Start accepting payments without a company?
I'm in the process of creating a SaaS MVP and it requires implementing a subscription payment system. Since Stripe is not available in my country and it's not yet affordable for me to incorporate a company in the USA, Paddle seems to be my only option. Now, my question is how do you start accepting payments without starting a company? Does Paddle allow for individuals to receive subscription payments? Just looking for an efficient and inexpensive way to start, I would switch to a company later if this turns out to be a profitable business. Do you guys have any practical advice?
What about PayPal? 2Checkout? Is it not available either?
You could technically incorporate in UK as a domestic company for about $25. But you need to be British for that.
There’s square as well.
Looking into using square in the SaaS product I'm building such that they are the merchant of record. I see on their site (https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/merchant-of-record) that do serve as the merchant of record despite the fact I've seen them in this conversation as a potential option is almost zero places outside of their website.
So if I've got this all straight - I can use this "online checkout" square product (https://squareup.com/us/en/online-checkout) to sell a subscription SaaS service, pay square 2.9% + 30¢, and never have to worry about all the global tax problems?
If that's true, why do so many people use Paddle at 5%?
Last time I checked, square can be used by a limited number of regions. A lot of Indies are from outside of those countries. Hence the problems.
That makes sense. From Square’s site: “Card payment acceptance with the Square app is currently available in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, France and Spain. We currently don’t support payment card processing outside of these countries or in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands.”
Surprised the whole EU isn’t in there. This will probably meet my needs for now though
Hmm, I might just be wrong in general about square handling taxes for you. Here's a youtube video from their official account explaining what you need to do to collect taxes with square (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO69IAO4H18) not sure why that would exist if they were taking care of everything for you.