Marketplace app development, built around the money flow

We don’t publish prices, because cost depends on scope: web or mobile, one seller per order or split carts, how much seller onboarding and reporting you need, and how many markets you launch in. Payment and verification costs then grow with volume. Our guide to building a marketplace app walks through the drivers, and after a free call you get a written scope and a fixed quote.

It depends on the model, the platforms and the markets, so the timeline is agreed in your written scope. The realistic route is an MVP for one category or one city with real payouts, a pilot with a small group of sellers, then scale. You see progress in a demo every week.

Sharetribe suits testing a services or rental idea quickly on a hosted builder. Mirakl suits large retailers adding third-party sellers. A custom build fits when your model, pricing or integrations are your edge, or when you have outgrown a builder. We give you an honest call in discovery, even if the answer is not to build custom yet.

Usually through a marketplace payments product such as Stripe Connect. The buyer pays once; the platform keeps its commission and the rest goes to the seller’s connected account. With destination charges or separate charges and transfers, Stripe’s docs say refunds and disputes are taken from the platform’s balance first, so we design holds and transfer reversals to recover them.

It is a US law, in effect since 27 June 2023, for online marketplaces with third-party sellers of new or unused consumer products. Once a seller makes 200 or more sales and $5,000 or more in revenue in a 12-month period, you must collect their bank, contact and tax details within 10 days and verify them within 10 days. Your counsel confirms whether it applies. This is general guidance, not legal advice.

Payment platforms (third-party settlement organizations) file Form 1099-K for payees whose payments exceed $20,000 and 200 transactions in a year, after the One, Big, Beautiful Bill reinstated that threshold (IRS, 23 Oct 2025). If your payments provider pays sellers, it usually files; we design the platform so you hold the seller data either way. This is general guidance, not legal advice.

DAC7 is the EU’s seller-reporting rule, in force since 1 January 2023, covering sales of goods, personal services and rentals of property and transport. The UK’s own rules commenced on 1 January 2024. Under both, platform operators report sellers by 31 January after each year. We build the data collection and the export. This is general guidance, not legal advice.

You do. The code, designs, data and IP are assigned to you, and your payments account, seller records and app store accounts are in your name from the start. If you change teams later, everything is already yours.