Challenge

As CSFloat’s marketplace grew in popularity, the CSFloat team implemented various payment systems to serve its increasingly global footprint—but a lack of integration between providers created barriers in the company’s ability to scale.

The team needed to consolidate its disparate payment systems into a single, unified platform that integrated with its marketplace. With a demographic of young, tech-savvy users, it also wanted the ability to offer emerging payment options like cryptocurrencies. To achieve its mission of providing a more scalable marketplace for its users, CSFloat looked for a payments provider that could offer an easy-to-use and elevated user experience, automatically mitigate fraud to protect both buyers and sellers, and facilitate faster, smoother payouts across markets.

Solution

CSFloat migrated its entire payment processing system to Stripe Connect, which is built specifically for marketplaces. The company chose Stripe for its ability to replace many different solutions with one ready-to-scale, future-proof, fully integrated solution.

“We tried covering a wide range of payment use cases by using multiple providers, but we quickly learned it wasn’t scalable,” says Stepan Fedorko-Bartos, cofounder and CEO at CSFloat. “Our previous payment providers were unreliable, slow, and stagnant, which actually made it harder to manage payments the way we wanted. We were looking for someone that was innovating and moving the industry forward, and Stripe is at the forefront of that.”
With fast onboarding and the ability to offer global payment and payout options, Connect’s APIs could provide fast, easy, and scalable end-to-end payment experiences for CSFloat’s users.

Through Connect, Stripe handles the whole onboarding flow for sellers—from receiving and holding funds until items are transferred from seller to buyer, to distributing payments and processing payouts—removing the burden from CSFloat’s small team and protecting all users from fraud without added work. Integrating and automating the entire process in one platform would help CSFloat to increase payment volume, reduce operational costs, accelerate development time, and improve the user experience for buyers and sellers alike.

Results

25%–35% lower payment processing costs

Disparate providers came with high fees and inefficient processes, making it difficult for CSFloat to sustain its growth and manage a high volume of payments. By bringing its payments infrastructure together in one platform, the team has cut credit card processing costs by 25% and crypto payment processing costs by 35%.

“Especially for a low-margin business like ours, it is pivotal to cut costs so we can deliver more value to our users,” Fedorko-Bartos says. “When we can shift operational overhead to a third-party provider like Stripe, it allows us to focus on building and improving our own product.”

4x increase in payment volume

Since consolidating to Stripe as its sole payment provider, CSFloat has quadrupled payment volume and automated compliance across regions. With over a million users in 115 countries, the company has now achieved a total of $70 million in gross merchandise volume through its marketplace. “This growth would not have been possible without Stripe’s fully integrated system, streamlined onboarding flow, and built-in fraud capabilities,” says Ceegan Hale, cofounder and COO at CSFloat.

Faster global payouts with crypto

Stripe supports instant payouts in the United States, but in some countries, bank transfers can take up to five business days. Additionally, users in many developing countries prefer not to receive funds in their local currency. That’s where crypto can provide some stability: users can receive payouts in one to two business days in USD Coin (USDC), which is pegged to the US dollar. With Stripe’s crypto-enabled system, CSFloat can serve more regions and help users access their funds in the way that works best for them.