Paddle Billing Payment Gateway Integration (Merchant of Record)
Feature Request
Add Paddle Billing as a supported payment gateway, with full Merchant of Record (MoR) support, subscription lifecycle management, and webhook integration.
How Would You Use This in Upmind?
I sell software licenses and subscriptions for a desktop AI application. My workflow would be:
1. Customer purchases a Nova Nodes subscription via the Upmind storefront
2. Payment is processed through Paddle Billing (Paddle acts as MoR)
3 . Paddle fires a webhook to Upmind confirming the subscription is active
4. Upmind triggers my external provisioning provider via webhook, which generates and activates the license key
5. Customer receives their license key and can activate the software
For subscription renewals, cancellations, upgrades and downgrades all of these events would flow from Paddle through Upmind's existing webhook and subscription management system, keeping everything in sync automatically.
I would also use the Upmind client portal as the self-service area where customers can manage their subscription, view invoices, and update payment methods all powered by Paddle on the backend.
What problem does this solve for you?
Without a Merchant of Record payment provider, I am personally liable for collecting and remitting VAT across every country I sell to. Under EU and UK digital goods rules, this means:
- German customers require German VAT (19%) collected and remitted to German authorities
- French customers require French VAT (20%)
- UK customers require UK VAT (20%)
- US customers may require state sales tax depending on the state
Without Paddle, I either need to register for VAT in every country I sell to (extremely complex and expensive for an indie developer), pay for Stripe Tax and still manage compliance myself, or restrict who I can sell to all of which are significant barriers.
Paddle as Merchant of Record removes this entirely. Paddle legally becomes the seller, collects the correct tax at the point of sale, and remits it to the relevant authorities on my behalf. I receive clean revenue payouts with zero tax liability.
Upmind currently has no MoR payment gateway. Every gateway in your current list (Stripe, PayPal, GoCardless etc.) leaves the tax liability with the seller. For software and digital goods sellers a growing segment of Upmind users this is a serious gap.
Impact of not having this feature
Without Paddle integration in Upmind, I face two options:
1. Use Upmind for billing automation but accept full VAT liability requiring external tax compliance tools, ongoing filing in multiple jurisdictions, and significant legal/accounting overhead as a solo founder.
2. Use Paddle directly for payments but lose Upmind's billing automation, client portal, support desk, and provisioning features essentially maintaining two separate billing systems
Neither option is acceptable long term. The absence of Paddle means Upmind cannot be my primary billing platform for a software product targeting international customers, despite meeting every other requirement I have.
This likely affects a significant number of Upmind users in the UK and EU who sell software, SaaS products, plugins, or digital goods internationally and need MoR tax coverage to operate compliantly.