Billing a merchant for third party services

[adavies]

Hi all,

I'm building a native Shopify app that as part of the service will need to integrate with a third party logistics (3PL) provider as a stage within the experience. Relevant part of the flow is as follows (note, there are other steps within the app customer journey):

• User confirms an 'order' within our app
• App connects to 3rd party logistics provider to create shipping label for the User

The expectation is that each Merchant that integrates the app into their store will be responsible for paying for the shipping labels created by the 3PL for their customers 'orders' with us. Therefore, we would need some way of managing that invoicing/payment separate to the monthly app cost they would pay us.

Is anyone aware of any other apps that are effectively a middleman between 2 companies, where the Merchant would have a sub-contract/pay the 3PL directly? Or is the best option for the merchant to accept our master contract with the 3PL as part of our Ts&Cs when downloading our app, pay us monthly for the labels created, but we're responsible for making the overall payments to the 3PL?

Thanks in advance

[jlightcap]

Hello Adavies,

Did you ever get your answer? I am in a very similar situation and wondering what the result of this was. I didn't see any responses to your questions.

The way I am setup currently is; my app is a free app that the merchant utilizes for 3rd Party services. The merchant is paying me and I am paying the 3rd Party. With this setup, it is not clear whether I should be utilizing the Shopify Billing API or if it is ok to use my integrated 3rd party payment gateway. 

Thank you!