.

There are two separate flows and both are mandatory. The vendor invoices the buyer for the goods sold, and you invoice the vendor for your commission. Through the 4invoices.net integration both are generated automatically, including Romanian e-Factura submission for B2B customers, so you are not pushing hundreds of documents around by hand. For your own marketplace company’s bookkeeping, the ecosystem has 4conta.ro.

You see aggregate GMV (the total value of goods transacted), your commission revenue, sales per vendor and per category, order counts and average order value. Those numbers tell you which categories deserve a different rate, which vendors actually bring volume, and where conversion leaks. Each vendor separately sees only their own figures: gross, commission withheld and net.

Subscriptions start from €70/month and include hosting, SSL, vendor onboarding, configurable commissions and split payments, with unlimited vendors and products on every plan — and no development cost. On top of that you pay only the payment processor (typically 1–3% plus a fixed fee per transaction) and your domain. The full grid is on /pricing.

Yes. Agencies and consultants who launch marketplaces for clients can join the partner programme, with recurring commissions and dedicated terms. It suits anyone who builds niche markets repeatedly and wants recurring revenue from the platform, not just a one-off implementation fee. Details on /partners.