
Payments for a 2-sided credit-based marketplace? - CryoLogic
Hi,<p>I have been researching payment processors, and found that it is <i>very</i> difficult to find one that accepts the following type of company:<p>1. A &quot;producer&quot; signs up and produces content<p>2. A &quot;consumer&quot; signs up, buys a multiple of in-app &quot;credits&quot; - than these credits purchase &quot;goods&quot; from the producer<p>3. The producer can than &quot;redeem&quot; these credits for cash, effectively making the application an economy for both consumers and producers.<p>This seems like one of the most effective ways to build a platform, since cash incentivizes &quot;producers&quot; to join - and a credit system eliminates much risk of chargebacks and allows for &quot;microtransaction&quot; style payments (no flat fee accept on initial credit purchase).<p>What do you call this type of business? And are there any payment processors that support this type of business?
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ptype
Payment processors are wary of these types of setups because of the money
laundry risks. In addition, fyi - this sounds like "social money"/e-money,
which may be a regulated activity depending on setup and where you are.

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fanseed
I am sort of stuck on this too. From my research, you want to avoid being a
'payment aggregator' but the definition of that depends on the payment
processor.

SubmitHub has a similar setup and reports using Braintree (Paypal). I wonder
if he only uses that for one side of the marketplace though, because holding
payments is where I'm stuck. Maybe cutting checks manually to the producer
solves everything? I can't find a clear answer.

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Zekio
I guess it could go as a gambling/game type business since mostly those types
of businesses uses credits?

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CryoLogic
Yes, many games _do_ use credits. And Stripe/Braintree/Paypal will all let you
build games that use credits on their platform.

However, I don't know of any games that allow you to redeem the credits for
cash - which would be incredibly useful for incentivizing production of goods
in a digital marketplace.

