Payee transactions

Payee transactions - agents, contributors and royalties

In certain business cases, the owner of the payment may wish to re-distribute the incoming money among third parties. Consider scenarios like buying digital music, where a certain percentage of all purchases would go to the record label, the publisher or any other copyright holder. This is where the so-called payee transactions come in handy. Using these give the payee the ability to re-distribute the incoming amount upon recepit among one or more third parties, the so-called contributors. The whole mechanism is hidden from all contributors and even the purchaser, they do not know about each other.

Setting up payee transactions

When calling the /Payment/Start endpoint, each Payment transaction can contain an array of Payee transactions. The sum of all payee transactions must not exceed the total amount of the corresponding payment transaction. The payee can specify a recipient and a transaction comment for each payee transaction that is sent to the contributor. This is to aid the recipient in identifying the cause of the transaction.

Note: the recipient must be a registered, active Barion user.

The process

1. The transaction gets prepared via the /Payment/Start API endpoint, specifying the optional payee transactions
2. The purchaser completes the payment
3. The Barion system deducts the fees (if applicable) and the paid amount is transferred to the payee
4. The payee transactions are processed by the Barion system and system automatically sends the money from the payee to each contributor, with the provided comments
5. The money is instantly transferred to the contributor and is available to use

Note: Payee transactions ALWAYS take place between the payee and the contributor. Payee transactions show up in both the payee's and the contributor's transaction history.

Direct payment to the shop

The payer pays directly to the payee. The Barion system is deducting fees from the payee, but, of course, this is not affecting the amount the payee receives. Upon receiving the amount, the Barion system sends the contributors the respective amount as separate payee transactions. Neither the payer nor the contributors are aware of each other. The payee transaction shows up in both the payee's and the contributor's transaction history.

Facilitated payment in a sharing economy scenario

In this case, the facilitator prepares all payment transactions, with their respective payee transactions. The payer pays directly to the facilitator. The Barion system deducts fees from the facilitator, and the facilitator themselves can also deduct fees from the payees. The payees receive the remaining amount, of which the Barion system send the respective contributors the money as separate payee transactions. The payer and the contributors are not aware of each other, however, a given payee is aware of all their contributors, despite the payment being prepared by the facilitator. The payee transaction shows up in both the payee's and the contributor's transaction history, but not in the facilitator's.