Stripe Connect and Long Tails

[YuriRoman]

A bit of a niche implementation question for folks using Stripe Connect and have long tails in their marketplaces.
We have a minimum payout threshold at $50. For our long tail of users, it can take longer than the 90 days Stripe will hold onto funds within a connected account. How are you navigating your way around a minimum payout threshold? We have a ledger in place already, but this all sits outside of Connect. I’m wondering if there’s potentially another solution that we’re perhaps not seeing yet.

[AhmadBashir]

You’re sure there’s a 90 day maximum? We don’t do minimum payouts, but we let people withdraw funds whenever they want.
90 day maximum holding period never came up, and we’ve been around 2.5 years so far.

[AhmadBashir]

For compliance reasons, funds can be held in a reserve for up to 90 days from charge creation to payout. The exception to this limitation is the U.S., where funds can be held in reserve for up to two years.

Perhaps because we’re US only for the moment

[AhmadBashir]

We recently moved some of our larger accounts to automated monthly payouts, which is something you could consider. Also my understanding is that once you hit significant volume, Stripe will negotiate down significantly on the payout fees

[YuriRoman]

Yeah - it seems US is far more lenient. We’ll absolutely run automated payouts, but we’d want to have that minimum threshold just to ensure we can keep costs in line. The likes of FB, Twitch and YT have minimum payouts at $100, I wonder if it’s all an escrow as I can only imagine that their long tail is even longer than ours.

[AhmadBashir]

Does Stripe actually monitor/enforce this limit?

[YuriRoman]

I don’t know about your business, but in our case, Stripe doesn’t know about any of our payout timing until it happens. So I’m confused how they’d really be in a position to know or enforce this stuff.
We do things like revenue shares, where we take part of the money from a transaction and give it to a third party, and Stripe would have no idea about that.

[AhmadBashir]

So, you’re not using destination payments within Stripe, and leaving a balance on your user’s connected account?

[YuriRoman]

So, we do separate charges + transfers instead of doing destination transfers.
So our connected accounts don’t have a balance until they manually decide to create a transfer.