Check Your Stripe Connect Setup in One Click
Before any seller can connect their payouts, you, the marketplace owner, have to finish Connect platform setup in your own Stripe Dashboard: activate your account, complete platform setup, and accept the platform responsibilities and terms. Until now that gate only revealed itself when a real seller tried to connect and hit a generic failure, leaving you guessing whether everything was in order.
The Payments tab now has a Test seller connection setup button. One click runs a safe throwaway check against Stripe (it opens a test account and closes it immediately, nothing is actually created) and tells you straight away whether your platform is fully set up. If something is still outstanding, you get a red banner with the exact fix and a direct link to the right Stripe Dashboard page.
Your Stripe platform setup is complete — sellers can connect.
Not finished yet? A red banner points you to the exact Stripe Dashboard page to complete setup.
Nothing is created on a successful check, and nothing is created when a gate blocks it.
Seller Onboarding, Cut Down to the Essentials
We rebuilt how sellers connect their payouts. Your sellers only ever receive transfers, your marketplace is always the merchant of record, so they never actually needed the full business KYC that Stripe was asking for. Onboarding now drops to just identity verification and a bank account: no business type, no industry code, no website question, no statement descriptor, and no phone-number SMS step.
Fewer fields means more of your sellers reach the finish line. The storefront URL is prefilled for them, and the embedded onboarding skips the phone & SMS-code step entirely. Same secure Stripe Connect payouts, far less to fill in.
Storefront URL prefilled. Phone & SMS step skipped.
Same Stripe Connect payouts — we just stopped asking sellers for everything Stripe did not actually need.
We also made the flow sturdier underneath: a stale Stripe account link now self-heals instead of locking a seller out, and the Payments tab shows your platform-setup readiness at a glance.
Stop Sellers Linking Out of Your Marketplace
Some marketplace owners are perfectly happy for sellers to link out to their own Etsy shop or website; others want every sale to stay on the marketplace. Until now there was no way to enforce the second case, so we added a choice. A new Don't allow links setting keeps sellers from slipping links into their listings. Flip it on and the link tool disappears from the seller's listing editor; leave it off and nothing changes.
A hidden button alone is not enough, so we also enforce it on save: listing titles and descriptions are scanned for anchors and bare URLs (www., http(s)://, and etsy.com-style domains) and rejected with a clear, translated message. Your own admin edits, on-behalf-of-seller listings, and bulk imports keep full link freedom.
On — the link tool is hidden and links are blocked on save.
Links aren't allowed in listings. Please remove the link and try again.
Enforced in the editor and again on the server, localized across all 6 languages.
More Improvements
Other things shipped this week.
- New optional 12-hour (AM/PM) time format for bookings - flip the setting on if you prefer AM/PM over 24-hour time, and it applies across the seller availability editor, time-slot ranges, and the Request Booking modal
- Stock, SKU, and Compare-at-Price fields can now be shown or hidden per listing type, so each type only shows the fields that fit it
- Cart checkout now carries multi-variant and add-on selections end-to-end, and add-ons show up on the buyer's My Orders
- One-click "Select all of [month]" in the availability calendar's Quick Fill
- The product detail page now has a configurable background color
- Rejected sellers stay visible in Seller Management instead of disappearing from the list
- Seller signup now validates email and phone format, and the footer "Follow Us" heading is translated and editable
Bug Fixes
Bug fixes shipped this week.
- Fixed an empty platform-status card and a stuck auto-check on the Payments tab
- The booking calendar no longer shows up on fixed-price listings that don't take bookings
Don't miss the next release
New features, improvements, and bug fixes shipped every Friday. One email per week.