What Is Stripe Connect?
Understand what Connect is, why you need it, and what it lets you build
Written by the RadarTrek editorial team · June 2026
Beyond basic Stripe
You know how to accept a payment with Stripe. A customer enters their card, money moves to your bank account, done. But what if you are building a marketplace — a platform where other businesses or individuals also need to receive money? That is where Stripe Connect comes in.
What Connect actually does
Connect is Stripe's API for platforms and marketplaces. It lets you create accounts for your sellers, route payments between buyers and sellers, take a cut as the platform, and manage payouts — all through a single Stripe integration.
- Create sub-accounts — Each seller gets their own Stripe account under your platform umbrella
- Route charges — A buyer pays, funds split between seller and platform automatically
- Application fees — Your revenue comes from a percentage or fixed fee on each transaction
- Managed payouts — Control when sellers receive money — instant, daily, weekly
Real companies built on Connect
Shopify uses Connect for Shopify Payments. Airbnb uses it to pay hosts. Lyft uses it to pay drivers. Fiverr uses it to pay freelancers. If your platform ever needs to route money to a third party, you need Connect.
The simplest mental model
Think of Connect as a bank-within-a-bank. You have your Stripe account (the "bank"). Your sellers have sub-accounts inside yours. When a transaction happens, funds flow through your account and out to theirs — with your fee collected along the way.
What you will build in this course
By the end of this course you will have the knowledge to build a fully functional marketplace payment layer: seller onboarding, charge routing, application fees, payout management, webhook handling, dispute resolution, and tax reporting.
Key ideas from this lesson