[avdempsey]

Yes it is a common business model, and great work if you can get it.

To be successful at it you need to be more than just a middle man; you provide value by solving an impedance mismatch between sets of buyers and sellers.

For example: eBay provides a reputation system, a search engine, and a payments processor (PayPal). Those are all arguably difficult things for individual buyers and sellers to provide. As a result eBay attracts a large audience of both, making the marketplace for goods more efficient, and extracts a small cut of lots of transactions.

Stripe is providing a way to make the payment provider part of the marketplace equation more easily available to developers. In theory you can focus more on the other hard parts of making a successful market.