How the money actually moves in live commerce

Plenty of English writing explains what a livestream checkout looks like. Almost none explains the middle: who takes what out of a completed order, out of which number, and how long the seller waits before the money is theirs.

I read platform rulebooks rather than marketing decks. They are dull, and they are the only place the arithmetic is written down.

What counts as a source here

Ranked: (1) rules published by the platform, with a date, because those move money; (2) help centres and developer docs restating them; (3) reported figures — press interviews, industry reports — fine for ranges, weak on precision; (4) “industry-common figure, unverified.”

Every number below carries a link and the date of the page I read it on. Where a page renders in a browser but not in a reader, I say so.

One structural problem runs through the chain. On the Chinese platforms the headline rate is often not in the rule text: the rule gives the formula, and the category rate sits in a separate annex or an in-product lookup.

The chain, in one pass

• the buyer pays the platform;
• the platform takes an order-level technical service fee;
• the merchant pays a promotion fee (commission) to whoever drove the sale;
• the platform takes a cut of that promotion fee too — a second fee, on the creator side;
• the remainder goes to the agency, which splits it with the host by private contract;
• separately, the merchant may have paid a slot fee up front, kept regardless of sales.

Two fees, two bases. Collapsing them is where most confusion starts.

Layer one: the platform’s cut

Dates matter as much as the numbers. Taobao’s fee applies to orders placed from 1 Sept 2024, annual confirmed sales up to ¥120,000 are refunded in full, and the ¥60 cap runs to 30 Nov 2026. The live fee rule was published 24 Mar 2024 (agreement, 11 Mar 2024).

The creator-side fee is a fee on a fee. The merchant pays, say, ¥20 of promotion fee, and the platform takes part of that ¥20 before host or agency sees anything. Douyin’s revised rule is explicit: the promotion fee is the base, and the band rate is 10% at grades A, B+ and B, 20% at C, 40% at D (Douyin 公示 notice on the 精选联盟 promotion-fee rule, 2026). Kuaishou publishes the same 10% on the host’s commission, and says it is currently waived (rule cited above).

The second feature is re-rating. Douyin ran a flat 10% for years, then replaced it in July 2026 with five grades, re-assessed every month from the previous month’s performance and applied to orders paid from the 9th to the 8th (公示 notice, 2026). The top grades get a rebate rather than a discount: A and B+ keep the 10% headline rate and receive a separate incentive payment, so their effective rate falls below 10%. That spread is wider than any merchant-side rate change I found.

Kuaishou shows how much these models differ historically. From 20 July 2019 it took 50% of the promoter’s actual commission on commission-bearing listings, and 5% of order value where none was attached (Beijing News, 1 July 2019).

Layer two: the fixed fee, then the commission

A 2020 reporting package put slot fees at tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan, varying with host size, and commission at 20–30% of transaction value (Xinhua / Banyuetan, 10 July 2020). Press figures, no methodology — historical and single-source.

The commission rate is merchant-set inside platform limits. Taobao Live’s fee rule puts the ceiling at 80% with no published minimum (热浪引擎平台资费规则, effective 25 Feb 2022; reproduced in trade press only). Kuaishou allows 0%–90% (快分销结算规则). The plausible band is far narrower than either ceiling, but no rulebook says so.

Taobao Live also rebated the live fee in full for orders placed between 1 Sept 2024 and 31 Aug 2025 (report of the platform’s 2 Sept 2024 announcement, 3 Sept 2024), which is why the charge looks new and old at once.

Layer three: the agency and the host

The private contract is where sourcing runs out, but the platform-side splits are published.

• Taobao Live takes 30% of the promotion fee from an agency-affiliated host and 40% from an individual one, so a signed host’s cut is already 70% or 60% before an agency acts (热浪引擎平台资费规则, effective 25 Feb 2022).
• Douyin’s MCN rule states the same 10% platform cut, then divides the remainder into an agency share and a host share at whatever ratio the two agreed (Douyin 巨量百应 MCN 机构管理规范, undated page).
• For scale: an industry association report counts 29,000 agencies in China as of May 2025 and puts the sector’s revenue at ¥63.6 billion, expected to pass ¥70 billion in 2025 (Economic Information Daily on the report, 30 June 2025).

Every “the agency takes 70%” claim I saw traces to a single undated explainer or a contract template. Industry-common figure, unverified.

When the money actually lands

Unsettled means paid but not yet matured; a refund can still reduce it. Settled means receipt is confirmed, the waiting period has run, fees are deducted, and the remainder sits in a balance (Kuaishou settlement rule, revision notice dated 7 Aug 2023).

Kuaishou’s 7 days is what its distribution rule states, but the settlement rule underneath is tiered by the host’s service score (cycles). Douyin’s spread replaced an older model keyed to probation status and experience score, and is now tied to the category’s after-sales window (细则, 7 Sept 2026). Creator commission rides on the merchant’s clock throughout. That spread is the point of a settlement period as a risk instrument.

The same chain on TikTok Shop

TikTok publishes this more cleanly, which makes it a useful yardstick.

US: TikTok’s own referral fee, category rate, settlement tier, reserve and Daily Advance pages. UK: its commission fee policy and creator payout rules. Singapore: its settlement page.

TikTok’s creator-side formula is (product price excluding tax − seller discount) × commission rate, a narrower base than the merchant side: shipping and platform-funded discounts sit inside the seller’s referral base but not the creator’s (UK guidebook on financial statements). A refund reverses the creator’s commission before it pays, not after. That is one reason a host’s number and the platform’s settled number drift apart.

Returns: who eats the refund

• Taobao. Refund after receipt: the fee does not come back. Before receipt: no fee. The help page’s own worked example is a ¥100 order settling at ¥99.40 (Taobao help centre, 2 June 2026).
• Taobao Live. A partial refund recalculates the fee on the reduced amount. A full refund with no merchant fault returns the fee, unless the merchant was on a discount scheme. Offline refunds get nothing (Live software service fee agreement, 11 Mar 2024).
• Douyin. A refund inside the after-sales window, after settlement, returns the fee proportionally. Outside the window, nothing (Douyin merchant technical service fee rule, 29 Sept 2026).
• Kuaishou. The commission base is recomputed as the original amount minus what was refunded; if that goes negative, the base is zero (Kuaishou settlement rule).
• TikTok. The seller’s commission returns minus the administration fee. The creator’s pays only after disputes, refunds or returns resolve, and its base already excludes them.
• Host wages. A 2022 court report describes a company deducting refunds from a host’s pay after a livestream underperformed; without an agreement on that point, the court held the wages payable and ordered the ¥6,612 owed (People’s Daily legal report, 24 Nov 2022). Clawback from pay is a contract term, not a platform rule.

Commission on a refunded order is usually clawed back in a later period than the order itself, so month-by-month comparisons never tie out. Douyin’s mechanic is explicit: a 5% reserve is held back from the last 15 days of settled commission, and late refunds are drawn from it (公示 notice, 2026).

The waterfall, on one hypothetical ¥100 order

The ¥100 is arithmetic, not a published rate card. Only the percentages marked as sourced are sourced.

Buyer pays                                              ¥100.00
  − platform order-level fee    Douyin formula; rate table not opened
  − merchant-set promotion fee  20%  [2020 press: 20–30%]    ¥ 20.00
      − platform cut of the fee 10%  [Douyin; Kuaishou]      ¥  2.00
    = agency, then host                                      ¥ 18.00
        agency/host split       private contract, ratio not published
  + slot fee, up front          tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands
  − returns                     any refund inside the window rewrites the base
  = settled                     3–21 days after receipt (Douyin); 7+ (Kuaishou)

If the order comes back, the promotion-fee base drops and the platform’s cut with it. Whether the merchant-side fee returns depends on the platform and the refund window.

How I would check any of this

Open the rule, not the blog post. Rules carry an effective date and a revision history, and a rate quoted without one is a rumour with a number attached. When the rule says the rate is in an annex, the annex is the rate. When a rule page renders in a browser but returns nothing to a reader, say so.

What I could not check

• The Taobao Live category rate table. The rule gives the formula and points to a separate annex, which would not open. The only rate I could tie to a source is the 3% charged on the pilot categories — one bags category and one jewellery sub-category — when the rule started. Wider ranges for the annex circulate in trade press; I could not trace one to a rule, so the pilot rate is all I state.
• Douyin’s and Kuaishou’s merchant-side category rates. Both publish the formula, base and refund logic; both rate tables are in-product lookups. Kuaishou’s fee schedule page documents the +0.4-point adjustment but did not render its table.
• The live 热浪引擎 fee rule page. The 80% ceiling and the 30%/40% platform cut come from rule text reproduced in trade press. The page on Taobao’s rule centre returned no rule text to me.
• The Kuaishou distribution rule’s revision date. The page carries no visible date, so I cannot say when the 10% or the 0%–90% range last changed.
• Any agency–host split percentage. No platform publishes one. Douyin’s MCN rule states the platform’s cut and leaves the split to agreement, which is the honest answer.
• The 20–30% commission range and all slot-fee figures. Press reporting, 2020, historically specific, no methodology.
• Platform GMV figures. One industry data service puts 2024 live-commerce transaction volume at ¥5.3256 trillion, up 8.31% (网经社, 9 June 2025). A report published the same period cites about ¥5.8 trillion for 2024 on a different definition (直播电商高质量发展报告, 2025). Industry estimates, not audited filings, and what counts as a livestream sale varies.
• Return and refund rates. The commonly cited pair — women’s clothing at 50–60%, livestream women’s clothing above 80% — comes from a research unit and a research centre, reported by a national newspaper, not from platform disclosure (People’s Daily Overseas Edition, 17 July 2025).
• Whether the ¥60 cap is still running when you read this. The help page says orders placed and confirmed up to 30 Nov 2026, and the page itself is dated 2 June 2026.