You can create a marketplace with Sharetribe anywhere in the world. Marketplaces requiring online payments can use the built-in Stripe integration to process payments, earn commission revenue, handle KYC (Know Your Customer), and payout providers. Stripe only works in certain countries and certain currencies. If you need to process online payments in a non-Stripe supported country, you can integrate a third-party payment gateway with custom coding.

Stripe Connect with Custom accounts, Stripe's online payment system for marketplaces, is the built-in payment and payout system in your Sharetribe marketplace. Though Stripe can process payments from pretty much anywhere in the world, it can only payout funds (transfer money to providers) in certain countries. Transferring funds is heavily regulated, so Stripe is only able to payout providers whose bank accounts exist in countries where Stripe has the requisite infrastructure.

What this means for your marketplace is that you may onboard and payout providers with a valid bank account and all legally required documents (fiscal residencey, valid identity, or any other information required by their local authorities) in any of the countries listed below:

Your customers can be from anywhere in the world, but your providers can only receive payouts through Stripe if they have a bank account in the countries listed above.

Through Stripe, your marketplace can process payments in the following currencies:

You can set your marketplace currency in Console > Build > General > Localization.

Your selected currency is assigned to prices on your marketplace. This shows to your users as the currency symbol displayed with the price. You can learn more about how currency works in this article.

The built-in Stripe integration in the Sharetribe platform uses Stripe Connect. This integration relies on specific attributes and functionalities, so it works only for countries where those all of these attributes and functionalities are supported. Specifically, these are:

We continually track Stripe’s country rollouts and enable support for new countries as soon as the required attributes listed above become available. If your country isn’t on our list, it simply means those features aren’t supported there yet. Rest assured, we’ve likely confirmed it more than once. For example, Thailand is unsupported because it lacks support for destination charges and application fees, and manual payouts are limited to 10 days. Similarly, Costa Rica is not supported due to missing features required by Sharetribe’s integration, even though Stripe Custom accounts are available there. In Hungary, Stripe Connect operates, but the Hungarian Forint (HUF), being a zero-decimal currency, requires coding customizations for payout handling.

If you have providers who you want to pay out and who do not have bank accounts in a Stripe-supported country, then you must integrate a different payment system to support them. It is not possible to payout providers who are not on the above list through the built-in Stripe payment system.

Integrating a custom payment system with your marketplace is done by custom coding. It is a technically challenging task, though the technical implementation is typically not the most difficult part. The most difficult part of integrating a custom payment system is finding a system that satisfies all your requirements. Custom code adjustments may also address specific issues like handling zero-decimal currencies, as in the case of Hungary's HUF. Additionally, integrating third-party payment gateways like PayPal or others necessitates verifying compatibility with regulatory and marketplace-specific requirements.

Take PayPal for example. On the surface, it seems like PayPal's marketplace payment solution is a great Stripe alternative for processing marketplace payments, offering more country coverage for payouts and brand recognition. In reality, though, PayPal is not available to use for most new marketplace businesses. Using PayPal requires being approved by PayPal through this form. If you are not approved, you cannot use PayPal.

Therefore, when considering a custom payment integration, research options thoroughly to make sure a viable solution exists to your particular needs. As a starting point, we recommend reviewing our high-level technical guide for implementing a custom payment integration found in our Developer documentation.