Hi All,

I'm setting up a site that I would like to work just like shopping for used books on Amazon.com works.

We'll be giving lots of individual vendors their own storefronts, and handling all the ckeckout at our site (using credit cards primarily).

My question is: how do the sellers receive the money from their sales?

Mailing checks out to everyone is too costly and time-consuming.

Is there some 3rd party service that interfaces directly with pople's bank accounts?

Thanks!
Rob

No.

If you get a real us merchant account the gateway will transfer the money to the bank in 1 day or so but not instant.

That I know off there is none that does it.

This is what usually happens (Usuing real merchant account)

Ex:

Customer CC -> Link Point -> CSI -> Your Bank Account

Customer Pays with credit card -> Goes to Gateway (Ex: Authorize.net/LinkPoint) -> Goes to Merchant Account (Ex: CSI) -> Depoist via ACH to the Bank

Usually takes 1 to 4 days but nothing goes directly to your bank

If you are looking for a great direct deposit solution - I suggest checking out AllianceACH. Their system allows you to issue individual credits or upload batch files of credits that affiliates could be paid with.

Now, in terms of running a multi-storefront operation, be very careful in how you set that up so that your store is not considered to be factoring - which is illegal in most states and a major violation of Visa/MasterCard rules.

So definitely pay close attention on how you structure that to make sure that you don't run into a potential landmine of problems on that end of your business.

Best of luck with your new venture!

Looks like you need to make structure like this
- You sell all kind of books at your site
- In the moment when someone want to buy particular book you ask him or her for money.
- In same moment you buy that book from your client and sell it like your own book.
You need contract with your client (who owned book)
You need another contract with your customer

In that case you are legal seller and you take full responsibility for selling process. Your customers do not know who owned book before you.


Cdgcommerce, is this right way?

If I was you I would do it this way.

Setup a paypal account for each vendor and everytime some one buys a book it directly sends the money to that account.

It will save you the trouble of splitting money, it will keep you in good stand with visa/mc, so you don't have 1 big account with all the money and thus giving you problems with the money and charge backs, etc...

Seems the easiest way

What exactly is "factoring"?

I would like it to work like this:
1. A book seller lists his own book on my site.
2. A buyer sees this book on my site and decides to buy it.
3. The buyer pays for the book using a credit card on my site.
4. Somehow I pay the seller what they are owed. Direct deposit would be ideal. I guess we could also send money to their paypal account? or I could write them a check.

Any other advice?
Thanks!