Oct 5, 2026
Education
On-Platform Payments: Your Questions, Answered
On-platform payments go live Monday, August 17. What it costs, when you get paid, what happens when a job changes or goes wrong — answered from the questions makers actually sent us.
On-platform payments go live Monday, August 17. From that day, quotes, deposits, changes, approval, final payment, and delivery all run through Maker Marketplace — and you will need payments set up to bid or send a quote.
We asked you to reply to the announcement with your questions. You did, and this page is built from them.
Before you quote: build in the 11%, not the card fee
Two fees, two different rules, and getting them the wrong way round is what costs you money. So this goes first.
The 11% commission — build it into your quote.
The price you quote is the price the customer pays, and we deduct the 11% from it. So quote the number that leaves you whole once the commission comes out. If you need $2,670 for a table, quote $3,000.
The 2.9% card processing fee — do not build it into your quote.
That one is charged to the customer separately at checkout, the way card fees work at any store. It never comes out of your price. If you add it to your quote as well, the customer is charged it twice, and your price looks higher than it needs to against a maker who quoted correctly.
Getting set up
Connect your bank details through Stripe, our payments partner, at **maker-marketplace.com/account/payouts**. About fifteen minutes if you have three things in front of you:
- A photo ID (driver’s license or passport)
- Your bank account and routing numbers
- Your tax details (SSN or EIN, depending on how your shop is set up)
One sitting. Log in and you will be walked through it.
Stripe moves money for millions of businesses and handles identity verification, banking, and payouts. We never see or store your bank credentials — you enter them with Stripe directly.
From August 17, you cannot submit a quote or bid on a project until payments are set up. We would rather say that plainly here than have you find out halfway through writing a quote. Your profile, portfolio, and conversations are unaffected.
No. Go back to **maker-marketplace.com/account/payouts** and it picks up where you left off. Stripe will tell you what is still missing. If you are stuck on a verification step, call us — it is usually a five-minute fix on the phone.
Yours. It is connected to Maker Marketplace, not owned by us. If you ever leave the platform, you keep the account and close it directly with Stripe.
The money
Two things: your membership, from **$4.99/month**, and **11% commission on the job total, shipping included.** Beyond those there are no listing fees, no per-bid fee, no charge to message a customer, and no charge to send an amendment. Bidding and quoting require an active plan.
Neither. The 11% is yours; the 2.9% card processing fee is the customer’s, charged separately at checkout. See the note at the top of this page — do not add it to your quote.
Flat 11% for every maker, on every plan. It stays 11% on trade commissions too — when a designer negotiates a discount, your payout does not change. That was deliberate.
Ours to handle. We are the merchant of record: we calculate it, collect it at checkout, and remit it. You do not register in another state because someone there bought a table from you.
A dining table quoted at $2,800, plus $200 to crate and ship it:
| | |
|---|---|
| Job total | $3,000.00 |
| Commission, 11% | −$330.00 |
| **Your net** | **$2,670.00** |
That arrives as $1,335.00 on the deposit and $1,335.00 on the balance. Card processing and sales tax sit on the customer’s side of the ledger, not yours.
- Hosting and running the site
- Marketing to bring you customers — paid acquisition runs into the hundreds of dollars per lead
- The Trade program: bringing designers, architects, and commercial clients onto the platform
- The payment infrastructure, and the record that comes with it
They cover different things: the membership covers your placement and access, the commission covers running the transaction and the marketing that generates it.
If you would rather not carry both, you can move to the **$4.99/month plan** at any time and keep selling. You keep your maker profile with unlimited listings, the job board, reviews and badges, and business verification. You give up direct marketing placement and Trade access — nothing else.
If you downgrade, the difference between the $4.99 rate and your current plan's monthly rate is credited to you on your next commission.
No. This is not a zero-subscription-fee model — membership stays, and the 11% commission is separate from it.
You have two options:
1. **$4.99/month** — the fee to exist on the marketplace, essentially — plus commission on what you sell.
2. **Stay on a higher tier** (annual or monthly), which adds priority access to Trade and direct marketing for your listings, as set out under each plan.
And to close the loop on the other half of this question: the 2.9% card processing fee is **not a third fee you pay**. It is levied on the customer, as is typical of credit card fees — we have been doing it that way since April with zero complaints from clients. Your costs are your plan and the 11%. That is the entire list.
No — and this is the one worth getting right.
**Build the 11% commission into your quote.** What you quote is what the customer pays, and the commission is deducted from that total. Quote the number that leaves you whole.
**Do not add the 2.9% card processing fee.** The customer is charged it automatically at checkout. If you build it in as well, they pay it twice.
Getting paid
Yes. Every job is two payments, and both happen before anything ships.
**The deposit — 50% of the job total** — is paid when the customer accepts your quote, before you start work.
- If you already have history on the platform, your deposit is **paid out to you within 2 days of the customer paying**.
- If you are new here, the deposit goes through **a short escrow period** first. That applies until you have completed work through the platform.
**The balance** is paid at approval. You submit the finished work with photos, or a FaceTime, or a studio visit if the customer is local. They approve. **In all cases you are paid in full once the product is approved** — and only then do you add tracking and ship.
Delivery confirmation closes out the record. It is not what releases your money.
It depends on whether you have history on the platform.
**Makers with a track record here are paid out within 2 days of the customer paying** on the deposit — no holding period.
**Makers without history go through an escrow period** on the deposit. That window closes once you have completed work through the platform.
Either way, the balance is paid in full as soon as the customer approves the finished work.
That claim happens after your payout, so your money is not tied up in it. We help the customer file the claim.
During a job
Send an amendment. You propose the change to price or delivery date; the customer approves it and pays the difference **before** you do the work. A different finish after the top is glued up stops being yours to absorb — unless you decide it is.
Yes. Accepting a proposal and paying the deposit creates an agreed scope on the record. Customers see and confirm terms before they pay. Deposits do not get casually clawed back because someone changed their mind.
We ask that you hold off until you have landed the project and are working out details. The paper trail is what protects you — we have seen fraud attempts aimed at makers that only work when there is no record.
That said, if you genuinely need a call to close a deal, tell Support. We make exceptions.
Support can clear the decline so you can re-propose — a quick request to support@maker-marketplace.com, answered the same day. If it turns out to happen often, we will give customers a button to handle it themselves.
There is a real process now. Every quote, approval, change order, and delivery confirmation is on the record, and there is a structured cancellation and dispute path with our team involved. When money moved off-platform, we could sympathise but not act. Now we can act.
Yes — proposal export is coming. Every proposal, amendment, approval, and payment is already recorded against the project, so the record exists; we are building the export so you can pull it out for your own files, your accountant, or a customer who wants a copy.
Why this is not optional
No. From August 17, you need payouts set up to send a quote or bid on a project, on any plan.
We know that is the least popular sentence on this page, so here is the reasoning. This change is about the customers who never got as far as hiring you. We talked to people who came close to commissioning work and walked away. The blocker was not price and it was not the work — it was trust. They wanted a fraud-proof way to pay, a real path to dispute if something went wrong, and certainty their money reached the right hands. Most customers we spoke with do not want to pay a maker directly.
The maker who has never had a problem still benefits, because the customer who was hesitating now books.
Two things.
**There is a record.** The quote, the scope, every change order, your approval photos, the tracking, and the delivery confirmation, all timestamped in one place. That is what a card issuer wants to see, and off-platform there was nothing to hand them.
**We only come back to a maker if the chargeback was genuinely caused by them.** Work finished, delivered to spec, customer disputed anyway is not that.
David and Laura bought this business in January 2026 and neither has taken a salary since. Every dollar goes back into the platform and into the marketing that brings you customers.
No — we announced the change on April 13 and walked through the full fee breakdown on May 24, including the 11%. Plenty of you did not read them, which is fair — nobody reads fee breakdowns until they have to. That is what this page is for.
The early-setup discount
- Connect your bank details by **September 16** → your first project runs at **8% instead of 11%**
- Connect by **October 16** → your first project runs at **9.5%**
“First project” means both payments on it — deposit and balance. On a $3,000 job, the 8% rate puts **$90 back in your pocket** across the two payments; 9.5% is worth $45.
No. Set up by the deadline and the rate applies automatically to your first project.
Quick answers
No. Your plan and the 11% are the whole relationship.
No. Same rate on every plan.
No. Any U.S. checking account works.
Yes. Conversations work exactly as before.
Jobs agreed before launch finish under the old arrangement. New quotes after launch run on-platform.
Reply to any of our emails, or write to support@maker-marketplace.com.
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