CASE 129 · WISTERIA · 2026
Marketplace payouts, run by Stripe, not by our compliance team.
A multi-vendor marketplace had been handling vendor payouts via a homegrown ACH pipeline with manual KYC review. As the marketplace grew, the compliance overhead grew faster. We migrated to Stripe Connect Custom — Stripe handles KYC, payout rails, and 1099 reporting; we handle marketplace logic.
Multi-vendor marketplace
MIGRATION
2026
RESULTS
What changed, by the numbers.
KYC TIME-TO-PAYOUT
< 2d
COMPLIANCE FTE
−2.5
1099 GENERATION
AUTOMATED
VENDOR COMPLAINTS
−88%
HOW IT WENT
The compliance team had grown to three full-time people, with two more on the roadmap. Most of their time went to KYC document review, periodic re-verification, and year-end 1099 generation. None of those activities were the marketplace’s competitive advantage.
Stripe Connect Custom let us hand off the regulated operations: Stripe runs KYC, holds vendor balances, runs the ACH and faster-payment rails, and generates the 1099s. The marketplace’s API surface is unchanged from the vendor’s perspective; the back-end now bridges to Stripe events via EventBridge.
KYC time-to-payout dropped to under two days. Compliance FTEs went from three to a half — and the half is now strategic work (sanction screening adaptations, jurisdictional expansion). Vendor complaints about payouts dropped 88%. Year-end 1099 generation became a one-button operation.
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