#nix_best-practices
sturdy kilnBOT
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reef rover
Hi 👋 typically for a flow like this, where you need to send funds from a payment to multiple parties, I'd recommend leveraging a Separate Charges and Transfers flow. Doing so would allow you to make multiple Transfers per payment to move your funds to multiple recipients. However, we don't recommend leveraging those when you're using Standard Connected Accounts, we typically recommend using them with Custom or Express accounts instead.
https://docs.stripe.com/connect/separate-charges-and-transfers
You can't let your users connect their existing Stripe Account to a Connected Account, as a Connected Account is a Stripe Account.
sleek pine
I am aware of that option but I am not looking to send money to affiliate on every product sold, but just when a certain ammount owed is reached. How can I do that?
I am looking for someone that is very aware of the API and coding, I really hoper you are or you can connect me with.
Can I send money from standard to express?
reef rover
Not directly no, you will need to use one of the approaches you already described if you aren't looking to split every payment.
The only alternative that I can think of that might do what you want, is if you incorporate Stripe Treasury:
https://docs.stripe.com/treasury
but that gets into BaaS, which may be going overboard for an affiliate seller program.
sleek pine
My question is, for example, I am looking at other affiliate systems like the one https://whop.com/affiliates/ has. Theirs doesn't accumulate the amount owed and then pay it out, so there is a way. My question is how, because the solution I came lastly to is to just charge the connected account (seller) as a customer by the affiliate connected account, but those charges are getting deprecated. I know you cannot tell me how who does it, but my question is how would you do it, or can you confirm with a colleague of yours to let me know for sure what is the appropriate way to payout accumulated charges from one stripe account to another stripe account, or maybe I can connect the affiliate with paypal, or something else.
My last question is:
I was looking into using custom accounts but I read that that limits the user to NOT having a stripe dashboard is that true?
reef rover
Yup, Custom Connected Accounts don't get access to the Stripe dashboard, which makes sense as most of the activity for an integration using Custom Connected Accounts should occur on the Platform account anyway.
I would implement it by paying my affiliates as part of each payment, using Separate Charges and Transfers to create multiple Transfers for each payment. If you want to instead let those funds accumulate in a single place and then distribute them out, things are going to be more complex.
For instance, the idea of charging your Conencted Accounts will start to run into problems if you don't also take control of your Connected Accounts payout schedules via Manual Payouts. Without that control Automatic Payouts could drop the Connected Account to a zero balance making it hard to charge them, depending on the specifics of the account being used and your Platform's settings.
You can't payout funds from one Stripe account to an External Account belonging to a different Stripe Account, you will need to first transfer those funds to the desired Connected Account within Stripe.
sturdy kilnBOT
sleek pine
When will the charges API be deprecated? What I do now is, when 100 USD is accumulated, I charge the business (they have a customer ID on the platform stripe account) through the affiliate-connected account and send them what they are owed; how does that sound to you?
reef rover
I don't have a timeline on when the Charges API would be deprecated, but it sounds like your flow is charging Customers rather than Connected Accounts, so you could also accomplish that with Payment Intents. It sounds techincally feasible.
echo oyster
You can use either standard or custom accounts with this charge flow.
sleek pine
And the product for which a customer is charged can be under one of the connected accounts, it does not need to be under the platform account.
echo oyster
If you're using SC&T, then the product would live on your platform account
sleek pine
ok but I want affiliates to be payed out from products sold from the connected account
sleek pine
When I do direct charges, it goes into the platform account; I do not want the money to go through the platform account; I want the affiliate to receive them (another connected account).
echo oyster
Direct Charges are created on the Connect account
You can't transfer money in between Connect accouns without having funds in your platform's balance. There's no direct Connect-account to Connect-account transfers
sturdy kilnBOT
sleek pine
To finally confirm.
My platform account for my Saas, "Ternary," allows people to sign up and have connected accounts, such as "Sellers." I want "Sellers" to be able to have their own "Affiliates" so that when a product is bought from "Sellers," the "Affiliates" get a cut of the profit.
Keeping in mind the "Sellers" are standard accounts, there is no way for me to achieve what I want without using custom accounts or firstly taking money into "Ternary" from "Sellers" and then sending what is owed to "Affiliates".
My only solution that i found would be:
When 100 USD is accumulated for example, I charge the "Sellers" (they have a customer ID on the platform stripe account "Ternary") through the affiliate-connected (on_behalf_of) account and send them what they are owed.
trail zephyr
Hello! I'm taking over and catching up...
We don't allow the kind of nested Connect setup you've described above. If your platform has a Standard connected account, and that account is also a platform and has its own connected accounts, your platform can't access those connected accounts. For what you describe you would need to have all the connected accounts directly connected to your platform.
That said, it sounds like separate charges and transfers would work for this use case. What specifically is blocking that from being a good solution for you? Note that you don't need to create the separate transfers at the same moment the transaction happens; you can do the transfers later.
sleek pine
That said, it sounds like separate charges and transfers would work for this use...
the fact that the product sold needs to be under the platform account, not under the connected "Sellers" account, where products are created
I also tried this solution where I want to connecte potential "Affiliates" bank accounts to "Sellers" stripe account as external and payout to those external accounts, but that doesn't work when they are not custom
trail zephyr
Okay, so you want to use direct charges on the Standard accounts that are selling things... can you give me an end-to-end example? Like when a Standard account sells an item for $20, what portion of that $20 do you want to end up with the affiliate, and what happens between the initial $20 transaction and the affiliate being paid?
sleek pine
Here is my original idea of what I want to do:
I want people to sign up on my platform to sell products, and I get a commission, which is quite easy to set up with connected accounts.
Now, we want to integrate affiliates into our SaaS where people can go on the "Sellers" dashboard and sign up as an Affiliate for them and get a code; when customers use the code, again, we as a platform get our fee and "Sellers" get their portion. The initial idea was to let those affiliates accumulate, say, 100 USD being owed to them from referrals (their codes being used upon checkout), and when that $100 is reached, to payout those affiliates.
If it is easier I would also be fine with not accumulating a said amount but doing this, when a product is payed our platform gets owed fees, "Seller" get's their cut and "Affiliate" gets their cut upon every purchase.
trail zephyr
Okay, so what about an approach where the affiliates are also connected accounts on your platform, but are not involved in any of the transactions themselves. Your platform does the direct charge for $20 on the platform and takes, say, $5 as the application fee. You then set aside $1 of that application fee for the affiliate and keep track of that on your end. Then, when an affiliate has accumulated $100, you transfer to their connected account?
sleek pine
That is a great approach yes, however we are trying to achieve this so affiliates are not payed out from our account but from the connected account/business they are affiliates for.
trail zephyr
That's not possible.
sleek pine
Ok what about this solution:
When 100 USD is accumulated for example, I charge the "Sellers" (they have a customer ID on the platform stripe account "Ternary") through the affiliate-connected (on_behalf_of) account and send them what they are owed.
trail zephyr
Yeah, you could do that as long as you set up the sellers as both connected accounts and Customers you can charge separately.
sleek pine
yes exactly, my only question is then from a financial standpoint, the transaction appears as a transfer on the Platform account on our account, does that mean money has went through our account for that scenario or it just shows the transaction because it is done from connected account, people higher up than me are concerned with:
"that is fine as long as stripe handles any tax forms"
or
"is that like an invoice or?"
I am asking because I merely a developer and I don't really get financials that much
trail zephyr
The transaction will have been facilitated by your platform, and the money would still flow through it, but the settlement merchant would be the affiliate if you use on_behalf_of: https://docs.stripe.com/connect/destination-charges?platform=ios#settlement-merchant
I can't answer your questions about taxes and things like that, you'd need to ask Stripe support about those topics: https://support.stripe.com/contact/email
sleek pine
ok another dev question then is there a way for the charge to not go through my platfrom, basically if the customerId is on the platform account can I charge it from the connected affiliate account directly and not using on_bahalf_of
trail zephyr
No.
sleek pine
hahahah cool
trail zephyr
Your platform is going to be involved one way or the other; there's no way to move the money directly from one connected account to another.
sleek pine
yeah that is what I am getting