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Ask HN: What payment processor can a private individual use to offer a service?

21 points by nenadg ↗ HN
I'm finishing one hopefully ineresting service and want to offer it, but I have a problem finding payment processor that allows private individuals outside of the US.

And I would just like to avoid registering company in this testing phase.

Is there anything out there that HN can point me to?

17 comments

[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 55.1 ms ] thread
bellwether
You can receive payments using your individual social on PayPal I believe. I don't know if that opens up their checkout and subscription APIs though. It's a bit of unique test case, so if PayPal and Stripe don't work for you, I think you'll have a hard time finding a solution. Perhaps try talking to a business in the cannabis industry? They often have a lot of hurdles to overcome when accepting payments.
nenadg
That's the same conclusion I came upon, also interesting case for someone to build it :).
tipsysquid
My company Gilded[1] can help small businesses or individual contractors get paid with cryptocurrency (stable coins), Stripe (local fiat currencies) integration, or wire transfers.

Setting up a Coinbase account and getting paid with Gilded would be fairly easy. Also, USDC (stablecoin) can be exchanged 1:1 on Coinbase and can be quickly exchange for fiat in your bank account.

Happy to help or discuss specific scenarios.

[1] https://gilded.finance

RabbitmqGuy
Hi, I looked around the website and it looks like a cool service.

But I was unable to figure out;

1. What countries are supported for sellers.

2. What countries are supported for buyers.

tipsysquid
Thanks for taking a look!

We're a non-custodial service allowing our customers to create invoices anywhere, payable by anyone. We don't touch your funds, which makes us global without restrictions.

If you are curious about on/off ramping stablecoins into your bank account, we have a deep integration with Coinbase which is available in 80+ countries and have partnerships with several stablecoin companies.

seanwilson
Try https://paddle.com?

I use them for a paid Chrome extension (https://www.checkbot.io, you can see the Paddle checkout when you click the buy buttons) as an individual.

Paddle let you sell worldwide via subscriptions and individual purchases where they handle country specific tax for you. Obviously you need to declare the income you make to the government but that shouldn't require you to form a company (in the UK at least) and this structure means you don't have to do accounting for EU VAT which I've heard is a huge plus.

Let me know if you've got any questions like integration tips. Generally for a SaaS for example, you accept purchases via Paddle's embeddable JavaScript checkout then use a web hook sent from their server to trigger account creation, email confirmation etc. from your server.

mytailorisrich
On the other hand, in the UK forming and maintaining a company is so simple and cheap that you might want to do it anyway to keep your business finances and liabilities separate.
seanwilson
It's not simple though in the sense that you'll then have more ongoing paperwork to do each year for taxes and your accountancy costs will be higher (I wouldn't recommend doing company tax filings by yourself). The OP mentioned testing an idea out so creating a company only for this might not be worth the hassle and you risk doing your taxes wrong if you're not careful.
mytailorisrich
In my experience (UK), company tax filings are very simple if you have a solo business selling online, and not more difficult than tax filings as an individual. You have to do your accounts anyway: If you can do that you can fill a company tax return.

Of course that's highly dependent on your jurisdiction. I was replying to you because you seem to be in the UK. Sometimes the hassle of wanting to avoid forming a company exceeds the hassle of forming a company (which you can use for multiple projects), which also shields you many liability issues.

seanwilson
> In my experience (UK), company tax filings are very simple if you have a solo business selling online, and not more difficult than tax filings as an individual

If you haven't done it before, I think it's realistically several days of work over the first year to get up to speed (e.g. dividends, payments on account, what you can expense, deadlines + fines, setting up a business account). Most of the time you'll have to do a personal tax return at a minimum and the company tax return would be on top of the personal tax return (so extra rules to learn and extra paperwork you could forget to submit during the year).

I'm not saying it's impossible and you shouldn't look at forming a company, but I wouldn't call it simple in terms of time and stress, especially when you want to focus on validating a modest side project.

mytailorisrich
All the accounting you mention has to be done either way and HRMC nicely sends email reminders. The personal tax return also has to be done either way.

The only thing I'm saying is that very often people with no experience are a bit afraid of forming a company as that sounds like a daunting task and it means becoming a "real business" but in fact, and I stress again depending on the jurisdiction, it may not be a big deal at all and will actually bring benefits.

nenadg
This is cool, I'll check it out. Thanks!
RabbitmqGuy
I have had success with PayPal in the past to power payments for my service [1]. Their API and documentation (or lack thereof) wasn’t great but it worked in far more countries than the likes of stripe.

You could also try gumroad.

1. https://errorship.com/

miluge
Snipcart might solve your problem!
nenadg
Update: I've tested Paddle, and it seems it's perfect. Thank you all for kind answers, and special thanks to @seanwilson for bringing Paddle up.
question11
no one said crypto? stable USDT, EURT, Bitcoin?