To design a marketplace that suits your use cases, start with learning about:
- Your Adyen account.
- The resources within your marketplace.
- How your Adyen account and your marketplace are connected.
Your Adyen account
When you sign up for an Adyen account, you receive a company account and one or more merchant accounts.
In your merchant accounts, you can configure:
- Payment methods
- Processing currencies
- Account-specific risk management rules
- Reports
The number of merchant accounts you need depends on your type of business. In most cases, it is enough to have a single merchant account. However, having multiple merchant accounts can sometimes be useful. For example, if your users operate in multiple regions, you can manage regionally available payment methods by using a different merchant account for each region.
Resources
The following resources represent your business in Adyen's payment processing platform:
- Company account: represents your core business entity and connects your merchant accounts.
- Merchant account: the account where we process payments for your users. You can have multiple merchant accounts.
You can use the Management API or your Customer Area to manage these resources.
For more information about your payment processing account, refer to Adyen account structure.
Adyen for Platforms
In an Adyen for Platforms integration, your merchant accounts are connected to your balance platform. The balance platform is an accounting system that manages the flow of funds within your business. When we process a sale for your user, the balance platform enables you to split the incoming funds between your platform and your user. Users are the third parties in your marketplace: sellers, service providers, or contractors, for example.
In your balance platform, you can:
- Onboard users of your marketplace and initiate their verification process.
- Hold your users' funds and pay out to them.
- Move funds within the accounts of your marketplace.
- Reconcile transactions based on webhooks and reports.
Resources
Depending on your business model and use case, you need to create the following resources for each of your users:
- Account holder: contains the capabilities of your user. These capabilities define what your user can do in your marketplace. For example, receive fund transfers to their balance account, or payouts to their transfer instrument (verified bank account). An account holder must be linked to your user's balance account and main legal entity.
- Balance account: holds the funds of your user. All financial activities in your marketplace, such as paying out to a bank account, happen through balance accounts.
Similarly, your business has its own account holder and balance account on the balance platform:
- Balance platform: the accounting system on which you manage your users and funds.
- Liable account holder: represents your business in the balance platform.
- Liable balance account: the account where your business' funds are held. Funds can be deducted from this account if your users' balance accounts incur negative balances due to refunds and chargebacks.
These resources are created by Adyen. You can use the Configuration API or your Customer Area to manage these resources.