How can I split payments between different accounts?

Split payments between different accounts

As a platform, you may want to take commission from payments processed by your sub-merchants or split payments to various accounts. This is possible through split payments. 

Splits enable you to divide a processed amount into various balance accounts, for example, specifying where processing fees should be charged or where an amount should be credited.

This can be achieved in two different ways:

By providing split data: split instruction is needed to know where to allocate the money (balance account) and how much of the total sum to allocate (amount). You can also handle logic for possible refund or  chargeback.

Using split configurations: this allows you to automatically split the payment without providing any additional data. Based on the split configuration defined for a store, payments automatically follow this logic and are split accordingly.

Why split payment fail

Processing split payments require that the balance accounts involved are able to process payments, that the provided split information (balance account, amount, etc) is valid, otherwise the entire amount is credited to your liable account, ignoring the split data provided.

Make sure that split rules are created for each payment criterion (Payment method type, currency, funding source, etc). When there is no associated rule matching a payment, no split is applied even if the store has a split configuration. 

With the split payments features you can split funds as many times as you need. It helps you to split custom payments, captures, or refunds between any number of accounts in your platform, including your liable account.

Tip: Marketplaces can customize the payment split to suit their business model and account for operational costs.

Tip: In the payment request, a platform can provide split information. Based on the split.type and split.reference, a split.item is booked.

Split types

If every split.item in a payment has an unique reference each split.item will be booked as PendingCredit-Credited under the transaction overview of your account holder.

If the split.reference is missing or not unique for split.types (Default, PaymentFee, VAT and Commission) the split.item will not be visible as PendingCredit-Credited. Instead the split.item will be booked to your default liable account, and included as part of the TransferBalance record type in your Marketplace Payments Accounting Report.

Tip: For further information to execute a split payment request, please refer to our documentation.

Failed split payment

A split payment can fail to reach the intended account due to two reasons:

• The account provided in the split payment doesn’t exist. Make sure you have received an ACCOUNT_CREATED notification before attempting a split payment to it.
• No split data was provided in the payment request.

In both scenarios the funds will be sent to your liable account, which you can then correct using fund transfers. You learn more about validating split information in our documentation.