From 3.9% all in · No monthly fee · Test mode is open today
| Merchant-of-record platforms | CANDI | |
|---|---|---|
| Who is the seller | The platform. Their name is on the charge and the invoice. | You. Your name is on the charge. |
| Whose payment account | Theirs. Your customers pay them. | Yours. You connect your own account. |
| Where the money lands | With them, then paid out to you on their schedule. | In your account, on your own payout schedule. CANDI never holds it. |
| Sales tax / VAT | They calculate, collect and remit it. | Yours. CANDI does not calculate, collect, remit or file it. |
| Who verifies you | They do, as part of onboarding. | Your payment provider does. Not us. |
| Chargebacks | Theirs to fight, under their terms. | Yours, on your own account. |
This is a structural comparison of the two billing models, not a claim about any one vendor. Business models change — check the vendor's own pricing and terms before you decide.
Paddle takes on the whole seller role — tax registration and remittance across jurisdictions, invoicing, and the customer payment relationship. For a team selling software internationally without a finance function, that is a lot of work removed, and CANDI removes none of it.
Under an MoR you are, contractually, supplying the platform rather than selling to your customer. Your customer's bank statement shows Paddle. Payout timing is Paddle's. Account review and offboarding decisions are Paddle's. For many businesses that is a completely fine trade for the compliance it buys.
CANDI assumes you want to stay the seller and keep the payment account in your own name. You connect it, the money lands there, and we never hold it. On top of that account we add the billing model that raw payments lack: hosted and embedded checkout, subscriptions with proration, licence keys, metered usage credits, discounts, revenue splits and affiliates, a customer billing portal, and HMAC-signed webhooks — all behind one API and one OpenAPI contract.
If tax compliance is the reason you are shopping, pick Paddle. If a platform standing between you and your customer is the thing you are trying to avoid, that is what CANDI is for.
If cross-border sales tax is the problem you are actually trying to solve, a merchant of record solves it and CANDI does not. That is a real reason to choose Paddle, and we would rather say so here than have you find out after you migrate. Check their current pricing and terms directly — we deliberately do not restate them, because a number we copied today is a number that is wrong later.
MoR at a rate close to ours, tax remittance included.
Popular with indie sellers; surcharges on the headline rate.
Developer-first MoR with tiers that cut the rate.
Creator storefront and marketplace, MoR, at a much higher rate.
The underlying decision, without a vendor attached.
From 3.9% all in · No monthly fee · Test mode is open today
No, and this is the main reason to choose Paddle over CANDI. CANDI does not calculate, collect, remit or file tax. Every order records a zero tax line.
Yes. Your name is on the charge, the customer relationship is yours, and you are verified by your payment provider rather than by us.
No. There is no CANDI payout schedule because the money never reaches CANDI. It lands in your own payment account and pays out on that account's schedule.