Service · Websites and web apps

Marketplace platform

The hard part of a marketplace is not the shop front, it is everything standing behind it: independent sellers, money to divide, commission, returns and disputes between buyer and seller. What the buyer sees is the smallest slice of the work. Take a marketplace for second-hand farm machinery parts: every seller has to be vetted, every listing kept in order and money released at the right moment, or trust collapses within the first month. Amazon.fr and Cdiscount have meanwhile trained buyers to expect a high standard.

3 interfaces
buyer, seller, operator
Stripe Connect
the payment splits itself
In stages
a first release, then the rest
Seller records
collected from opening day

Where this service reaches

A marketplace has three interfaces: the buyer one, the seller one and yours. The third is usually designed last, which is a mistake, because that is the one you will live inside.

Put your scope to an engineer

Seller area

Listings added by hand or by file, quantities, orders, sales reports and a view of payouts. Larger sellers connect through an API or through a feed handled by Lengow.

Moderation and trust

Sellers and listings checked before publication, illegal content reports processed, an appeal route in place. Without it the platform fills up with duplicates, counterfeits and ghost listings.

Split payments

The buyer payment divides between platform and seller, with identity verification on the payee, funds held until delivery and partial refunds handled properly.

Commission and subscriptions

Rates by category, fixed listing fees, paid promotion slots and subscription tiers for high-volume sellers. Those rules have to change without shipping new code.

Reviews and disputes

Ratings limited to genuine buyers, detection of suspicious reviews, and a space where buyer, seller and operator work through a dispute against a timestamped record.

Regulatory duties

Collection of the seller information expected under the Digital Services Act and under the reporting duties placed on platform operators. The exact extent is settled with your lawyer; we supply the tooling.

The way an engagement runs

A first release capable of earning revenue is measured in months rather than weeks. After that the platform grows in steps, over several years.

01

Business model

Who pays, for what and when. Without written answers to those three questions, designing the technology is pointless.

02

Design

Three interfaces, roles, order states and the movement of money between parties, cancellations included.

03

First release

Shop front, seller area, payments and payouts. Promotion slots and on-site advertising can wait.

04

Growth

Moderation partly automated, dashboards, seller recruitment through feeds and connections to comparison sites.

Moderation is not a feature, it is a job. Checking listings, settling disputes and answering reports takes people from the first month onwards. Marketplaces rarely fail because of code. Far more often the human cost of running them was left out of the business model, and the team discovers too late that an 8% commission does not cover it.

Questions and answers

A niche narrow enough to gather both. An empty marketplace attracts nobody: buyers will not come without listings, sellers will not come without buyers. That circle only breaks inside a segment you know well, usually by signing up the first sellers one at a time, by phone or at a trade fair.

Platform operators pass information about their sellers and their revenue to the tax authorities, and European rules on digital services add transparency and reporting duties on top. How exactly that lands on your case is a matter for your legal adviser. Technically we collect the required data from opening day so the annual return never becomes a manual project.

To test the idea, yes: a multi-vendor plugin on WooCommerce or a specialist offering often does the job. The ceilings show up wherever your commission or payout model departs from the standard, which is precisely where your advantage sits. Starting that way and reassessing after six months remains sensible.

Commission is a service you provide to the seller and calls for an invoice. The platform can issue those monthly, in the electronic format the invoicing reform expects. Tax questions go to your accountant; we build the mechanism that carries out their instructions.

With a European provider, OVHcloud or Scaleway for instance, which simplifies the GDPR conversation with sellers and buyers alike. We design for load from the beginning, because a marketplace meets its traffic peak on the day a campaign works, not when it suits you.

Let us talk about your marketplace

Describe your niche and how you intend to earn. We assess the scope of the first release and cut it into stages.

When we are around
Weekdays, 8:00 to 18:00 CET; answers land inside one working day
Talking it through
A call on Teams or Google Meet, whenever writing is not enough

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