Overview
To ensure your merchants get paid for orders placed through Violet, they’ll need to connect a bank account to your Stripe Platform account. Violet leverages Stripe Connect to provide a seamless onboarding process for merchants. They can either create a Stripe Connect Express account specifically for handling transactions through your sales channel on Violet or link their existing Stripe Standard account via OAuth.
Account Types
Stripe Express Accounts
Stripe Connect Express accounts are a core part of Stripe’s product offering and used by companies such as Doordash, Lyft, and Shopify to power their payouts. You can read more about it here: https://stripe.com/connect.
Violet uses Stripe Express to let Stripe handle the onboarding process, including KYC requirements (Know Your Customer) and bank account connections. Stripe Express also gives your merchants the ability to control their own payout schedules. Additionally, Stripe provides a pre-built dashboard that can be accessed through merchant.violet.io/settings/payouts, which shows upcoming payouts and any transfers made by Violet to their account. All sensitive data remains securely within Stripe, and this account is solely used by Violet for handling payouts.
Stripe Standard Account
If your merchants already have a Stripe Standard Account, they can link it for Payouts using Stripe OAuth. This lets them receive payouts from Violet in the same Stripe account they already conduct business in.
Setting Up Payouts in Violet
Channel Payouts
Since Violet is using your Stripe platform account for payment orchestration, payouts for the commission you are owed for transactions placed through Violet are automatically available in your Stripe balance. As Orders are placed through Violet, your Stripe balance will automatically go up, as commissions remain in that balance while transfers to merchants are deducted from that balance. Stripe will then trigger payouts to your connected bank account based on your Stripe configurations.
Merchant Payouts
Prior to merchants being able to set up payouts, your existing Stripe platform account must already have been onboarded to Violet to use for payment and payout orchestration. Learn more about this here.
Merchants are given the option to set up payouts during Violet Connect. During this flow, they will be presented with the option to either create a Stripe Express account or connect an existing Stripe Standard account. Both these accounts are connecting to your Stripe Platform account.
Connect a Stripe Standard account
Merchants that select the option to connect their current Stripe account will be redirected to Stripe to select which account they would like to connect with your platform.
Once they are redirected to Stripe, make sure they are logged in with the credentials that they normally use to manage their existing Stripe account. Make sure they recognize the account they are selecting to link to your Stripe platform account and that it is the desired account. Optionally, they can create a new Stripe Standard account for transactions specific to your sales channel.
After selecting their account, they will be returned to Violet and see that the account has now been connected.
Creating a new Stripe Express account
Merchants that don’t have pre-existing Stripe accounts can create a Stripe Express account. To do this, they should select the option ‘I don’t have a Stripe account’. They will then be asked to Select a Country:
- Enter the Country for associated to their Bank Account. This may be different to the country that their merchant store is in.
- The merchant will be redirected to Stripe to complete KYC requirements. Upon completion, they will be redirected back to Violet Connect.
- Violet will show your merchant the state of their connected account in the form of indicators, which can be used to determine whether or not an account is enabled.
If your merchant is unable to locate the country their bank is located in within the list of available countries, they cannot be supported for payouts through Violet. We are limited to the countries currently supported by Stripe.
Viewing payouts
A Payout is the amount of funds transferred from your Stripe Connect account to your bank account. They are comprised of all Distributions made to you for orders you place through Violet. Violet provides dashboards for both Payouts and Distributions to help you understand the flow of funds for these orders and reconcile your books.
You can view a comprehensive list of your payouts on the Channel Payouts Dashboard, replete with key search and filter terms like external payout ID, the bag ID, order ID, payout status, and settlement dates. The distributions tab has been replaced with the payouts tab in the left nav, but you can still view your distributions on the Distributions Dashboard or by navigating to payouts and clicking on the distributions subtab. Merchants have a similar view available on the Merchant Payouts Dashboard
Was this page helpful?