Marketplace Plus BETA

Marketplace is where parents at your school can buy, sell or freecycle stuff; post wanted items; report lost and found, and request or propose services ranging from childcare to properties for rent.

A new Marketplace Plus Beta version is being trialed with some Classlist schools where buyers and sellers can make and receive payments directly through Classlist. As part of the transaction sellers can also help raise funds for your school by choosing to donate some of your sale proceeds - and uplift this automatically with Gift Aid.

Donations and Gift Aid

Your school will benefit directly from your donation. Most schools can also claim a 25% Gift Aid uplift on every donation made, where the person in the household making the donation pays sufficient income or capital gains tax.

Where the donor is a higher rate taxpayer, Classlist can summarise total donations each year, enabling donors to claim a further 25% back on everything you have donated. This can be a real win-win, as in this example:

Win-Win Gift Aid Example

Proceeds from your bicycle sale on Marketplace Plus are £100. You decide to donate £20 (20%) to the school charity

• The school charity receives £25 (your £20 donation plus a £5 top-up through Gift Aid)
• Higher rate taxpayers can claim a personal tax rebate of (20%*£25) = £5

As a donor your £20 donation has become £25 to the school and may only cost you £15 - a great result!

Classlist arranges the gift aid paperwork for parents; provides a summary of donations for PTAs and schools, and provides tax reclaim forms for parents.

Buying through Marketplace Plus

To buy items through Marketplace Plus you simply need to pay by credit card as you would on any e-commerce site. Please be aware that making by payment by card does not fully protect you against fraud or buyer misrepresentation, and cannot eliminate the possibility of a dispute. Classlist cannot accept any financial or other liability related to fraud, disputes or refunds. You should therefore regard this payment as final and irreversible, just as if it was a bank transfer.

Only validated Classlist parents at your school are permitted to buy and sell through your school's site. Please satisfy yourself that the seller is indeed a member of your school community before transferring funds. 

You can choose when to make payment for an item you are purchasing, but until you complete payment through the platform the item will still show as available and can be purchased by another parent. It is your responsibility to arrange transfer of the goods and satisfy yourself as to their condition. Classlist cannot accept any liability in this regard.

Selling through Marketplace Plus

To become a seller on the Marketplace Plus platform you need to register with Stripe, our global payment provider, who will transfer payments into your bank account.   This means purchasers can pay you using a credit or debit card. Stripe authenticates cards and provides a level of protection against fraud, although it is ultimately the seller's responsibility to satisfy themselves about the buyer's credentials before exchanging any item.

Registration with Stripe only needs to be done once and is extremely simple and quick - only seven items of information are required, all of which should be you will have (such as address, email, bank account number). Help on the Stripe registration process is here.

Use of this payment system enables your school or PTA to recover 25% Gift Aid on any charitable donations which you make. It also makes it easy for you to claim back a 25% personal tax rebate on your donations if you are a higher rate taxpayer. Classlist can provide a record of your transactions during the year to help with this.

Details of the fees involved in using Marketplace are outlined above. These are considerably lower than many other platforms offering similar services, and help keep your Classlist platform entirely free. 

PTA collection of funds

PTAs or schools can set up a Stripe account to collect donations made by parents at their school selling via the Marketplace. This takes just a few minutes to set up. You can nominate the same account used for event tickets. Please see Info on setting up Stripe for Admins. If your PTA or school is a charity and you wish to recover Gift Aid please ensure the nominated account is linked to this charitable entity.

Classlist is launching an online system where parents can make Gift Aid declarations. This will be used to provide you with a report showing which donations were Gift Aid eligible in order for you to claim the tax back.

Fees

Classlist’s platform fees are 5% plus payment fees from Stripe, a very popular, secure payment platform. Overall Classlist and Stripe’s charges are some of the lowest on any platform offering integrated payment, as shown below.

Note - fees may vary depending on type of credit card and Paypal account used. The figures above were prepared March 2019 from publicly available data and may have changed since.

Refunds and Disputes

Please note that payments made via Marketplace Plus cannot be refunded. Disputes must be settled directly between buyer and seller and Classlist cannot assume any financial or other liability related to fraud, disputes or refunds.