What is the best API to use for creating marketplaces using PayPal?

[NorteX]

Hello.

I'm an owner of a small marketplace for virtual goods & services which offers other people ("freelancers") jobs that they can gain a profit from by completing orders. The payment is collected from the end-user (customer) before the order commences, held in the merchant's account, and sent manually to the user when the order is marked as complete. This is the exact same behavior that a much more popular platform, Fiverr, has.

Currently, I use PayPal's invoicing system to create invoices and process payments for virtual services. Then, after the order for services is complete, I manually send out payments to the appropriate people.

I'm looking for ways to automate the last process: the withdrawal. I want to find a PayPal product that would let end-users pay invoices, hold it until the order is complete, and forward the payment automatically to the freelancer. I also need the ability to charge fees (the payment to the freelancer is not 100% of the total sum paid by the client). Together with that, it'd be ideal if the "withdrawal" (payout) process would only require the target user's PayPal email and not anything else, but this is not a necessity.

What is the best way to achieve this, or at least the withdrawal part, using PayPal?

Thanks.

[NorteX]

bump

[DevRel_Monti · Accepted solution]

@NorteX 

PayPal has a Payouts solution (both a code/no code) solution. You can check out the product developer documentation here. One thing you'll want to check before integrating is if the Product is available in your region. 

Christina 

[NorteX]

I'll take it as "there are no alternatives and Payouts is the only way" then.

[NorteX]

(the whole post was about finding an alternative to Payouts but I guess there isn't one)

[DevRel_Monti]

Apologies, @NorteX, I focused on your statement about automating the payout portion vs. the entire need to create a marketplace solution. 

PayPal does have a multi-party solution, which would allow you to onboard sellers, charge the marketplace fees, and payout to the sellers automatically. You can test this solution in the sandbox, but this solution will need the integrations team at PayPal to assist you (the merchant) to go live. 

Hope this answer is more helpful. 

Christina