Marketplace Seller Payouts: A B2B Marketplace Case Study

A B2B marketplace receives money from buyers, but most of that money is not its own: it belongs to the sellers. Once the seller base grows from a few dozen to a few hundred and spans several countries, paying them each period becomes a process with its own risks: calculation errors, duplicate payments, unverified sellers and closes that do not balance.

At Soulbit Academy we present this case as an illustrative, fictional example, not as a real customer. The company does not exist and every figure is a working assumption. The goal is to show how marketplace seller payouts are organized when the company uses batch payments in stablecoin, and which parts of the process remain the company's own job.

The company profile (illustrative case)

Agora Supply is a fictional B2B marketplace headquartered in Bogotá that settles with about 320 sellers in Colombia, Mexico and Chile every two weeks; every figure that follows is a working assumption. It connects manufacturers and distributors of packaging and industrial supplies with mid-sized buyers. The assumptions are these:

• About 320 active sellers: 180 in Colombia, 90 in Mexico and 50 in Chile.
• A monthly volume collected from buyers of 4.2 million dollars (assumption).
• A marketplace commission of 6% on sales net of refunds (assumption).
• Two settlements a month, one every two weeks, with a 5% reserve held for 30 days to cover disputes (assumption).
• A four-person finance team: a treasury lead, two analysts and an accountant.

Until now the team paid sellers by hand with local transfers built from spreadsheets, and sellers wrote in daily asking why their net did not match what they expected.

Why marketplace seller payouts are not a payroll

A marketplace seller payout is the periodic settlement of money the marketplace collected on behalf of third parties, after deducting its own charges. It resembles payroll in the mass sending, but it differs because each recipient's amount changes every period and depends on sales data.

Agora Supply's cycle has five steps. The first is closing the period, with sales collected and confirmed. The second is calculating each seller's net. The third is checking that every recipient has a current KYB. The fourth is dual approval. The fifth is uploading the batch file and disbursing.

Why is it not enough to reuse the company's payroll process?

Because the risk moves. In payroll the typical error sits in an HR change, and the employee spots it immediately. In a seller settlement the typical error sits in the net: a refund that was not deducted, a commission applied wrongly or a reserve released too early. A seller may not notice until reconciling their own income, sometimes after month-end close. That is why the calculation is reviewed before sending, not after.

The sending mechanics, however, can be reused. The batch payment module, the same one Soulbit Salaries uses for payroll, accepts one file with many recipients, as described in the guide to batch payroll from file to disbursement.

How the net payout for each seller is calculated

The net payout equals sales collected minus refunds, marketplace commission, withholdings and reserve. Each item should appear separately in the statement the seller receives, because that prevents most follow-up questions.

Table 1 shows the settlement of a fictional Agora Supply seller for one two-week period. All amounts and percentages are assumptions and do not represent Soulbit fees or prices.

Item (assumption)	Calculation	Amount in USD
Sales collected in the period	Orders confirmed and paid by buyers	18,000
Refunds and credit notes	Orders returned in the period	minus 1,200
Settlement base	18,000 minus 1,200	16,800
Marketplace commission	6% of the base	minus 1,008
Assumed tax withholding	2% of the base (varies by country and seller)	minus 336
Dispute reserve	5% of the base, releasable after 30 days	minus 840
Net payout in the batch	16,800 minus 1,008, 336 and 840	14,616

Two rules keep this calculation orderly. The first is to always calculate on a closed base: the period's orders are frozen at a cut-off date and anything arriving later goes into the next period. The second is to store each seller's calculation as its own record, with a date and a version, because it becomes the reference in any dispute.

The reserve is not a final deduction: it is a seller balance the marketplace holds and releases later. Treating it as a separate item keeps it from being confused with the commission.

Seller KYB and dual approval before sending the batch

A seller's KYB verifies who the company is, who its representatives are and where its funds come from before the first payout. Agora Supply requires it at onboarding and releases no settlement to a recipient whose verification is incomplete or expired.

The platform includes KYB and AML/KYT monitoring of operations, but the marketplace keeps its own duty to know its sellers. Which documents are requested and why is explained in what KYB is and how a company is verified.

Who should approve a batch that moves hundreds of payments at once?

Two people other than the one who prepared it: one who checks the totals and another with payment authority who approves. At Agora Supply an analyst builds the file, the treasury lead checks the totals against the close, and a second person with payment authority approves the sending. Nobody can hold two roles on the same batch.

This segregation of duties follows the logic of internal controls for payment approval. The reason is practical: a 320-row file is hard to review by eye, and one wrong digit can send a larger sum to the wrong seller.

Before signing, the team runs three simple checks. It compares the file total with the close total. It confirms no recipient appears twice. And it verifies that destination addresses match those registered at seller onboarding, with no recent unconfirmed changes.

Marketplace seller payouts across countries: currency, withholding and support

When sellers are in several countries, the marketplace disburses once in stablecoin and each seller decides how to convert. That simplifies sending but does not remove each country's tax rules, which depend on where the seller is and what kind of taxpayer it is.

Sellers in Colombia can receive USDC or convert to pesos through the platform's local bank rail, under an eOTC quote (OTC by quotation, no order book). Sellers in Mexico and Chile receive USDC and convert with their own institution. Agora Supply wrote that condition into each seller contract.

On withholding, the general principle is that some countries require whoever intermediates payments to withhold tax on the seller's behalf. Two official examples show how much this varies:

• In Mexico, article 113-A of the Income Tax Law (LISR) provides that technology platforms withhold income tax from individuals with business activity who sell through them, with rates set in the law itself. In the text consulted, from the Chamber of Deputies with a last reform dated April 2024, the withholding on sales of goods and services is 1% and is a provisional payment. It applies to individuals, not to sellers incorporated as companies, and its reach over a B2B marketplace must be confirmed by the accountant. Check the current version.
• In Brazil, article 22 of Complementary Law 214/2025 makes digital platforms liable, under the conditions it sets, for the new IBS and CBS taxes on operations carried out through them. It is a marketplace obligation, not a seller one.

In Colombia the analysis differs, because it depends on the type of payment and whether the recipient is a resident. How withholding tax works on payments abroad helps locate the rule, although the one for a marketplace with local sellers should be reviewed with an adviser. Agora Supply handled this with an internal table, kept by its accountant, assigning each seller its treatment by country and updated whenever a rule changes.

Human support completes the picture: if a seller does not receive a payment, a person answers with the operation identifier.

Seller-by-seller reconciliation, disputes and reserves

Seller-by-seller reconciliation means matching, for each seller, three records: the net calculation, the payment sent and the movement in the company's balance. Agora Supply reconciles the day after each disbursement, not at month end, following the guide to reconciling stablecoin payments with accounting.

The result of that daily reconciliation is a short list of open items. The most common are three. The first is a payment to a seller with no associated calculation. The second is a calculation with no payment, usually a seller with an expired verification. The third is a difference between the calculated net and the amount sent.

How are buyer disputes handled after the seller has been paid?

Through the reserve. If a buyer disputes an order within 30 days, the amount in dispute is deducted from the held reserve, not from the next period's net. If the dispute exceeds the reserve, the difference is offset in the following settlement, with advance notice and a detailed statement to the seller.

This rule prevents a large dispute from leaving the seller with a negative net. What it does not do is cover fraud: if a seller disappears after being paid, the reserve may fall short. That is why Agora Supply caps the first settlements of new sellers and normalizes them as history builds.

What the V1 delivers and what it does not solve in this case

Soulbit V1 delivers batch payments in stablecoin, KYB, AML/KYT monitoring, payment links, collection QR codes, eOTC conversion and institutional custody with MPC. It does not deliver the settlement calculation, automatic integration with the marketplace order system or automatic conversion to local currency.

Agora Supply expectation	Result in the V1	How the company handles it
Connect the order system so settlements run themselves	No API or SDK for ERPs	Exports the settlement and uploads it as a batch file
Calculate commission, withholding and reserves on the platform	Calculation is not part of the V1	Finance does it in its own system and checks with the accountant
Convert to local currency in every country	Local bank rail exists only in Colombia	Sellers in Mexico and Chile convert with their own institution
Set a lower commission than the previous setup	There is no closed price list to promise	No cost comparison with the previous model
Schedule each two-week payout	The batch is loaded and approved each cycle	Internal calendar with a close reminder
Operate from a mobile app	No native app is available in the V1	Operation from the web platform

Three conclusions carry over to other marketplaces. The first: settlement is a calculation process with a sending step at the end, and the main control belongs before sending. The second: KYB and dual approval matter more when payment is mass and errors multiply. The third: sellers in several countries need one tax rule per country, maintained by a named person in the company.

For collecting from the buyer, a payment link can be an option for per-order collection.