PayPal Commerce Platform - Where does the platform fee go? - paypal

Question

I'm back with a paypal issue. I've managed to finally capture payments where I've set a platform_fee to be deducted from the total sale. It does deduct the set platform_fee from the amount that the seller receives (listed as platform fee). The completed transaction's response (as well as the GET order's response) show that the transaction fee was sent to the merchant_id of the marketplace platform's sandbox account. However it looks strange to me that the email address attached to it is correct except it is prefixed with "cs-".
Here's a snippet from the response when I capture the payment:
"payment_instruction": {
"platform_fees": [
{
"amount": {
"currency_code": "GBP",
"value": "50.00"
},
"payee": {
"email_address": "cs-sb-5ncon7179067#business.example.com",
"merchant_id": "3P2BRV2QKVZ22"
}
}
],
"disbursement_mode": "INSTANT"
},
Now, the money is all accounted for EXCEPT for the platform fee; I can't see it in my expected sandbox account. I've tried this on a fresh developer account/platform as well, with the same result. One of the accounts I've tried this on is also an approved paypal partner.
I've also tried changing the parameters (as it solved my previous issue) by setting the payee to email, to merchant id, and to default. It all points to the platform's sandbox account, but it doesn't appear in the wallet. I've also made sure my sellers are onboarded with the PARTNER_FEE feature.
Do you have an idea of where I can check this? I don't see it in the activities area of the sandbox account. Thank you.

Answer 1

In the sandbox environment, the partner fee disappears. It goes nowhere and you won't see it end up anywhere.
For the live environment, the partner fee does not go to the partner PayPal account. Rather, it goes directly to the bank account that the partner has set up for this settlement. Contact your partner relationship manager at PayPal for details on changing the bank if needed.