Stripe Connect Express is a decent bootstrap for marketplaces — until your top sellers start asking why 2.9% + $2 per payout is non-negotiable and why their own branding never appears on a statement. multiflow inherits every Express-onboarded seller, port the KYC data Stripe is willing to release, re-onboards the rest under your brand, and runs pooled payouts at interchange-plus. Ten business days, zero downtime, every active Connected Account follows you.
On Stripe Connect Express today
On multiflow after migration
| What you pay for | Stripe Connect Express | multiflow |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplace processing | 2.9% + 30¢ + 0.25% platform | IC + 0.55% + 10¢ + 0.15% platform |
| Seller payout fee (ACH) | $2.00 each | $0.25 each (pooled) |
| Seller payout fee (instant) | 1.5% of amount | 1.0% of amount |
| Connected account monthly fee | $2 per active | $0 |
| KYC refresh fee | $5 per seller / year | $0 |
| Platform branding on statements | Seller name only | Platform + seller |
| Dispute pass-through fee | $15 held from seller | $15, platform can absorb |
| 1099-K issuance | Stripe-branded | Your platform-branded |
Flat-rate processors optimise for onboarding friction, not P&L. Every line above that reads "flat" on the left and "IC +" or "tiered" on the right is a line where multiflow returns margin that was previously opaque to you.
We pull a full snapshot of your Connected Accounts via the Stripe API — active count, payout-method distribution, 1099-K flagged sellers, payout-hold cases, and restricted verticals. You export accounts.csv with every Express account ID, their verification status, and current balance. Critical: we identify sellers with active payout delays or KYC gaps before kickoff, not during.
Marketplace underwriting is heavier than standard — we need your platform agreement, seller T&Cs, refund ownership policy (platform vs seller), and a sample of 20 disputed transactions. Underwriting issues your parent MID and a seller-template KYB flow. No sellers touched yet.
Buyer payment methods migrate via Stripe's PaymentMethod bulk-export endpoint — same vault port as a standard migration. Platform test-mode checkout wires up in your marketplace staging environment. All existing sellers still receive new transactions on Stripe Express; nothing has moved yet.
We pick 20-30 of your top-rated, non-payout-hold sellers as the pilot cohort. They receive a white-labeled onboarding email that takes them through multiflow's Express-equivalent flow — identity verification, bank account, tax info. Average completion time 6 minutes. Their next buyer transaction routes through multiflow.
We migrate 25% of sellers per day in waves. Each wave gets a 48-hour dual-mode window where their new transactions go to multiflow but pending Stripe payouts complete normally. Sellers with incomplete KYC get escalated to your support queue with pre-filled Stripe-Express-to-multiflow data so they finish in under 2 minutes.
Your platform Fee Collection routes through multiflow's dedicated platform sub-account. Historical Stripe Fees up to cutover settle into your old Stripe account. BI/accounting gets a crosswalk file mapping acct_* IDs to mf_acct_* so 12-month revenue trends stay intact.
The final 5-10% of sellers who haven't completed multiflow onboarding get a direct phone/email outreach sequence. Buyers of these sellers continue to see Stripe on their statements until the seller completes — no buyer impact. You decide when to force-cutover the long tail (we recommend day 20).
Event webhooks (account.updated, transfer.created, payout.*) repoint to multiflow. 1099-K issuance for the current tax year splits: Stripe issues for pre-cutover earnings, multiflow for post. Your sellers get two 1099-Ks in year one, one per year after.
Seven days, one operator ceremony per day, zero weekend overtime. Each step is reversible through day 30 — you do not fly one-way until the Stripe Connect Express drain window closes.
Everything below is yours under Stripe Connect Express's ToS. Export now, before underwriting opens — it's faster while you're still a customer in good standing.
Once you submit notice-of-migration, some processors throttle export API limits. You want these files in your S3 bucket before anyone at Stripe Connect Express knows you're leaving.
KYC data is partially non-transferable. Stripe owns the ID verification artifacts (ID photo, selfie match). We re-verify sellers through our own KYC partner (Persona) during onboarding. This is why sellers must re-onboard — we cannot port the identity proofs themselves.
Seller bank accounts. Stripe releases last4 + bank name, not the full routing/account. Sellers enter bank details once during re-onboarding. 95% of sellers finish in under 3 minutes; 5% require a support ticket.
Stripe Tax. If you use Stripe Tax for marketplace sales tax, multiflow integrates with TaxJar and Avalara — not a 1:1 replacement, but more flexible. Tax rules port via CSV.
Active payout holds. Sellers with Stripe payout-hold flags stay held on Stripe. We don't inherit Stripe's risk decisions; you evaluate each case and decide if they onboard to multiflow or not.
Instant Payouts. Stripe's Instant Payouts use the Debit Push network. We support Instant via RTP and FedNow where the seller's bank supports them (roughly 70% of US banks by asset size). Older credit unions may need to stay on next-day ACH.
Rollback is harder for Connect Express than Standard because sellers have already re-onboarded under your brand on multiflow — unwinding means asking them to re-verify on Stripe a second time, which burns trust. We only recommend rollback in the first 14 days, before seller cohort 3.
Within day 1-14, rollback procedure: freeze new multiflow seller onboarding, repoint buyer checkout to Stripe, let multiflow balances pay out on normal schedule, and push unmigrated sellers to stay on Stripe. The pilot cohort's sellers remain on multiflow — they've onboarded and their buyers already see multiflow on statements; reverting would confuse them more than staying.
After day 14, rollback is a re-migration project, not a rollback. Budget 20 days and a seller communications plan.
The core issue with Express isn't the processing rate — it's the ownership model. Stripe retains the seller relationship. Every compliance update, every 1099-K, every payout dispute is between Stripe and your seller. Your marketplace is intermediated in a way that limits your product roadmap: you can't launch platform-owned instant-payout pricing, you can't bundle seller services under your brand, and you can't negotiate custom settlement cadences with large sellers.
For a marketplace under $5M GMV, Express is the right trade — you outsource KYC complexity and pay a premium. Over $10M GMV the math flips. At $50M+ GMV you're subsidizing Stripe's marketplace infrastructure to the tune of $200-500k/year vs running the same layer on multiflow.
At $50M+ GMV you're subsidizing Stripe's marketplace infrastructure to the tune of $200-500k/year vs running the same layer on multiflow.
From the Stripe Connect Express migration field notesStripe Connect Custom lifts most of Express's limitations — you own the onboarding UX, you issue your own dashboard, you can embed payouts. But Custom shifts the full KYC liability to you, you onboard your own compliance stack, and Stripe's pricing on Custom is negotiated per account with no published rate card. By the time you've done the Custom build, you've built 60% of what multiflow ships out of the box. Custom is the right answer if you specifically want to remain on Stripe's payment rails; multiflow is the right answer if you want marketplace economics without a 9-month engineering project.
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