Paddle Billing

The Billing Engineer

Plans carry multiple products, multi-seat and add-ons; proration is calculated to the minute with five billing modes for upgrades, downgrades and quantity changes, controllable from both dashboard and API; and a built-in customer portal lets buyers change quantities, cancel, pause and reactivate. That clears the core lifecycle bar with room to spare, backed by over 20 currencies, a sandbox and documented webhooks. We found no public information on trials, usage metering through an API, quotes that convert into subscriptions, or contract terms with ramps and notice periods, which is what separates a solid engine from one where the commercial model lives in the product. 1 5 6

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The Billing Engineer

Credit notes are real objects: generated for approved refunds and credit adjustments, delivered to customers and downloadable as PDFs from the dashboard and API, taxed at the same rates as the original transaction. Erroneous invoices are canceled rather than edited, with the canceled record kept for recordkeeping — though subscription-generated invoices can only be canceled from the dashboard, where the API returns an error. We found no public information on sequential numbering, mandatory content per jurisdiction, retention and archiving to GoBD, or structured e-invoices such as XRechnung, ZUGFeRD or Peppol, which is the surface European business buyers and public bodies audit. 7 8

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The Billing Engineer

The terms state that Paddle handles sales tax collection, reporting and remittance for transactions under the agreement, and as merchant of record it publishes per-country rates — EU member states at OSS rates for B2C, the UK, Canada per province, Japan, 40 US states and more — with B2B reclaim rules and a standard digital-goods category. That is a contract-stated division of tax liability with the jurisdictions named, over 100 in the marketing claim, which is the structure I want in writing before routing revenue through a reseller. We found no public information on filing data handed to the seller or a stated process for maintaining rate changes. 1 4 9 10

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The Billing Engineer

Retries are genuinely smart — timed on payment method type, customer location and 15+ datapoints over a 30-day window, with localized dunning messages across email, in-app and SMS, wallet-backed no-login payment update forms, card-expiry prompts, and pause or cancel as the end-of-dunning outcome. Inbound migration of existing subscribers is offered with hands-on support, but as merchant of record the multiple gateways are Paddle's own rather than ours, and we found no public information on SEPA direct-debit mandates, bank-transfer reconciliation, or a documented migration path that takes subscriptions and stored payment tokens out again — that last one is what I page on, because every reseller relationship ends someday. 4 8 11 12

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The Billing Engineer

Free subscription analytics and retention reporting sit alongside Transactions and Adjustments reports in the dashboard, a reports API generates filterable CSV snapshots with ready-or-processing status, and documented webhook events like the canceled-transaction one give me something to wire into a ledger. The revenue recognition story, though, is a worksheet: the guidance has the seller compute ASC 606 recognition themselves from three report data points, on the gross amount including the Paddle fee, and suggests moving to automation via the APIs. We found no public information on a named accounting or CRM integration, a DATEV export, or deferred-revenue schedules. 1 8 13 14

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The Billing Engineer

The privacy policy names four controllers across the UK, USA, Ireland and Canada, relies on Standard Contractual Clauses for UK/EEA transfers to non-adequate countries, promises deletion or anonymisation after retention periods, and the security claims include SOC 2 Type 2 and PCI certification. The captured pages do not state where customer, invoice or payment data is hosted, and the only non-European names that appear are card and payment networks in a definitions clause rather than a published subprocessor list. US transactions contract with the US entity, so that slice of the billing chain sits outside Europe, and we found no public information on a published data processing agreement. 1 3 4

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The Billing Engineer

Public pages give real numbers: '5% + 50¢ per Checkout transaction' with no monthly or migration fees, bank-transfer invoicing at 3.5% of SRP, Checkout Recovery at '10% of each checkout successfully recovered', chargeback fees of up to 20 GBP, USD or EUR or 40 AUD or CAD, FX margins of 2% for major currencies, 2.5% for CZK, DKK, NOK and THB, and 3% for all other currencies, a $15/€15/£15 international transfer charge, payouts requiring accrued fees above $100, €100 or £100 paid on or before the 15th of the following month, and a possible dormancy charge after six months without sales. An annual cost is computable from these pages for a given checkout volume, and either side can terminate on 30 days' written notice. VAT treatment of the fee is not stated, and the terms mention optional Additional Services activated from the dashboard whose prices we found no public information on. 2 4

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