Paddle
More info
- Creator
- Christian Owens, Harrison Rose
- Founded
- 2012
- Type
- Merchant of record / billing
- Website
- paddle.com
A payments and billing service that acts as "merchant of record" and shoulders the entire tax burden for software vendors.
Paddle was founded in 2012 in London by Christian Owens and Harrison Rose. The difference from Stripe is legal: Paddle is the merchant of record, meaning it — not its customer — is the counterparty on the sale and handles VAT, sales tax and payouts worldwide.
That removes the administrative hell of global tax for small companies, at the cost of a higher per-transaction fee. In 2022 Paddle acquired the revenue-analytics firm ProfitWell. It belongs to the same payments family as Adyen and Braintree.