Paddle Payments Platform

Paddle is a merchant of record platform for software and digital product sales founded by Christian Owens in 2012, headquartered in London and Menlo Park, providing payment processing, subscription billing, tax compliance, fraud prevention, localization, and checkout optimization through a single platform, designed to eliminate the operational overhead of selling software globally by acting as the merchant of record, handling sales tax, value-added tax, and goods and services tax compliance in over two hundred markets, supporting payments in over thirty currencies through localized payment methods, adopted by over four thousand software companies including Evernote, Craft, AdGuard, and Setapp for their global sales. The merchant of record model means Paddle is the legal seller for each transaction, assuming responsibility for calculating, collecting, and remitting taxes in every jurisdiction, including registering for tax in countries requiring local registration, handling tax exemptions and reverse charges for business-to-business sales, filing tax returns, and managing audits, while also handling currency conversion, payment fees, and fraud liability. The subscription billing engine supports flexible pricing models including flat-rate, per-seat, metered usage, and hybrid pricing, with features including trials, coupons, proration, upgrades and downgrades, dunning for failed payments, and subscription pauses. The checkout system provides a localized, conversion-optimized checkout that adapts language, currency, payment methods, and tax display based on customer location. The JavaScript SDK for embeddable checkout. The API for programmatic control. The webhooks for automation. The analytics dashboard. The tax compliance reporting. Designed by Christian Owens. Designed for software companies.