Looks expensive, though. 5% + 50¢
For one thing Paddle is a merchant of record so it's more like "outsource your entire payment system including all the processing of different payment methods and the global tax admin". For a lot of businesses, particularly smaller ones with international sales, that is going to be an attractive option compared to services like Stripe even at this price point.
For another thing Stripe has introduced so many extras that bump up their cut now that some types of business will end up paying quite a bit more than the analogous headline rate. So even if it were an apples to apples comparison the difference on the bottom line still wouldn't be as wide as it might first appear for those merchants.
Having a checkout bundled with paypal/apple pay/card is pretty compelling however.
Paddle handle it all + take full liability. Shoot me a email nick.read @paddle.com if you want a little more info :)
I have contemplated Stripe vs Paddle couple of months ago. But ultimately chose to stay with Stripe and deal with tax complexities when there is sizable revenue.
For those CTOs in the back: YOU NEED TO PAY REAL MONEY TO GET REAL SERVICE.
So yes, CTO's should "pay real money to get real support," but that only makes sense if the costs don't scale with every dollar of revenue.
A 5% fee is basically impossible to pay for anything that's not software (90%+) margins. Ecommerce, for example, has about 5%-10% net margins. 2%, net, extra payment processing fees is huge.