They also automatically remit local taxes, for small businesses that want to operate globally.
But I have not actually used them. Can anyone else chime in with actual usage experience of Paddle?
In short: would recommend. In my opinion fees are reasonable for the service they supply, and I'm sure they would reduce them if you sell more than say $10k/mo through their platform.
I just knew I wasn't interested in building a complete billing system for 5% + $0.50 per sale, when Apple takes 30% on each sale. They also have affiliate support, which is interesting. But the $0.50 fee might be a bit steep if you're selling a product < $10 -- worth reaching out to them about that.
The trick to using Paddle is use two providers and set the prices in Paddle to be slightly higher than the cheaper provider. In the end those that can use the alternative do, and those that can't, use Paddle.
The general way you integrate Paddle is to add JS-based Paddle checkout buttons to your web interface. On checkout completion, a web hook is sent for the payment success event. I use this to trigger a Google Cloud Function which creates the user account and sends out an email to the customer for how to log in to their account.
Paddle let you sell to most countries in the world (see https://paddle.com/support/countries-supported/ for exceptions) and deal with all local tax, compliance regulations, VAT and invoicing for supported countries for you.
I generally haven't had to give a second thought to where I'm selling to which is great for solo founders as you can focus on your product instead.
For example, when selling from the UK to other EU countries, about 20% in taxes is deducted on each sale, where Paddle will deal with compliance of tracking where the sale came from and giving VAT refunds to VAT registered businesses along with accurate invoices. This really isn't an area I would want to take any risks in getting wrong.
They also give email support for customers concerning payment, invoices and tax issues which can help as well, although it can be confusing for customers who Paddle is and whether they should be contacting you directly or Paddle for help.
Most times I read about Paddle being mentioned in comments, the primary message is "expensive!" but I don't think this is fair. Unless I'm missing something, by going with Stripe I'd have to handle tax and country specific compliance myself which sounds unfeasibly time consuming and risky to me. Until you're making a large amount of money, your time would be better spent elsewhere in my opinion.
For people selling to multiple countries on Stripe, what do you do about keeping up with country specific taxes?