How to send money to other people's bank account with stripe api

Question

I'm trying to understand Stripe Connects api. I've a platform where people come and sell their products and customer will pay immediately but I want to hold it in escrow and release it later. That is fine but my all sellers might not have stripe account and just have bank accounts.

I checked this api https://stripe.com/docs/api/php#create_charge which allows destination and platform fees as well but the problem is it requires stripe account of my sellers too. Can I directly send money to their bank accounts and save my commission only on stripe ?

I can't find any API for it or any similar solution if anyone have. Suggestions are appreciated.

Answer 1

In your case, your sellers will need to have Stripe accounts. It's not possible to directly payout funds from your Stripe account to an unconnected bank account(Stripe is required to perform various know-your-customer checks before allowing payouts). You will need to use Connect, so you should check the Stripe Connect docs on payouts. [0] But to summarise:

In Standard Connect, you cannot trigger payouts from the connected account balance to a bank account- the payout schedule is controlled by the connected account holder as they manage the Stripe account.

If you use Express or Custom Connect, you as the platform can control when payouts from the connected account occur.

[0]- https://stripe.com/docs/connect/payouts