Competing with Gumroad and Stan Store as a solo founder from Bangladesh (No Stripe, no PayPal)
Hey Indie Hackers,
I'm Ayesha, a designer turned developer and solo founder from Bangladesh. Thanks to AI coding tools like Google Antigravity and Claude, I’ve been able to build and ship fast, completely in public.
While running my first product, RoastMyLanding, I started looking deeper into the creator economy. I noticed two massive, glaring problems that digital product sellers face every day:
Predatory Platform Fees: Bloated legacy platforms are eating anywhere from 10% to 15% of a creator's hard-earned revenue per transaction.
Geographic Gatekeeping: Building from Bangladesh means I don't have native access to traditional payment processors like Stripe or PayPal. Millions of talented creators worldwide face this exact same barrier.
It shouldn't matter where you live. If you build a valuable digital product, you should be able to sell it smoothly and keep what you earn.
So, I decided to build a competitor: Dropanda.
It’s a streamlined platform designed for digital creators (selling ebooks, templates, Notion docs, Canva Templates, Course Creators, UGC Creators, etc.) to launch high-urgency, countdown-driven flash sales on the fly.
Instead of copying the old model, I built it with alternative, borderless payment infrastructure to completely bypass traditional banking restrictions. No Stripe required, no monthly subscriptions, and a flat 5% platform fee.
The math is simple: Drop the product. Sell it. Keep 95% of your revenue directly in your wallet.
I'm currently in the pre-launch phase, building the core engine completely in public while managing the roadmap as a solo bootstrapped founder. RoastMyLanding just crossed 500 AI-powered landing page audits, which proved to me that the demand for conversion clarity is real, and I'm ready to bring that clarity to digital drops.
If you’re a digital product creator, indie hacker, or designer tired of losing heavy margins, I'd love to have you on the journey.
I’m opening up early founding spots on the waitlist here: https://dropanda.xyz/
For the solo builders out there: What alternative payment stacks are you using to run your SaaS outside of the standard Stripe/PayPal bubble? Let’s swap notes in the comments.
Love this. the fee problem is annoying, but the payment access problem is even bigger for founders outside Stripe-supported countries.
Building a product is hard enoug getting paid shouldn't be, excited to see how Dropanda evolves. Curious to see which payment stack ends up working best at scale
Spot on! Building the SaaS is the fun part — the real boss battle for global founders is just getting a button that lets people pay you.
To solve this at scale, I'm routing everything through crypto rails instead of traditional banking. It completely bypasses the geographic restrictions and approval delays that lock out so many brilliant creators outside Stripe-supported countries.
Appreciate the support! If you ever want a peek at the dashboard before we open the floodgates, just let me know.