I haven't purchased CataLook yet (I'm in the decision making phase), but here's a question:

This question is in regards to using the multi-vendor setup for a general consumer to consumer "markeplace" type setup.

Is there a way for a site owner to separate himself entirely from the monetary transactions of the marketplace sellers, but still earn money from the marketplace.

In particular, I'm thinking of using subscriptions/roles for this purpose.  (Sellers pay a subscription to list in the marketplace, based on role).  However, I don't know if Catalook can facilitate the transactions of sellers, and allow buyer feedback, without overly involving the site admin in the process.  What I want to do is completely take the admin out of the money handling area.  Buyers would pay sellers directly.  However, Catalook would still handle all the other transaction details such as inventory, order history, expire the listing as needed, allow for user communication and buyer feedback.

I hope this makes sense.  Essentially I don't want any money being sent to, nor withheld by the admin during the transaction.  But I do want to make use of Catalook's other features for the transaction.

My setup would basically require parts:
1)  Catalook would need to use roles to allow folks to list or not.  Possibly in tiers in a best case scenario (so role 1 could list 5 items, role 2 could list 100 items, role 3 could list unlimited items).  This is key for this to work.

2)  It would require some sort of auto subscription to set roles feature.  I can get this from other sources if needed, but it would be nice if this were included within Catalook.

3)  It would require a feature to bypass sending any money (and associated bookkeeping) to the site admin for transactions, including transaction fees, but instead send all the money straight to the seller at the time of the purchase.  So, essentially transaction fees would be zero.

4)  Finally, this would require disabling of using the same shopping cart across multiple sellers - UNLESS the sellers are paid separately (while bypassing the site admin) upon checkout.

Can Catalook do this out-of-the-box, or is there a similar solution that would work instead?

I've received answers to these questions from Catalook. Essentially, all of the above are possible, except having roles to limit the number of listings per role.