Payment Gateways for Companies Like Airbnb and Uber

People are constantly asking questions like: what is Airbnb payment system; what is Uber payment system; who is Airbnb payment processor etc. In 2010-2011 the payment service provider behind Airbnb (according to the company’s founders) was Braintree. But now the company expanded to many new geographies and utilized multiple new payment processing solutions, so it is impossible to provide accurate answers to the listed questions unless you are a manager of the company itself.

Uber and Airbnb

In fact, those, who want to know, which payment gateway software and what payment system stands behind Uber and Airbnb, usually strive to develop similar logic and build similar functionality in their own payment systems. The common feature of companies like Airbnb, Uber, and other similar businesses is that they all represent so-called online marketplaces. In the online marketplace model each payment should be split among multiple entities: the payment facilitator, the merchant, and, possibly, multiple affiliates. In order to implement this function, you need split funding mechanism. So, if you want to follow the example of Uber, Airbnb, and other similar companies, look for a payment service provider, that has smooth merchant on-boarding logic and supports split funding.

Read more about online marketplace models, similar to the ones used by Airbnb and Uber in the respective article on Paylosophy.