Setting up the Multi-Vendor Marketplace

Updated May 29, 2026 Extensions

The Multi-Vendor Marketplace extension turns your TitanCart store into a marketplace where independent vendors sell their own products under your storefront. It adds vendor accounts, a self-service application flow, per-vendor public storefronts, commission control, and automatic payouts to vendors through Stripe Connect. This guide takes about twenty minutes and assumes you already have Stripe working as a payment gateway, since vendor payouts run on Stripe Connect.

1. Activate and enable the extension

Go to TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions and enter your Multi-Vendor Marketplace license key to activate it.
Open Settings → Marketplace and switch the Enabled toggle on.

Note: the Enabled toggle stays locked until a valid license is active — that’s expected. Activate your license first, then enable. You can fill in all the other marketplace settings before flipping the master toggle on.

2. Configure marketplace settings

Still under Settings → Marketplace, set up how your marketplace behaves:

Marketplace name — the public name used on vendor pages and onboarding emails.
Mode — choose Digital or Physical to match what your vendors sell. This shapes the vendor product editor and storefront layout.
Default commission rate — the percentage your platform keeps on every vendor sale. For example, a rate of 10 means the platform keeps 10% and the vendor keeps 90%. This applies to every vendor unless you set a per-vendor override (see step 6).
Accent colour and default brand — optional styling and attribution defaults applied across vendor-facing surfaces.

Note: if you leave the default commission rate blank, the marketplace falls back to a built-in default of 10%. Set it deliberately so every vendor knows their cut up front.

3. Connect your platform Stripe account

Vendor payouts use the Separate Charges and Transfers model on Stripe Connect: a customer’s payment is charged to your platform Stripe account, and the marketplace then transfers each vendor’s share to their connected account automatically. Before any vendor can be paid, your own Stripe gateway must be live and configured.

Make sure Stripe is set up and working as a payment gateway (see the Stripe setup guide linked below).
No extra marketplace-specific Stripe keys are required — the marketplace uses your existing platform Stripe connection to create the charges and fire the transfers.

4. Let customers apply to become vendors

Once the marketplace is enabled, any logged-in customer who is not already a vendor sees a Become a Vendor entry in their My Account area. When they apply, they provide:

Store name (required) — the public display name for their vendor storefront.
An optional description, business email, phone, website, and address.

Submitting the form creates a vendor record with a Pending status and automatically emails you, the administrator, that a new application is waiting. Until you approve it, the vendor cannot sell and their public storefront URL returns a normal “not found” page, so unapproved vendors are never indexed by search engines.

5. Review and approve vendor applications

Open TitanCart → Vendors to see every vendor and their status. A vendor moves through a simple lifecycle:

Pending — applied, awaiting your review.
Active — you approved them; they can list products and sell.
Suspended — temporarily blocked (for example, during a policy review). Their products stop selling but their record is preserved.
Disabled — permanently switched off.

To approve an applicant, open their record and set the status to Active. Approving (or otherwise changing a vendor’s status) automatically sends the vendor a notification email so they know they can begin onboarding.

6. Set commission rates

Every vendor inherits the default commission rate from step 2. When you need a different split for an individual vendor, set a per-vendor override:

Open the vendor’s record under TitanCart → Vendors.
In the Commission section, enter the platform’s percentage for this vendor and click Save rate. The readout confirms the split — for example, “platform keeps 20%, vendor keeps 80%.”
To remove an override and send the vendor back to the site default, click Clear override. The readout returns to the default rate, marked (site default).

Note: leaving the per-vendor field blank means the vendor uses your site-wide default. You only need an override when a specific vendor’s split should differ from everyone else’s.

7. Vendors connect Stripe to get paid

After you approve a vendor, they connect their own bank details through Stripe so the marketplace can pay them. From their vendor area:

The vendor opens their Payouts tab and starts Stripe Connect onboarding.
They’re redirected to Stripe’s hosted onboarding to verify their identity and bank account (a Stripe Express account).
When they return, the Payouts tab shows their connection status. If verification is incomplete, they can pick up where they left off with a Continue onboarding link.

Note: a vendor must finish Stripe onboarding before they can receive transfers. A vendor who hasn’t connected Stripe is simply skipped when payouts run — the rest of the order still pays out normally to the vendors who are connected.

8. Vendors add products

Active vendors manage their own catalogue from their vendor area — adding products, prices, images, and categories you’ve made available. Their products appear on your storefront and on their own public vendor page, and orders that include their products are tracked against their account for sales and payout reporting.

9. How payouts work

Payouts are automatic. When a customer’s order is paid:

The full payment is charged to your platform Stripe account.
For each vendor whose products are in the order, the marketplace calculates the vendor’s share using their commission rate and transfers it to their connected Stripe account.
Each transfer is recorded so it can never be sent twice, even if Stripe redelivers the payment notification.
Vendors see their earnings and payout history on their Payouts tab.

A mixed cart that contains both your own products and several vendors’ products is split correctly: your platform keeps its products’ revenue plus the commission on each vendor sale, and each vendor receives their share.

Troubleshooting

The Enabled toggle won’t switch on — activate your license first under TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions.
A customer doesn’t see “Become a Vendor” — confirm the marketplace is enabled, the person is logged in, and they aren’t already a vendor.
A vendor’s storefront shows “not found” — their status is still Pending, suspended, or disabled. Only Active vendors have a public storefront.
A vendor isn’t getting paid — confirm they completed Stripe Connect onboarding (their Payouts tab should show connected, not “not connected”), and that your platform Stripe gateway is live.
The commission split looks wrong — check the per-vendor Commission section on the vendor’s record; if it shows (site default) the vendor is using the rate from Settings → Marketplace.