How multi-capture payments improve the workflow of your marketplace

multi mangopay

The marketplace business model has been on the rise for the past decade, but this probably will not come as a surprise 
In a February 2020 study, MIT Sloan Management demonstrated how remarkably popular new platforms are among entrepreneurs and investors in private ventures. In 2017 they examined a list with over 200 unicorns (startups with valuations of $1 billion or more ) and estimated that 60% to 70% were platform businesses. At the time, these included companies such as Ant Financial (an affiliate of Alibaba), Uber, Didi Chuxing, Xiaomi, and Airbnb. (Source)

Building a client-centric user experience in a multi-vendor marketplace is one of the keys to the growth of all of the latter platforms.

In march 2020, 88.05% of online shopping orders were abandoned (Source Statista). Working on improving your platform’s checkout experience can help you not only with cart abandonment but also by building a loyal base of users who recurrently purchase on your website.

mangopay multi capture

Choose a feature to easily onboard users and vendors

Multi-capture is a functionality that allows platforms to split any payment into several captures initiated from a pre-authorisation within a specified time-framework.

This type of feature will help you build the best user experience for your clients by avoiding checkout drops due to a multitude of vendors selling on your platforms, who themselves have different stock availabilities. Moreover, this type of feature can also be an added value to onboard vendors on your platforms by giving them extra-flexibility in the management of their orders and stock, without impacting your clients’ purchasing experience.

A pre-authorisation allows your platform to hold a specified amount on a user’s registered card for a defined period. During this period, you can then capture the payment – that is, complete the transaction and acquire the pre-authorised funds. Alternatively, you can cancel the pre-authorisation manually or let it expire, at which point it is automatically canceled.

For this feature, the payment follows two steps:

  • The authorisation: the credit card is verified and the defined amount is secured for future use
  • The partial capture: a part of the reserved/pre-authorised funds are transferred from the buyer to the payees’ account.

As long as there are remaining funds on the pre-authorisation and within the limit of the payment gateway, a new partial capture can be made.

MANGOPAY’s multi-capture feature allows you to make several partial captures of the pre-authorised funds instead of one single capture. This increases flexibility and security by initiating captures under certain conditions while retaining a streamlined payment experience for your customers.

multi capture workflow
Example: multi-capture transaction flow for a multi-vendor marketplace

For example, a buyer on a platform may purchase three items from three different vendors in the same basket. With multi-capture, the platform can pre-authorise the total amount of the basket and then capture partial payments as, and if, the transactions are confirmed.

  • The first vendor confirms the order and dispatches it immediately, so the platform captures the funds for that item straight away
  • The second vendor only confirms the order after five days, at which point the platform can capture that transaction
  • The third vendor declines the order as the item is not available, so the platform can simply close the pre-authorization

These options demonstrate the flexibility of multi-capture, which allows you to only complete the transactions that are needed while still providing a seamless payment experience to your customers. 

Why integrate a multi-capture feature in your flow?

Multi-capture brings a flexible solution for business models that want to break down the transaction flow and initiate the capture under certain conditions. 

This type of feature is indeed beneficial for multi-vendor basket marketplaces that don’t want to disrupt their customers’ buying experience.

  • When the customers will have their products/services shipped, the capture will be initiated.
  •  When one of the products/services is not available, the capture won’t be initiated.
  • When the customers will have their products/services delivered, the capture will be initiated.

This feature can be tested for free on MANGOPAY’s sandbox. Alternatively,  can reach out to their payment experts to schedule a call to understand how this feature would benefit your platform and its user-experience.

Image credit : Goga Katsadze

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ECN Team
E-Commerce Nation is The 1st B2B Web Media about E-Commerce in Europe. The team of E-Commerce Explorers help businesses to reach new potential market through delivering useful content. Let us know in comment if you enjoyed this content.