First of all, please accept my apology for being ingnorant to compliance/FCA regulations as I have been digging out everywhere to get the answer of a very specific question:
SCENARIO
I am planning to start an online business (lets say MYONLINEBUSINESS.COM) in UK where businesses would be able to sell their products to the customers using my web portal. The concept is exactly the same as ebay where ebay individual merchants/sellers run their shops online on ebay and sell their products to ebay customers.But instead of bidding, i am just providing only "buy product" functionality.
My idea is to provide similar service as ebay's.
PROCESS
Here are more details: 1-Seller creates an online account, pays for my website's annual account subscription and creates his eShop(same as ebay's) on my web portal to sell products .e.g Light bulbs , Fans etc 2- website visitor /customer visit my web portal and look for "Light bulbs".Once found,the customer purchases the item from the seller's shop individually.
3- I send each and every order's confirmation in email and hold all order amounts in my MYONLINEBUSINESS.COM 's business bank account and put in seller's account after every 10 days (fortnightly as agreed on subscriber's agreement/terms and condition document).
NOW my FEAR starts here:
i- I want to take online order payment (£20.00) directly into MYONLINEBUSINESS.COM 's business account and after deducting online card transaction charges of my merchant account provider(e.g WorldPay/Paypal) e.g (£0.55), i want to move the order amount indirectly to seller/light bulb eShop owner's bank account.
QUESTIONS
If I do things this way, will i violate any of FCA/PCI regulation?????
Also, please note that i am clearly stating in seller's agreement/terms and conditions document that MYONLINEBUSINESS.COM will hold all orders's amount for 10 working days and it will be transferred into seller's bank account soon after deducting transaction charges?
Do i need to provide a kind of guarantee/assurance to FCA that i would transfer funds into seller account???If yes then what and how can i do this?
2- If i clearly state about holding of seller's funds for 10 days in agreement documents and terms and conditions and store only bank account and sort code in my database, would i be still be penalised for breaching any FCA regulation, providing strong SSL and fully PCI-DSS compliant payment gateway ?????? Please note i am not sotring and taking card details on my website but is done on my merchant gateway provider (WorldPay/Paypal).
I would appreciate your help in this regard. Cheers
