A marketplace is not a store with extra sellers.
A multi-vendor marketplace lets many sellers list on one platform with commission taken on each sale. Haryes builds vendor onboarding, automated split payouts over M-Pesa B2C, and the moderation and dispute tooling a Kenyan marketplace needs to operate.
The hard part is money moving between strangers.
Listing many sellers on one site is the easy half. The half that decides whether the business works is what happens after an order: who holds the money, when the vendor gets paid, what happens on a refund, and who decides when two parties disagree.
Marketplaces that skip this are rebuilt within a year.
- Payouts calculated by hand in a spreadsheet, which stops scaling at around twenty vendors.
- No holding period, so a vendor is paid before the customer has confirmed delivery.
- Commission rules hard-coded, so changing them means a developer and a deployment.
- No dispute process, meaning every disagreement escalates to a phone call with the founder.
- Vendors onboarded manually, which makes growth a staffing problem.
How a marketplace build runs
Longer than a store, because the money flow has to be designed before anything is built.
Model the money
Who the customer pays, who holds the funds, when the vendor is paid, and what a refund does to a payout already made.
A money flow on paper first.
Design the roles
What a vendor can do, what an admin can do, and what happens at every point a human has to decide something.
Permissions that hold.
Build the core
Catalogue, vendor storefronts, orders split across vendors, and an admin view that shows the whole platform.
The platform itself.
Payments and payouts
Customer payment in through M-Pesa, vendor payouts out through B2C, with the holding period and reversal handling built in.
Money that moves correctly.
Launch with real vendors
A small group first, with the onboarding, support and dispute processes exercised before volume arrives.
Processes proven at small scale.
The four systems a marketplace actually needs
In the order they cause trouble when they are missing.
Payout engine
Commission, holding periods, scheduled payouts and a statement each vendor can check without asking you.
The thing that breaks first.
Vendor onboarding
Application, verification, product upload and a dashboard, so growth does not mean more staff.
Scales or it does not.
Moderation
Product approval, policy enforcement and the ability to suspend a vendor without touching the database.
Protects the buyers.
Disputes
A defined process with a record, so outcomes are consistent and defensible rather than decided case by case.
Protects you.
What you get
A marketplace is custom software, scoped individually. See application pricing.
Vendor platform
Onboarding through to dashboard.
- Application and verification flow
- Product upload and management
- Per-vendor statements and orders
Payout engine
Automated, with a record.
- Commission rules you can change without code
- Holding period before release
- M-Pesa B2C payouts with reconciliation
Buyer experience
One checkout across vendors.
- Orders split correctly behind one payment
- Delivery handled per vendor
- Refunds that unwind the payout properly
Admin and moderation
Operating the platform.
- Product approval queue
- Vendor suspension and policy tools
- Dispute workflow with an audit trail
Questions clients ask before they commit
What does a marketplace cost?
Marketplaces are custom software rather than a store build, starting from KES 150,000 and scoped against the money flow and vendor features you need. Discovery comes first and is credited against the build.
Can we start with a plugin?
You can, and for validating demand it is a reasonable first step. The limits appear at payouts and disputes, which is where the plugin versions tend to stop and a rebuild starts.
How do vendor payouts work with M-Pesa?
Through the B2C API, which has its own registration and approval requirements. We build the holding period, the scheduling and the statement so every vendor can see what they are owed and why.
How many vendors can it handle?
The constraint is almost never technical. It is whether onboarding, moderation and disputes run without you, which is what the build is designed around.
Validating, or building?
You want to know whether vendors and buyers will show up.
Start small and deliberately, so the first build is not wasted.
Talk it throughYou have vendors waiting and a model that works.
Discovery first, then a scoped build around the money flow.
See custom applicationsThe listings are the easy part. The payouts are what decide whether the business survives its first hundred vendors.
