Paddle
Merchant of record for SaaS — tax, invoicing, and compliance bundled so you sell globally without becoming your own finance department.
Why it earns a place
Why I use it
When VAT and localization are the product risk — MoR trades margin for operational sanity until you are big enough to own the stack.
Use cases
Best for
- Testing a real payment or monetisation path with Paddle
- Keeping checkout friction, tax/compliance responsibilities, and product access understandable
- Connecting a successful payment to one explicit downstream action
Start small
Quick start
- 01Create one product and test price
Set up the smallest real offer rather than an entire catalogue.
- 02Run the full test checkout
Use Paddle test/sandbox mode where available and verify success, failure, refund/cancellation, and the receipt/customer experience.
- 03Connect fulfilment explicitly
After payment, grant access, create the order, or trigger the workflow from a verified event — never from a browser redirect alone.
Repeatable workflows
Things I come back for
Test the money path end to end
Treat payment as a system, not a button.
- 1
Start from the public offer page.
- 2
Complete a test purchase and inspect the customer email/receipt.
- 3
Verify the backend event and downstream access or order state.
Handle a cancellation or refund
Make the unhappy path predictable before a real customer needs it.
- 1
Trigger the cancellation/refund in a test or low-risk case.
- 2
Confirm entitlements and accounting state update correctly.
- 3
Check what the customer sees and receives.
Reference