Stripe Connect split payments

The layer on top of Stripe Connect

Stripe Connect split payments and payouts need more than transfers: rules, a ledger, refund reversal and reconciliation. FractionalPay is not a Stripe Connect alternative that replaces it, it is the layer your team would otherwise build on top.

Keep your Connect platform, your connected accounts and your onboarding. Point FractionalPay at the same account, map each beneficiary to its connected account id, and stop maintaining split logic in your own codebase.

Try the split simulator See pricing

Beneficiaries mapped to your existing connected accounts
Splits, ledger and payout schedules through one API
Stripe stays the rail, nothing to migrate

POST /v1/beneficiaries

201 Created

curl -X POST https://fractionalpay.com/api/v1/beneficiaries \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer fp_test_4eC39H..." \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: d1fa617a-order" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Harbor Tools Co",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "type": "seller",
    "external_ref": "seller_2291",
    "country": "US",
    "currency": "USD",
    "provider_account_id": "acct_1Q7ZxT2eHarb"
  }'

{
  "id": 2291,
  "object": "beneficiary",
  "name": "Harbor Tools Co",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "type": "seller",
  "external_ref": "seller_2291",
  "country": "US",
  "currency": "USD",
  "provider_account_id": "acct_1Q7ZxT2eHarb",
  "tax_status": null,
  "status": null,
  "created": 1792062760
}

Build it yourself

What you would build on Stripe Connect by hand

Connect gives engineers solid primitives: connected accounts, destination charges, separate charges and transfers, transfer reversals and payouts to bank accounts. Paying several parties correctly from every charge means writing the rest yourself. This is the list teams usually discover one incident at a time.

None of this is exotic, and a strong team can build all of it. The question is whether your engineers should own it for the life of the product. FractionalPay ships these six pieces behind the payouts API and a dashboard for finance, priced as a flat plan on pricing.

1

A split rule engine

Percent and fixed lines, priorities, matching on product or metadata, a remainder party for rounding, and versioning so old charges keep the rule they were split by.
2

A business ledger

Double-entry and append-only, with an account per beneficiary, so you can say what each party earned from each charge and what they were owed on any date.
3

Multi-party refunds

Reversing a partial refund or a dispute across three or four shares in proportion, then carrying a negative balance when the share was already transferred.
4

Payout scheduling

Availability dates, holds for return windows, minimum amounts, approvals above a threshold and retries for failed transfers.
5

Idempotent event intake

Webhook events arrive twice or out of order. Each one needs a key so a single charge never produces two splits or two transfers.
6

Daily reconciliation

Matching your ledger against balance transactions and flagging what differs before finance finds it at month end.

Side by side

Stripe Connect alone vs Stripe Connect with FractionalPay

This is not a contest between the two. Stripe Connect is in both columns. The table shows what Connect provides on its own and what you get when FractionalPay sits on top of the same account.

Payment processing and money movement

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Stripe, unchanged

Stripe Connect alone

Stripe
Connected accounts and onboarding

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Your existing accounts

Stripe Connect alone

Yes
Transfers to connected accounts

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Sent through your account

Stripe Connect alone

Yes
One charge split between many parties

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Yes

Stripe Connect alone

Code you write
Rule engine with priorities and remainder

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Yes

Stripe Connect alone

No
Ledger of earnings per beneficiary

what each party earned from each charge

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Yes

Stripe Connect alone

Code you write
Proportional refunds across all shares

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Yes

Stripe Connect alone

Code you write
Holds and reserves per party

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Growth

Stripe Connect alone

Code you write
Reconciliation of ledger vs balance

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Growth

Stripe Connect alone

Reports, matching is yours
Rules editable by finance without a deploy

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Yes

Stripe Connect alone

No
Pricing

Stripe Connect + FractionalPay

Stripe fees plus a flat monthly plan

Stripe Connect alone

Stripe's published fees

Stripe Connect alone compared with Stripe Connect plus FractionalPay
Capability	Stripe Connect alone	Stripe Connect + FractionalPay
Payment processing and money movement	Stripe	Stripe, unchanged
Connected accounts and onboarding	Yes	Your existing accounts
Transfers to connected accounts	Yes	Sent through your account
One charge split between many parties	Code you write	Yes
Rule engine with priorities and remainder	No	Yes
Ledger of earnings per beneficiary what each party earned from each charge	Code you write	Yes
Proportional refunds across all shares	Code you write	Yes
Holds and reserves per party	Code you write	Growth
Reconciliation of ledger vs balance	Reports, matching is yours	Growth
Rules editable by finance without a deploy	No	Yes
Pricing	Stripe's published fees	Stripe fees plus a flat monthly plan

Payments land in your own Stripe platform account. FractionalPay calculates splits, keeps the ledger and sends payout instructions to that account. It never holds, pools or transmits funds, it is not a payment institution, and it has no official partnership with Stripe.

An honest boundary

When to build directly on Connect

Not every platform needs a layer on top. If every charge goes to exactly one seller, your platform takes a fixed application fee, refunds are rare and you have no partners or affiliates to pay, a destination charge does the job. Adding FractionalPay would give you a dashboard you do not need.

The picture changes when a second or third party appears on the same charge, when partner commissions depend on time or volume, when holds protect you during a return window, or when finance asks for a ledger they can reconcile. That is the point where teams usually start writing the list above, and where a split payment API saves the most time.

One seller, fixed fee, no reporting needs: stay on Connect alone
Several parties per charge or recurring partner shares: add the layer
Finance needs reconciliation and an audit trail: add the layer

Beneficiaries on charge ch_1840

Seller

Harbor Tools Co

Scheduled

$1,472.00

80%

acct_1Q7ZxT2eHarb

Platform

Platform revenue

Available

$276.00

15%

Your account

Partner

Referral partner

Held

$92.00

Held 14 days

For engineering teams

Delete the split code you maintain today

Teams already on Connect usually adopt FractionalPay in steps. They connect the platform account in the sandbox first, create beneficiaries that point to existing connected account ids, and run the new rules next to their own code until the numbers agree. Then the old transfer scripts are switched off.

From then on, Stripe Connect payouts follow the schedule in FractionalPay: on payout day each beneficiary's available balance is sent as an instruction through your platform account, and every step fires a signed webhook your systems can listen to. For the seller side of this flow, see marketplace payouts.

For developers

Events you can build on

Live charges arrive from your connected Stripe account automatically, so there is nothing to call per payment. You read balances with GET /balances, list payouts with GET /payouts and react to events. Amounts are integers in cents, every POST accepts an Idempotency-Key, and test keys start with fp_test_.

Payouts move through scheduled, sent and paid, or held and awaiting_approval when a hold or a four-eyes approval applies. Webhooks are signed with HMAC SHA-256 and retried for 24 hours. The full reference is in the API docs.

payout.scheduled when a share becomes a payout
payout.paid or payout.failed when the transfer settles
hold.released when a reserve becomes available

Read the API reference

GET /v1/payouts?status=scheduled

200 OK

curl https://fractionalpay.com/api/v1/payouts?status=scheduled \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer fp_test_4eC39H..."

{
  "object": "list",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": 5021,
      "object": "payout",
      "beneficiary_id": 2291,
      "amount": 147200,
      "currency": "USD",
      "status": "scheduled",
      "scheduled_for": 1792746000,
      "sent_at": null,
      "external_transfer_id": null,
      "failure_reason": null,
      "requires_approval": false,
      "approved_by": null,
      "approved_at": null,
      "created": 1792062790
    }
  ],
  "has_more": false
}

Webhook delivery · payout.paid

200 delivered

POST https://api.yourplatform.com/hooks/fractionalpay

FractionalPay-Signature: t=1760534400,v1=5257a869e7ec...

{
  "id": "evt_7f5495b5aad91970bdb4eead",
  "type": "payout.paid",
  "created": 1760534400,
  "livemode": false,
  "data": {
    "payout": {
      "id": 5021,
      "object": "payout",
      "beneficiary_id": 2291,
      "amount": 147200,
      "currency": "USD",
      "status": "paid",
      "scheduled_for": 1792746000,
      "sent_at": 1792746060,
      "external_transfer_id": "tr_1Q9Hrb5021",
      "failure_reason": null,
      "requires_approval": false,
      "approved_by": null,
      "approved_at": null,
      "created": 1792062790
    }
  }
}

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Something else on your mind? Write to [email protected] or read the API documentation.

Is FractionalPay a Stripe Connect alternative?

Not in the sense of replacing it. Connect remains the rail that processes payments and moves money. FractionalPay is the alternative to building the rules, ledger, refunds, payout scheduling and reconciliation on top of Connect yourself.

Do we have to migrate our connected accounts?

No. You connect the same Stripe platform account and create beneficiaries with the existing connected account ids. Onboarding and verification stay in Stripe.

How do Stripe Connect payouts work with FractionalPay?

Each share becomes available after any hold, then moves into a payout on your daily, weekly or monthly schedule. On payout day the instruction goes through your platform account to the beneficiary's connected account, and you get payout.paid or payout.failed.

Does FractionalPay hold funds or need its own license?

No. Money stays in your Stripe platform account and connected accounts. We never hold, pool or transmit funds and we are not a payment institution. FractionalPay is independent and not an official Stripe partner.

What does it cost next to Stripe's fees?

Stripe's fees stay as they are. FractionalPay is a flat plan with no transaction fees: Starter 199, Growth 499, Scale 1,499 USD a month, or 99, 249 and 749 USD a month billed yearly. See pricing.

We have several Stripe platform accounts. Does that work?

Starter and Growth connect one live account. Scale connects up to 10, with multiple currencies and a separate ledger per entity.

Try your Connect split before writing code

Model a charge with your real parties in the simulator, then call the same engine from the sandbox with a test key.

Try the split simulator See pricing

No transaction fees from us. Runs on your own payment account at a licensed operator. FractionalPay never holds your funds.

The layer on top of Stripe Connect

What you would build on Stripe Connect by hand

A split rule engine

A business ledger

Multi-party refunds

Payout scheduling

Idempotent event intake

Daily reconciliation