Haste: multivendor marketplace engineering on Medusa

// challenge

Most multivendor builds we scope start from the same question: what does a two-sided platform actually need before the storefront matters? Shopify Plus handles one merchant of record well, but twenty vendors each with their own commission rate, payout schedule, and KYC requirement means a stack of per-vendor-billed apps duct-taped together.

We wanted a working answer we could put in front of clients: not a diagram, but running code. Commission logic, payout splitting, vendor onboarding with identity verification, and a vendor dashboard, all built as first-class parts of the platform rather than app add-ons.

// approach

We built the backend on Medusa.js, using its multi-vendor and fulfilment modules as the foundation rather than bolting marketplace logic onto a single-tenant commerce engine. Vendor accounts, product ownership, and order splitting are handled natively, which means less custom code to maintain long-term.

Payments run through Stripe Connect in Express mode. Vendor onboarding collects KYC during sign-up, and each vendor sets their own commission tier, which the platform applies automatically at checkout and splits on payout with no manual reconciliation.

The storefront is a Next.js application talking to Medusa over its store API, statically generated where the catalogue allows and incrementally revalidated where stock and pricing change often. A Lightspeed POS sync keeps in-store and online stock in lockstep for vendors with physical retail.

// outcome

Delivered as a complete engineering engagement: the multivendor backend, the payment and payout rails, vendor tooling, and the storefront. It shows the full range of what we build for clients — commerce platforms, custom connectors between systems that were never designed to talk, and the operational wiring in between.