Workflow for taking a percentage of a payment (PayPal)

Question

I'm implementing a business model where the service takes 10% of a fee. For example, the user lists a product for $100. The buyer purchases it. $90 goes to the seller, $10 is collected by the site.

Does anyone know offhand if this is feasible with Paypal. In theory all the money could go into our PayPal account and then a $90 payment could be made behind the scenes to the seller's account. Is it possible to programatically schedule a depsoit?

We also have the option of using a merchant gateway like Authorize.

Ideas appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

look into paypal adoptive payments (beta) www.x.com , they allow you to distribute payments into multiple receiver.

if you want to schedule payments i think you can use the mass pay API to programmatically send payments from the PP account. But using the beta adoptive payments is much much easier.

Answer 2

Yes you can programmatically do a deposit to the seller's account. Paypal calls it Mass Pay.

You pay 2% for the deposit, with a cap. So it might make sense to pool the funds before you deposit them.