Retailers are moving decisively into marketplace commerce. From Lowe's and Best Buy to Ulta Beauty and Nordstrom, established US retailers are launching third-party marketplace platforms and finding success. US online marketplace sales grew 11.5% in 2025 — nearly double the 7% growth rate of overall US ecommerce over the same period.
A model that can open new revenue opportunities without taking on added inventory is intriguing to many retailers. But the leap from running a storefront to operating a multi-seller platform comes with challenges many retailers don't anticipate.
The moment a retailer becomes a marketplace operator, a lot shifts. Notably, the payments model changes dramatically. Fragmented payment environments where onboarding, payouts and reconciliation are all disconnected are common. Retailers are trying to layer marketplace capabilities onto infrastructure built for traditional ecommerce — but they don't want a massive overhaul. What starts as a growth initiative can quickly become operationally burdensome.
For retailers navigating that shift, three areas emerge as the ones that determine whether a marketplace scales or stalls.
1. Seller onboarding is where speed matters
For retailers launching a marketplace, speed matters. Every delay in onboarding can slow seller activation, inventory expansion, and revenue growth. That’s why, often, the first pain a retailer feels on the marketplace journey is onboarding — as they realize it can involve verifying sellers, collecting payment and tax information, managing compliance, and activating accounts quickly enough to keep the momentum going.
In this case, what can help is payments infrastructure that builds seller verification and compliance checks directly into the onboarding flow, rather than leaving those as a separate operational step for internal teams to manage. The result is sellers going live in days rather than weeks.
Retailer expectations around onboarding timelines have shifted significantly, and there’s increasing pressure to move quickly. The rise of models like TikTok shop has reset what sellers expect: the ability to list, sell, and get paid with minimal friction and seamless, near-instant setup. Where weeks-long onboarding cycles were once accepted as standard, modern marketplace infrastructure has changed what's possible, with sellers now able to be onboarded and ready to transact in as little as two business days.
2. Operational complexity becomes a barrier
Most retailers assume their existing payments setup will carry over into a marketplace model. It rarely does.
The moment third-party sellers enter the picture, payments become a multi-party problem. Two separate providers often enter the mix, one to process customer payments and another to handle seller payouts — with separate contracts, integrations and reconciliation flows that were never designed to work together.
The fragmentation is a problem, but so is the prospect of rebuilding everything from scratch. Retailers don't want to rip apart their existing commerce infrastructure. The challenge is figuring out how to add marketplace capabilities without allowing the operational complexity to become a burden.
Modern payments infrastructure allows marketplace businesses to scale in a manageable way, offering the ability to add marketplace capability without dismantling what already works. It gives retailers the ability to use pay-ins, payouts, or the full stack, and bring an existing acquirer along rather than replacing it. Using native integrations is also a way to reduce go-live timelines from months to days.
This is a make-or-break for many retailers — having infrastructure that fits around what they’ve already built, rather than rip-and-replace.
3. Monetization is where new revenue opportunities scale
As marketplaces mature, the seller relationship itself becomes a source of recurring revenue. Retailers can offer sellers subscription access to the platform, promoted product visibility, or premium payout terms for faster access to their funds.
At that point, the conversation shifts from enabling a checkout experience to creating an ecosystem that fuels growth. And payments become a layer that generates margin on every seller relationship, not just every transaction.
Monetization may not be the earliest priority, but it is a way to level up. And if a retailer has those goals in mind, it changes how infrastructure is evaluated early on — selecting a platform that can evolve into a meaningful part of a revenue strategy.
Consider a payments infrastructure built for how marketplaces work
The marketplace opportunity is real and growing fast. For retailers willing to make the operational leap, the rewards are significant, from new revenue streams to expanding assortment without adding inventory.
What retailers are discovering, often earlier than expected, is that payments infrastructure is where marketplace ambition either accelerates or stalls. Getting it right from the start is the decision that shapes how far and how fast a marketplace can grow. Nuvei for Platforms is built specifically for that moment. Modular infrastructure that lets retailers embed payments, onboard sellers compliantly, and unlock new revenue streams without rebuilding what already works.
