The Solo Founder's Guide to Stripe Connect

If you are building a marketplace (like Airbnb, Uber, or an Upwork clone) where other people earn money on your platform, standard Stripe Checkout isn't enough. You need Stripe Connect.

Connect is Stripe's routing engine for money. It allows you to accept a payment from a customer and "route" a portion of it to a "connected account" (your vendor/creator), while keeping a "platform fee" for yourself.

The Three Account Types

This is where everyone gets stuck. Stripe offers three flavors of connected accounts:

1. Standard Accounts

Best for: Platforms serving sophisticated businesses (e.g., Shopify, Substack). How it works: The user has their own full Stripe account. They log in to Stripe.com to see their dashboard. You just facilitate the transaction. Pros: Least liability for you. Stripe handles support. Cons: You lose control of the UI.

2. Express Accounts

Best for: Gig economy, marketplaces (e.g., Lyft, DoorDash). How it works: Stripe provides a lightweight, pre-built dashboard for the user to see their payouts and tax forms. You control when they get paid. Pros: Faster onboarding. Cons: Monthly fees per active account.

3. Custom Accounts

Best for: White-label platforms where you want to hide Stripe entirely. How it works: You build the entire dashboard (banking info forms, identity verification, payout UI). The user never knows Stripe exists. Pros: Ultimate branding control. Cons: Massive engineering effort. You are responsible for fraud and support.

Which one should you pick?

For 99% of bootstrapped platforms in 2025, Express is the sweet spot. It abstracts away the complex tax compliance and identity verification (KYC) while giving you enough control to build a cohesive experience.

We use Express accounts in our own SaaS Box marketplace template to handle split payments for digital creators.