Estate planning as a Bonanza account holder

Bonanza is an online marketplace and eBay alternative where sellers list items in a "booth" and buyers check out by paying the seller directly through the seller's own PayPal, Stripe, or Amazon Pay account. Bonanza does not hold seller funds or sit in the middle of the money — it bills the seller separately for Final Value Fees and a per-sale transaction fee on completed sales. The estate-relevant assets are therefore the funds in the connected payment processor (PayPal or Stripe), the booth and its listings, the seller's feedback and customer records, and any fees still owed to Bonanza. The Bonanza account itself is non-transferable under the User Agreement.

When a Bonanza account holder dies, their account may be transferred to a designated person at Bonanza Worldwide, LLC's sole discretion. A transfer is not guaranteed, and satisfactory documentation is required before processing any request.

What happens at death

Bonanza does not publish a deceased-seller or estate-succession process, and its User Agreement contains no death or estate clause at all. What the User Agreement does say, in section II (Membership Eligibility), is that a user agrees "not to transfer or sell your account (including feedback) or User ID," so the booth cannot pass to an heir, and there is no beneficiary designation and no self-service account transfer. Critically, Bonanza does not hold seller money: buyers pay the seller directly at checkout through the seller's own PayPal, Stripe, or Amazon Pay account, and Bonanza states "Bonanza has no hand in the financial part of a transaction. Instead, buyers pay sellers directly," and that it places no holds on payments. So the sale proceeds for a deceased seller are not held by Bonanza — they sit in the seller's connected payment processor, and the estate pursues them by working with PayPal, Stripe, or Amazon Pay (and the receiving bank account) directly. The only balance Bonanza itself holds is Bonanza Tokens, and the User Agreement forecloses any claim to them: Tokens "are not redeemable for cash and have no cash or monetary value," "do not constitute a property right or interest," are "not transferable from one Bonanza account to another," expire on a rolling monthly basis if not redeemed within 12 months of being awarded, and "All Tokens terminate upon any termination of your membership." What is left at Bonanza is therefore the booth and its listings, the feedback and sales records, and money owed in the other direction: a Final Value Fee of at least 11 percent of the Final Offer Value (effective May 1, 2025, with a $0.50 minimum and a flat 1.5 percent on the portion of an order above $4,000), a flat 25-cent transaction fee on each completed sale for sellers without a membership subscription, a listing fee of $0.03 per item per month above 50 active listings capped at $20 per month, and any paid membership subscription. All of it is billed to a credit card on file, which every seller account is required to have, and the User Agreement provides that if the account becomes past due "Bonanza reserves the right to attempt to collect past due fees by charging the seller's card on file." Because Bonanza reviews any request to close or settle a deceased seller's account individually rather than through a published procedure, the account policy is classified as case-by-case: the estate contacts Bonanza about the account and the outstanding fees, while the money is pursued through the payment processor.