Nine percent, and where every shilling of it goes

Most marketplaces are vague about what they take. We would rather show you the arithmetic and let you judge it.

The short version

Sokomoja takes 9 percent of the item value when you make a sale. You keep 91 percent. There is no listing fee, no registration fee, no monthly charge and no withdrawal fee. If you do not sell anything, you pay nothing.

Where the 9 percent goes

It splits two ways.

2.9 percent covers payment charges. This is what the payment gateway takes to move money from your buyer to the platform and eventually to you. It is not our margin. It leaves the business.

6.1 percent runs the marketplace. Verification of every seller before their first sale, holding buyer funds against each order, dispute handling, the platform itself, support, and the work of getting buyers to your listings.

On a real order

Say you sell an item for KSh 5,000.

• Commission at 9 percent: KSh 450
• Of that, KSh 145 goes to payment charges
• And KSh 305 to Sokomoja
• You receive KSh 4,550

Delivery is not taken from your money

This is the part sellers most often get wrong when comparing platforms. The buyer pays delivery at checkout, on top of the item price, and that money goes straight to the logistics partner. It is never deducted from your earnings. So the 91 percent is 91 percent of what you charged for the item, not of some larger figure that delivery is then carved out of.

When you are paid

Funds are held against the specific order while it is packed, sent and delivered. They are released to you after delivery is confirmed and the return window has closed, on the settlement cycle set out in the Payment Policy.

That wait is doing work for you. It is the reason a buyer in Kisumu will order from a shop in Nairobi they have never heard of. Without it, most of them would not.

The exceptions

Settlement on a specific order can be withheld while a dispute is open, where fraud is suspected, where a chargeback has been started, or where a seller is in breach of the Terms. That is per order, not a freeze on your account.

The full wording is in the Terms and Conditions, and there is a worked example on the Pricing and Commission page.