# Onboarding merchants

In order for merchants (sellers) to sell their products/services on your platform, they will first need to create their own Stripe account. 

The Stripe Connect - Marketplace plugin allows you to select what type of account will be created for your sellers. 

{% hint style="info" %}
**HIGHLY RECOMMENDED**

You can read about Stripe account types and which might be best for your app at this link:

<https://docs.stripe.com/connect/design-an-integration>
{% endhint %}

The plugin's '**Stripe Connect - Create Account**' action allows provides you with several options for choosing an account type:

* **Dashboard:** Choose if the seller can access the full Stripe dashboard or the lighter-weight Express dashboard
* **Fees:** Decide if the your platform will pay the Stripe fees or if the connected account pays them
* **Responsible for negative balances:** You can ensure Stripe will be responsible for any negative balances (from chargebacks etc.) or choose for your platform to be responsible

{% hint style="info" %}
Please note that you can't necessarily mix and match these options as you wish. If you want the connected account to be responsible for fees and Stripe to be responsible for negative balances, you'll need to provide access to the full Stripe dashboard and use Direct charges. See [this Stripe link](https://docs.stripe.com/connect/design-an-integration) for full details.
{% endhint %}

### Video tutorial

The below video tutorial demonstrates how to onboard merchants to your marketplace app and allow them to create their own Stripe account.&#x20;

{% embed url="<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvpt5JDCAqU>" %}

### Steps involved in onboarding merchants

1. Create an account using the '**Stripe - Create Account**' workflow action
2. Save the newly created account ID to the current user in the database
3. Create a link to the Stripe onboarding portal using the '**Stripe Connect - Create Onboarding Link**'
4. Navigate to that link
5. The seller can then provide all required details to Stripe via their onboarding portal

### Ensuring charges are enabled

It is highly recommended that you put in a check to see if Stripe has enabled charges for merchants you are onboarding. If the merchant has not supplied all the relevant details, Stripe will not enable charges on their connected accounts and you will not be able to process transactions on their behalf.

You can use the '**Stripe Connect - Retrieve Account Details**' data call that comes with the plugin to check the 'charges' field when the page is loaded. If the 'charges enabled' field returns 'yes', it means the user can accept payments.

### Demo app

You can view an example of the database setup and workflow actions in the demo app at the below link (relevant section is the 'Creating Stripe accounts for sellers' section):

{% embed url="<https://stripeconnectmarketplace.bubbleapps.io/version-test>" %}

The editor is public and can be accessed by clicking the 'View Editor' button at the top of the page.


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