In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Sudipto Manna and Lauren Steyn of FastSpring about their thoughts on how to approach payments and ecommerce in emerging markets, and some of the requirements needed to get access to local payment methods and currencies.

If you’re wondering how you’re going to get the most bang for your buck when it’s time for you to expand into new emerging markets, don’t miss this episode of Growth Stage. Watch or listen now!

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Podcast Full Interview: Video

The post EP44: Optimizing Ecommerce for Emerging Markets With Sudipto Manna and Lauren Steyn appeared first on FastSpring.

Yet, there is conversation in the market that enterprise SaaS growth is beginning to slow. Finding new ways to grow can be especially hard for large companies that already have many subscribers, or which are chasing growth through new subscription services in addition to their usual offerings. 

The big question remains: How do you overcome the complex financial and technical hurdles of doing business globally? 

Spoiler alert: Global enterprise growth has an “easy button” with a merchant of record. Let’s take a look at how this powerful payment platform model solves enterprise-grade headaches.

FastSpring is how Enterprise game companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies, powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Enterprise Global Expansion = High Stakes, Higher Friction

Enterprise leaders currently face three primary challenges that prevent them from capturing international market share:

1. High Investment and High Risk in Emerging Markets: You know the opportunity is massive, but the investment required to build local entities, hire tax experts, and establish banking relationships is astronomically high. While North America remains the largest market, Asia-Pacific is now the fastest-growing region globally, with a 24.6% CAGR in virtual fitness as an example. Effectively capturing new users in this space requires native options for buyers or local entities, but the risk of getting it wrong in a regulated market often stalls expansion plans before they begin.
2. The Architecture Gap: You need an enterprise-grade payment architecture that is resilient, localized, and compliant. However, correctly building all of that takes significant time, money, and specialized experience. Most organizations try to solve this with a domestic-only infrastructure, resulting in the “entity gap”: a state in which your regional web traffic is ready to buy, but sales can’t proceed because you don’t support local payment methods or don’t have local entities, leading to high cross-border decline rates.
3. The Need for Flexibility: You want the ability to adjust your rollout based on real-time data without incurring unexpected costs or risk. Traditionally, capturing 100% of market potential in regions such as India, Brazil, or Indonesia has required permanent local subsidiaries, which take years to establish. But you need the flexibility to test markets without being locked into analog-era banking setups that make it difficult to pivot.

These challenges can make it exceedingly complex or slow to expand into new global markets, even for well-established enterprise SaaS companies.

So What Is a Merchant of Record (MoR)?

Simply put, a merchant of record is a service provider that acts as your software’s reseller. While you maintain the brand experience and customer relationship, the MoR assumes the majority of the liability for the transaction.

The MoR model allows a company to “go live tomorrow.” Because the MoR already holds local entities and tax registrations across 200+ regions, you can leverage its infrastructure as your own. This is the strategic solution to the entity gap. For global enterprises, the barrier to international revenue is rarely a lack of demand — it’s the infrastructure.

Why Do Traditional Payment Providers Fail at Scale?

Most enterprises start with a standard payment service provider (PSP) such as Stripe, PayPal, or Square. However, as you expand into multiple regions (some with complex tax rules and regulations), the limitations of a PSP create a revenue ceiling:

• Missed Opportunities: It’s common for global leaders to see significant web traffic from regions like India or Mexico, only to find they can’t process a single transaction because they lack a local legal entity. One FastSpring customer was losing 20% of web traffic in India before implementing an MoR that accepted local payment methods, which are otherwise inaccessible without a local entity.
• Unnecessary Discounts: When internal infrastructure can’t support global growth, teams look for scrappy, alternative growth tactics that provide a quick revenue boost but which don’t maintain profit margins over the long term. A merchant of record provides a sustainable alternative to this by making it easy to unlock untapped revenue in new territories rather than slashing prices in existing markets.
• Administrative Burden: When your expansion plans reach your tax and legal departments, they’re often vetoed due to the complexity of managing local taxes and varying economic nexus laws (nexus is the defined threshold for tax liability on sales). 
• Tax Law Fragmentation: Beyond tax calculation, enterprises struggle with data fragmentation. A fragmented payment setup creates a reconciliation nightmare, where transaction data lives in silos. A robust MoR provides a single source of truth, ensuring that every transaction — regardless of currency or country — carries a consistent data schema that meets global KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) standards.

How to Scale With Speed and Flexibility

Every large company fears the need to “rip and replace” an existing infrastructure, even if that means sticking with a solution that’s not meeting their needs. Modern MoR solutions such as FastSpring address this through something called “headless deployment.” Let’s look at an example.

Avid, a leader in creative software, needed a global online payments solution that would leverage its recent investment in a new composable commerce stack. By implementing FastSpring as its MoR, they didn’t have to abandon their existing proprietary subscription engines or dunning logic. Instead:

• Avid managed the customer experience, subscriptions, and dunning.
• They layered FastSpring on top to manage the back-end: global payments, tax collection, and compliance.
• They went live in just three weeks and saw 4% of transactions come in through newly added payment options such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which supports long-term retention through buyer-friendly payment methods. 

This headless approach is critical for organizations using middleware platforms for orchestration and entitlements. Instead of a brittle, hard-coded integration, an enterprise-grade MoR uses webhooks and robust APIs to push real-time transaction data into your data lake or BI tools (like Snowflake or Tableau). This enables real-time revenue recognition, a necessity for both public companies and those preparing for an exit.

That’s how you scale without friction.

Even Your Back-Office Team Will Rejoice

Internal tax and finance teams are often the strongest skeptics regarding global expansion. An MoR turns these skeptics into advocates by providing:

• Liability Offloading: The MoR is responsible for calculating, collecting, and remitting all global taxes. If you get audited in Indonesia, the MoR handles it — not your internal team.
• One Report to Rule Them All: Instead of reconciling thousands of transactions across dozens of currencies and banks, your finance team receives a single, consolidated payment and a clean data set.
• ERP Integration: Leading MoR solutions such as FastSpring provide data that flows seamlessly into SAP Commerce, S/4HANA, and other enterprise backends, ensuring the cycles of planning, execution, and analysis are always data-driven and efficient.

This isn’t just about a CSV export — it’s about automated GL mapping. Leading MoR solutions allow you to map transaction types directly to your internal chart of accounts (COA). This turns a week-long, manual month-end close into an automated process, reducing human error and ensuring that your ERP sub-ledgers are always in sync with your actual cash flow.

Lessons From the Field: Navigating LATAM and APAC

Enterprise expansion often fails in these regions due to the infrastructure barrier. According to a Baymard study, businesses that enable regionally preferred payment methods see 21% higher growth rates than those that don’t.

Treating a Brazilian or Indian transaction as “cross-border” by routing it through a U.S. or EU bank is a recipe for involuntary churn. For a local bank, a foreign-processed transaction poses a security risk, leading to higher decline rates.

With an MoR as your local legal entity, the transaction stays “in-country.” This shift doesn’t just lower fees; it fundamentally stabilizes your leaky funnel by ensuring valid customers aren’t blocked by banking security flags.

Similarly, forcing a mobile-first economy into a credit-card-only checkout creates another barrier. While credit cards dominate the West, they are the exception in high-growth regions. 

In India for example, credit card penetration is under 5%, while UPI (Unified Payments Interface) accounts for over 75% of digital retail transactions. Similarly, in Brazil, Pix has surpassed 150 million users. It’s not necessarily about having more payment methods; it’s about having the right ones.

Bridging the Entity Gap for Global Growth

The transition from a domestic success story to a global enterprise powerhouse is no longer a matter of simply “turning on” new regions. For the modern SaaS leader, the merchant of record model is more than a compliance shortcut — it’s a strategic lever for revenue operations. It represents the end of the entity gap, allowing your organization to:

• Reclaim Lost Revenue: Stop losing 20% or more of your international traffic to avoidable cross-border declines.
• Decouple Growth from Headcount: Scale into 200+ countries without hiring a team of tax experts or managing dozens of local entities.
• Empower the Back Office: Transform your finance and tax departments by offloading the liability and complexity of global nexus and tax laws.

Global expansion in 2026 isn’t about being present in every market — it’s about being native to every market. By partnering with an MoR like FastSpring, you ensure that your infrastructure is as agile as your code.

The demand is there. The customers are ready. It’s time to close the gap.

You built the software. Let FastSpring build your global payments strategy.

FastSpring is how Enterprise companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies, powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software.

Ready to try FastSpring? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Headache-Free Global Growth: The Enterprise Guide to Merchant of Record appeared first on FastSpring.

• Mobile app marketplaces such as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store make app distribution easy, but they charge steep fees.
• There are a few important components to selling outside the app marketplaces, such as choosing a payments partner, setting up user accounts, and structuring your purchases and packages.
• A merchant of record such as FastSpring can make selling globally much easier for mobile app and game publishers.

If you’re not sure how to sell an app direct to consumer (also referred to as D2C or app2web) outside the app marketplaces — or if you’re looking for a new way to monetize your mobile app or game — you may be wondering what options you have.

Steep fees from platforms like the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store can understandably cause game developers and app creators to look beyond the convenience, discoverability, and ubiquity of traditional app marketplaces.

Historically, restrictions from the platform providers have made that difficult — but as a result of ongoing court cases along with the development of new laws and regulations, the mobile landscape is changing.

TL;DR: If you’re looking to sell outside Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, you may have more options than you thought.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How mobile app marketplaces work and the fees they charge.
• How to sell outside app marketplaces and the tools you’ll need to do so.
• Legal and regulatory updates regarding app sales and monetization.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Note: Information in this article was validated at time of publishing and is subject to change.

How Mobile App Marketplaces Work

Making up over 99% of mobile OS market share globally, Android with the Google Play Store and iOS with the iPhone App Store have enjoyed a duopoly over mobile app distribution and mobile app ecommerce worldwide. While those markets are beginning to open up, it’s helpful to understand the business model that app marketplaces have traditionally worked under.

On the plus side, because major app marketplaces are used by basically every human on earth with a mobile phone, the ability to attract new users for your app or players for your game is unmatched.

Marketplaces make it easy and convenient for users to download and pay for new apps and in-app purchases through a marketplace and within an ecosystem they already trust, and with payment methods they’ve already saved to their account.

Marketplaces also make it easy for mobile app developers to distribute their apps. They manage important transaction factors such as varied payment methods and currencies, fraud, tech support related to the transaction, and collecting and paying sales taxes. 

But that ease of use can come at a steep price for developers.

Fees and Commissions Charged by Major App Marketplaces

Assuming your game or app is accepted by the mobile app store app review gatekeepers in the first place, the complete lack of competition ensures that the fees associated with sales via iOS and Google Play app stores are very high — usually around 15% on the first $1 million in sales annually and up to 30% on revenue streams exceeding $1 million per year.

That’s on top of the $99 per year membership fee required to join the Apple Developer Program, create your developer account, download Xcode, and access App Store Connect.

Those fees also apply to in-game purchases as well. This means that even if you intend to release a free app but monetize it using in-app purchases, you and/or your players and users will still be burdened by paying steep fees to the app stores.

Passing App Store Costs on to Consumers

Some apps have taken efforts to make it clear that at least a portion of high app store fees are being passed along directly to buyers, but that there are lower-cost options instead.

Adding Fees to Subscriptions Purchased via App Marketplaces

When Otter — an AI meeting agent and transcription app — revamped its pricing options in mid-2023, there was one particularly notable option for Pro plans: Paying for a yearly subscription via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store cost users an extra $10, increasing the price by about 8% from $119.99 to $129.99 USD.

To explain how users could avoid this upcharge, Otter placed a green “Tip” box just below the Otter Pro pricing grid, encouraging users to “Learn how to move your Apple App Store or Google Play Store subscription to Otter via Web.”

To address this pricing discrepancy more directly, the FAQ section at the bottom of the announcement page stated the higher price via app marketplaces “reflects the additional charges required to host the Otter.ai subscriptions on both Apple and Google’s app stores.” 

It went on to explicitly recommend users cancel their current Apple App Store or Google Play Store subscription and re-subscribe via Otter’s website.

At the time of this writing, it appears that pricing for Otter Pro is now the same whether the user signs up via the Play Store or via web directly from Otter.ai, but their help page (linked above) about how to switch to a web subscription is still up, and the page mentions two additional benefits besides savings: access to the Otter support team if you have any subscription issues, and easier account management with access to upgrade options that aren’t available in the app. 

Offering Discounts for Direct Purchases

Subsequently, game and app developers may opt to offer discounted prices to users if they purchase outside of the app via an external user account that’s linked back to the app.

Developers can advertise these kinds of discounts and user accounts on their websites or in the app, depending on app marketplace regulations and location. 

App devs make it easy for a user to sign up by simply opening the app on their phone, tapping a button to create a user account, and completing registration. 

Then users can easily make purchases from the developer’s website directly, for much less than they would pay if they made the same purchases within the app. (More on user accounts below.)

More App Developers Are Selling D2C

While there are many benefits to selling games and apps through the iOS App Store and Google Play, the downsides on pricing & fees and the limitations on game distribution mean that as court cases continue and new regulations open up the markets, more and more developers will be wondering how they can implement a D2C strategy for their app or game.

In fact, by the middle of 2025, the gaming industry leaders we surveyed were already using direct-to-consumer monetization at a rate of 57%, and when combined with those not yet using D2C but planning to within 12 months, about 83% of all those surveyed will be using it by mid-2026. 

Read more of the illuminating gaming industry survey results in our post, Massive Gaming D2C Survey From FastSpring and Omdia.

How to Sell Apps Outside App Marketplaces

In the Otter example above, even though Otter’s app is downloaded via the Apple App Store or the Android Play Store — and Otter was charging a higher price if users paid for their yearly Pro subscription via those stores — there was still a lower-cost option for their users: Downloading the app from one of the stores, but paying for their service on Otter’s own website using a different payment services provider (PSP).

This model is an example of the difference between distributing an app through the app marketplaces, and monetizing an app through the app marketplaces. 

Even if downloads of your app are captive to proprietary stores, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way users can pay for your service or features.

Here are some of the key things to consider when setting up your own app monetization option outside of major app marketplaces.

Choosing a Payment Provider

Step one is choosing how you’ll accept payments outside app marketplaces.

There are many options for payment services providers (PSP) and merchants of record (MoR) on the market that you can set up to take payments outside of device-captive app stores. 

But there is a key difference between payment services providers and merchants of record. 

A PSP helps businesses sell a product by handling the specialized services and back-end connections needed to do so (such as connecting payment gateways, payment processors, and a merchant account). 

An MoR like FastSpring does all that and more — from handling payment processing to taking on important responsibilities such as worrying about card brand rules, regulatory rules across jurisdictions, risk management and fraud prevention, handling refunds and chargebacks, sales taxes, VAT, and GST, and more. That includes calculating, collecting, and remitting taxes.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps!  Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Can I Just Use Stripe?

Before you jump to considering an even simpler and lower-cost PSP such as Stripe, note that it’s very simple — Stripe is not a merchant of record.

Because they do not assume the same responsibilities an MoR like FastSpring does, you will still be responsible for important tasks such as managing risk, dealing with chargebacks, and handling taxes. 

Stripe has multiple upgrades available to fill some of those gaps, but each upgrade package will continue to increase the price anyway. Learn more about how Stripe charges for their Tax upgrades in our article 2Checkout vs. Stripe vs. FastSpring: Comparing Payments, Taxes, and Platform Features (+ Pricing).

It can be very easy for SaaS companies and app businesses to outgrow Stripe, so it may be easier to start with a more robust merchant of record from the outset, particularly if you plan to grow quickly and/or serve customers globally.

FastSpring Steer Safe^TM Makes Web Purchases Very Easy for Mobile Users

For a super smooth purchase flow that sends app users from your app to your website and right back when the purchase is complete, FastSpring now has Steer Safe^TM, an approach to monetizing apps with the fastest, least-taps paths possible. 

Easily add purchase buttons or links directly in your mobile app or game, and securely pass player info, product info, and more to your FastSpring-powered checkout on the web. Then quickly return the user to the app to get right back to utilizing their purchase.

To learn more and even see gifs of the purchase process in action, check out our Steer Safe^TM posts about games on iOS, games on Android, or mobile apps on both iOS and Android.

Setting Up User Accounts

To connect purchases between your own checkout option and your app that was downloaded from an app marketplace, you’ll likely need some kind of user account system for users to track — and activate in-app — their purchases.

User accounts allow users to make purchases outside of the App Store or Play Store, then sign in to your app to see the purchase credited there.

In the case of FastSpring, we also provide consumer support to users. If they have any issues with their purchase or their purchase account, we’ll be there to help — making one less thing for you to worry about.

Structuring Purchases and Packages

Purchases tied to users’ accounts are often in the form of in-app currency or subscriptions.

In-App or In-Game Currency

To monetize your app using in-app or in-game currency, the currency is purchased using real money on your site and then redeemed in your app for in-app items, features, etc. 

In the case of many game apps, the apps use an in-game currency such as coins, gems, gold, or a unique fictional currency that users can redeem for bonuses within the game. The currency can usually be purchased in various packages, with web-exclusive pricing offered if users leave the app and buy straight from the game developer’s site.

Users can then check out with a typical online purchase experience, such as with FastSpring’s online checkout with built-in user experience and conversion optimization.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT and sales tax compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Subscriptions

Rather than individual purchases as needed, you may prefer to offer access to your app (or its premium services and functionality) via a subscription, often available monthly or yearly.

In the Otter example, besides a freemium option, Otter’s packages are available as monthly or annual subscriptions. 

FastSpring provides a wide variety of subscription management tools to help you monetize your mobile app, game, software as a service, or other digital products.

Items and Upgrades

Items and upgrades are yet another packaging option for monetizing your app. These can be independent of other options like subscriptions and in-app currency, or they can work in tandem with them.

In the case of Otter, which offers a freemium version of their service (either via web or using their app), upgrades such as more transcription minutes, team collaboration, and advanced export options help incentivize users to subscribe to their Pro and Business packages.

In the case of gaming apps, the possibilities are nearly endless — with exclusive items, characters, power-ups, and more to motivate players to shop via the website and redeem in the app. 

Legal and Regulatory Updates Regarding App Sales and Monetization

If you’re not familiar with the recent and ongoing legal challenges that could affect both Google and Apple’s stores in some way, there have been quite a few around the world, including in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Brazil.

The EU’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA)

In Europe, the EU’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA) is aimed at what the Commission called “gatekeepers” (which includes Apple, Google, Meta, etc.), and the Commission began enforcing it in March 2024.

Apple has revised its App Store rules, giving developers more freedom and flexibility when it comes to monetizing — but this was after the company was charged with violating the DMA rules by not fully allowing steering.

Get the basics on the DMA and more helpful links here.

Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act Guidelines

The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) released the Mobile Software Competition Act Guidelines, which includes regulatory guidance in line with the EU’s DMA. The MSCA guidelines went into effect in December 2025 and address Apple and Google’s restricting of alternative app marketplaces, forced use of their own payment systems, and anti-steering & browser engine restrictions.

Epic Games’ Lawsuits in the US

After Epic Games used discounts to encourage its Fortnite users to use a different payment system instead of the app marketplaces, both Apple and Google subsequently removed Fortnite from their stores in 2020. Epic Games then separately sued both Apple and Google.

In the Apple case, judgments and appeals have been split between Epic and Apple. Of note, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in April 2023 that Apple’s prohibition against allowing app devs to send users to other non-App Store payment methods violated California’s Unfair Competition Law.

Appeals were made to the Supreme Court, but in January 2024, the Supreme court decided not to hear those appeals; read more about responses from Epic and Apple here. 

In response to requirements that the company permit developers to guide users toward alternative payment options outside the App Store (also known as “payment steering”), Apple put in place rules that required developers to report — and pay Apple a commission — on transactions processed elsewhere. But n April 2025, a U.S. judge ruled against Apple, preventing the company from charging commissions on external payments.

In the Google case, appeals also continue, but a December 2023 ruling found in favor of Epic on all counts, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in October 2025 against Google’s bid to delay required changes to the Play Store set to take effect later that same month.

Disclosure: FastSpring provided key evidence about alternative payment options in EPIC’s antitrust lawsuit against Google. Read more here.

US State-Led Cases

In Utah v. Google, 37 attorneys general (representing 21 million Americans) maintained that Google uses illegal, anticompetitive, and/or unfair business practices that restrict competition, drive up prices, and limit choices, all of which harm consumers that purchase games and other digital goods through the Google Play store. Read more about the Google case here.

Brazil’s Antitrust Regulation

After a 2022 complaint filed by MercadoLibre in both Brazil and Mexico — in which MercadoLibre took issue with Apple’s requirement that app developers must use Apple’s payment system for selling digital goods or services offered within the apps — Brazil’s antitrust regulation agency Cade stated in Nov. 2025 that Apple needed to lift restrictions regarding payment methods for in-app purchases. That included allowing links to other sites to help facilitate alternative payment options.

Frequently Asked Questions About Selling Outside the App Stores

Partner With FastSpring

If you’re looking for help selling your mobile app or video game directly to consumers, we can help.

FastSpring powers global D2C payments for game studios and app publishers. As a merchant of record, we provide a fully managed payment solution — including customizable checkout, fraud mitigation, and 100% automated sales tax and VAT compliance.

Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Thanks to Tony Markov for contributing to this article!

This post was originally published in Feb. 2024 and has been updated.

The post How to Sell a Mobile App or Game Outside App Stores appeared first on FastSpring.

• Chargebee offers a number of subscription management features, but their customers are still responsible for handling key tasks like connecting to payment gateways, taxes, payment reconciliation, and chargebacks.
• As your merchant of record (MoR), FastSpring takes on the responsibility for these tasks, including payment processing, remitting taxes across jurisdictions, and more.
• Other Chargebee alternatives include Stripe, Maxio, Zoho Billing, Stax Bill, Zuora, Sticky.io, PayPal Enterprise Payments, Recurly, and Paddle.

Chargebee is a robust subscription management platform —  and if you’re looking for Chargebee alternatives, you’re likely already aware of many of its key features.

However, there are certain aspects of collecting recurring payments that you would still be responsible for when using Chargebee, such as:

• Connecting to payment gateways manually. While Chargebee supports several different payment gateways, you have to set up and configure each one.
• Remitting taxes at the end of the year. They will collect taxes for you, but you are ultimately held responsible for filing and paying taxes correctly within each jurisdiction you do business.
• Reconciling payments, fulfillment, refunds, etc. While Chargebee lets you automate many mundane accounting tasks and integrate with account software, you still have to track and record every transaction, refund, etc.
• Responding to and processing chargebacks. Chargebee only offers full chargeback support for limited vendors, so other vendors will need to manage chargebacks for themselves.

In this guide, we present 10 alternatives to Chargebee that help relieve some of these burdens for users, starting with an in-depth review of our solution, FastSpring. 

FastSpring handles the entire payment process from checkout to remitting end-of-year taxes for SaaS companies. To learn more about how FastSpring can help you scale quickly, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

10 Chargebee Alternatives

1. FastSpring.
2. Stripe.
3. Maxio.
4. Zoho Billing.
5. Stax Bill.
6. Zuora.
7. Sticky.io.
8. PayPal Enterprise Payments.
9. Recurly.
10. Paddle.

1. FastSpring

As your merchant of record (MoR), FastSpring takes on the responsibility for payment processing, remitting taxes, and more for your software or SaaS business.

To compare, most Chargebee alternatives are either subscription billing platforms or payment gateways. 

Some of these providers may be able to help you connect to international payment gateways, alert you to chargebacks, and help you collect VAT and sales taxes. However, you’ll still be responsible for paying taxes, processing chargebacks, and for things like legal compliance, dunning, and more. 

FastSpring, on the other hand, handles everything from optimizing your checkout flow to remitting end-of-year taxes by acting as your merchant of record (MoR).

Next, we explain how an MoR is different from other payment service providers. 

What It Means to Have FastSpring as Your Merchant of Record

A merchant of record, or MoR, is the business entity that sells goods or services to the buyer. You can act as your own MoR, or you can outsource the entire process to FastSpring. Companies that haven’t thought about who their MoR is are probably acting as their own MoR.

When you outsource your transactions to FastSpring, your customers still visit your website to choose their software and/or subscription, but FastSpring takes over when the customer gets to the checkout. They’ll receive a receipt from FastSpring, and FastSpring will be listed on their bank or credit card statement.

The profits are yours, but FastSpring is the liable party for the sale.

That’s why FastSpring can do more than other types of service payment providers can:

• Collect and remit VAT, sales taxes, and other consumption taxes.
• Comply with local laws and regulations.
• Monitor chargebacks in real time.
• Reconcile transactions, payments, refunds, etc.
• And more, all on your behalf.

If something goes wrong with local or tax compliance, chargebacks, accounts not balancing, etc., FastSpring takes the lead to solve the issue on your behalf.

Instead of juggling multiple platforms and providers for a complete payment solution, you can work with just one provider: FastSpring. 

Plus, you can start selling in 200+ jurisdictions almost instantly — because we’ve already established the necessary processes in each region. You can learn more about how FastSpring helps you with international recurring payments here.

In summary, FastSpring focuses on the selling, so you can focus on making a great product.

In the next sections, we’ll dive deeper into how FastSpring helps you: 

• Create flexible free trials and recurring billing logic without code.
• Minimize payment failures with advanced payment routing and smart dunning.
• Increase conversions with branded, localized checkout.

We’ll also cover how FastSpring provides all features for one flat-rate price designed to fit your budget. 

Flexible No-Code Free Trials and Recurring Billing Logic

Not every business can use the same free trial model. Some businesses will see more success if they let customers sign up without payment details, while others will see more success if they require a payment method to sign up but don’t automatically charge the customer at the end of the trial.

Additionally, what worked for your small business to start may not be the right solution for you long term as you grow and adopt more complex billing. That’s why many software, gaming, digital product, mobile app, and SaaS companies need payment software that can support many different types of trial models, subscriptions, etc. 

However, most payment processors (sometimes interchangeably referred to as “payment gateways,” while technically being slightly different) only offer limited recurring billing and basic trial options — e.g., a free trial that automatically turns into monthly billing. This makes it difficult to optimize your trials and subscription plans for high conversions and what works best for your customers. It also makes it difficult to adapt as a business in the long run. 

FastSpring, on the other hand, delivers advanced features and a wide variety of flexible options for how you can set up trials, subscriptions, and more. Below, we provide an overview of FastSpring’s subscription management tools. 

Trial subscription options:

• Free or paid trial periods of any length.
• Set up free, paid, or usage-based trials.
• Choose whether or not to require a payment method when signing up for a trial.
• Choose to automatically bill the user after the trial has ended or let them manually start a paid subscription.
• Allow subscribers to reactivate expired trial accounts.
• Choose when FastSpring will send reminders of ending trials (e.g., three days before the trial ends).
• Offer a discounted trial period.
• Automatically detect when a single user tries to sign up for multiple trials, and only allow one trial account.
• And more.

Recurring billing options:

• Choose subscription frequency (weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom) and billing date (or let your customers choose).
• Set subscriptions to auto renewal, manual renewal (i.e., customers have to re-enter payment information each time they’re billed), or managed renewal (i.e., your team initiates the charge via the API, which is great for usage-based billing).
• Offer discounts and coupons.
• Allow prorated billing if a customer wants to upgrade, downgrade, or pause the service part-way through the billing cycle.
• Add one time purchases to the initial bill but not recurring billings.
• Manage upsell and cross-sell products at checkout.
• Give customers the option of whether or not to store payment information (or make the decision for all customers).
• Auto-renew to a different subscription.
• Offer subscription add-ons.
• And more.

Fulfillment options:

• Choose whether to share products and resources via a license key, product download, signed PDF, or email.
• Configure multiple fulfillment actions for one subscription (e.g., send a license key and product manual PDF via email).

FastSpring also provides your customers with an easy-to-access self-serve Customer Account Portal, where they can view their entire order history; upgrade, downgrade, or pause their subscriptions; and add or edit payment methods.

This self-serve portal is entirely managed by FastSpring but reflects the visual branding of your checkout for a cohesive and user-friendly interface and customer experience. 

Finally, some subscription management tools require a lot of technical skills to set up and use. 

But with ease of use in mind, FastSpring lets you set up many of the options mentioned above without code. If you have unique subscription management needs, you can also use our API and webhooks library for more control — our experienced developers are readily available to help you create the best solution for your subscription business model.

Don’t forget: Rules around recurring billing vary across the globe. Without a global MoR like FastSpring, it’s your responsibility to keep track of current and evolving local transaction laws and regulations and ensure your recurring billing model complies.

FastSpring handles this — and the liability for recurring transactions — for you.

Note: If you already have multiple subscriptions set up in another platform, we can help you easily migrate over to FastSpring. For subscription data migration with payment information included, click here for more info. For subscription data migration without payment information, click here for more info.

Advanced Payment Routing and Smart Dunning to Minimize Payment Failures

From the initial purchase to each subsequent rebill, failed payment is one of the main reasons for lost revenue.

Many payment service providers will automatically retry failed payments once or notify customers of failed payments. This is a good place to start, but there are more ways to meaningfully reduce involuntary churn due to failed payments. 

FastSpring helps you proactively minimize payment failures and reduce churn with flexible dunning management, which includes:

• Proactive reminders to update payment information (e.g., “Your subscription is due soon”).
• Multiple follow-up notifications (e.g., two, five, seven, 14, and 21 days after their payment method fails).
• A pre-made email template for reminders — or the ability to customize your own messages.
• Multiple payment retries before each follow-up notification is sent out.
• Automatic payment gateway rerouting (this solves many payment failures due to network or system errors.
• An intuitive self-serve portal (customers can easily update payment information from the same portal where they manage their subscription plan).

Plus, you can choose whether to pause or continue the service when a payment fails. If you keep the service going after a failed payment and give your customers a chance to update their payment information, you’ll have less churn and increase retention.

You can also choose to apply a pause rather than a full cancellation of their service after all reminders have been sent out. Pausing makes it easier for your customer to restart their subscription without the hassle of onboarding again.

You can read more about how one of our customers reduced churn by 50% in this case study. 

Branded, Localized Checkout to Increase Conversions

Friction at the purchase step can cause customers to fall off before completing a purchase. For example:

• If the price at checkout is different than it was on the website (e.g., different currency or different amount because additional fees have been added without a clear label), customers may decide not to buy.
• If the checkout is visually very different from the website, or if the checkout is on an entirely different website, the customer is less likely to believe the checkout is authentic and secure.
• If they have to create an account in order to purchase but don’t want to.
• If checkout translation and localization is incorrect, inconsistent, or missing, so the customer questions the store’s legitimacy.

These are just a few examples, but there are many reasons why a customer may decide against completing a purchase at the last minute.

FastSpring helps you anticipate objections and reduce friction at checkout in the following ways:

• Customizable checkout UI.
• The most popular payment methods.
• Local currency conversions and language translations.
• Conversion-optimized embedded, pop-up, or web storefront checkout experiences.
• Personalized developer support.

Read on for more details about each.

Customizable Checkout UI

Many subscription management platforms or payment processors only provide checkout templates where you can add your logo and choose basic color schemes. These solutions usually fail to match your visual branding and may not be optimized for increasing conversions. 

To create the best experience for your customers and get the highest conversion rates, you need more custom abilities.

FastSpring lets you customize the look and feel of your checkout with pre-built branding tools and CSS overrides. You have complete visual customization with our Store Builder Library (SBL), a JavaScript library that lets you customize, brand, and streamline your entire checkout workflow to build trust and eliminate friction throughout the buyer’s journey. This allows you to create the checkout experience that most aligns with your brand and highlights your product. 

The Most Popular Payment Methods

One of the biggest reasons customers fail to complete a purchase is because they can’t use their preferred payment method. 

However, offering different payment methods isn’t as simple as adding their logo to your checkout screen. 

You have to agree to certain terms and conditions before a payment network or issuing bank will approve transactions with your business. Each payment provider will have different regulations regarding fraud, chargebacks, privacy protection, etc. It can be a huge task to stay in good standing with many different payment providers on your own. 

If you want to transact internationally, there will be even more to manage.

While Visa and Mastercard may be popular payment methods in the U.S., buyers in other countries prefer different payment methods. To convert international customers, you need to provide many different types of preferred payment methods — which means more payment providers to maintain. 

For instance, Pix is a preferred payment method in Brazil, while AliPay is a preferred payment method in China.

FastSpring takes care of all of this — from staying in good standing with payment networks, to managing fraud and chargebacks — for you.

FastSpring already has good relationships with many different payment networks and issuing banks around the world, which means you can accept your customers’ preferred payment methods right away. 

Local Currency Conversions and Language Translations

Customers are more likely to trust a checkout experience that uses the same language and currency as what’s shown on your website. That’s why FastSpring lets you translate checkout into the local language and convert prices to the local currency. 

You can let each buyer select their preferred language from a dropdown menu featuring 21+ supported languages. Or, you can lock the language and FastSpring will automatically select the appropriate language based on the buyer’s location. 

You also have the option to set custom pricing strategies in each currency or let FastSpring automatically convert prices to the local currency (FastSpring supports 23+ currencies).

If you choose to let FastSpring convert product prices for you, we match the format of the original price. For example, if the original price is $12.99 and the conversion to Euros is €14.29, FastSpring would change it to €14.99.

Learn how Nelio increased growth by 50% with localized checkout in this case study.

Embedded, Pop-Up, or Web Storefront Checkout

With FastSpring, you can embed checkout directly on your website, insert a pop-up checkout, or send customers to a secure web storefront managed by FastSpring. This gives you the flexibility to choose the solution that’s best for your team and customers.

To compare, embedding checkout directly on your webpage ensures less disruption and typically decreases the likelihood of your buyers abandoning. Pop-up checkout requires less setup — simply insert a few lines of pre-written HTML and Javascript in your webpage.

Learn how DaisyDisk was able to spend less time managing their checkout while significantly increasing conversions by using FastSpring’s pop-up checkout, in this case study. 

To outsource the entire checkout process to FastSpring, you can choose the web storefront option.

With the web storefront option, customers will be redirected to a webpage entirely managed by FastSpring — but customized to match your visual brand identity — where they can view their cart and complete the purchase.

Personalized Developer Support

Many payment service providers only help with the initial setup and when something goes wrong with the software. Some companies only provide personalized support to their largest clients. This leaves you on your own to manage ongoing payment operations.

FastSpring is dedicated to providing you with the best experience throughout the entire engagement.

Our team is always available to help — regardless of how big or small your operation is. Whether that’s helping you build the best checkout experience for your business or expanding into a new region, our friendly customer support team will help you find and build out the best solutions for your business.

Robust Analytics and Reporting Dashboards

FastSpring’s Reporting and Analytics is a robust suite of reports and visualizations to keep you informed of important stats such as MRR, churn rate, new customers by product type, and more. 

For example, our Subscription Overview dashboard shows key subscription analytics including subscription churn, subscriber loss, MRR churn rate, active customers, and more. 

Use our Subscription Overview dashboard, Revenue dashboard, data export reporting and data API features, and more to better understand:

• How each product contributes to your bottom line. 
• When customers are most likely to drop off.
• What coupons or promotions are working.
• How individual trials are performing.
• Which subscription models generate the most revenue.
• Where your customers are located.
• What currencies and payment methods customers prefer.
• Chargeback rates by customer segment.
• Chargeback rates by product line.
• The status of your active webhooks.
• And much more.

All-in-One Pricing Without the Need for Additional Software

Chargebee separates its Billing features into three pricing plans, so you may eventually need the most expensive plan to get the features you need. For example, chargeback automation is not offered in Chargebee’s Starter plan. 

Plus, you’ll still have to pay for additional software solutions like payment gateways (sometimes interchangeably referred to as “payment processors,” although they are technically different) or tax software for a complete payment management system. Even with seamless integrations, it’s a hassle, an additional cost, and may even require additional headcount to manage it all. 

FastSpring, on the other hand, offers one flat-rate price that includes the entire platform — every feature and all services. Our team works with you to find an affordable price based on the volume of transactions you move through FastSpring (you’ll only be charged when successful transactions take place).

If you think FastSpring could be the right payment solution for your subscription-based business, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

2. Stripe

Stripe’s main service is payment processing; however, they do offer a few other services, such as: 

• Checkout.
• Fraud and risk management.
• Automated invoicing.
• In-person payments.
• Subscription management.
• Virtual and physical card issuing.
• Business spend management.

Stripe billing has fewer options than Chargebee for recurring billing, but you can easily integrate the two software solutions if you want to use (and pay for) both. Stripe works with companies of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises. 

3. Maxio

Maxio (formerly Chargify and SaasOptics) is another cloud-based financial operations platform for B2B SaaS. They offer solutions to automate financial systems on the back end, and features to help improve the order-to-revenue process. Their main services include: 

• Subscription management.
• Usage-based and global billing.
• Revenue recognition and revenue management tools.
• Billing system dashboard and metrics.
• Built-in integrations with various other software (e.g., accounting software such as QuickBooks and Xero).
• International payment gateways.

Maxio advertises their ability to accommodate any go-to-market strategy (such as product-led or sales-led approaches).

4. Zoho Billing

Zoho offers a large suite of software to run your business, from a CRM and ERPs to a video meeting platform. Zoho Billing (formerly Zoho Subscriptions) is their payment processing and recurring billing solution. Some of their key features include: 

• Invoicing and invoice templates.
• Multi-currency support.
• 50+ pre-built analytic reports.
• Automatic online payment retries.
• Out-of-the-box integrations with other billing platforms (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, etc.).

Zoho Billing offers more pre-made solutions than other options on this list, which some companies may find limiting. However, Zoho Billing may be a good choice if you’re already embedded in the Zoho ecosystem.

5. Stax Bill 

Stax Bill (formerly Fusebill) provides subscription management software and a payment gateway in one platform. Other than offering a payment gateway with each plan, Fusebill offers many of the same features as Chargebee, including: 

• Dunning management.
• Flexible recurring billing options.
• Recurring revenue recognition features.
• Billing analytics.

Fusebill also offers flexible catalog pricing and inventory tracking tools. 

6. Zuora

Zuora is a monetization platform for B2C and B2B companies. Zuora’s key functionalities include: 

• Customer subscription management.
• Revenue reconciliation tools.
• Revenue analytics.
• Built-in integrations with lots of business software.
• Low-code SDKs and APIs to build your own integrations.
• Quoting software.

Zuora provides a lot of flexibility for building out your own solution on top of their platform; however, non-developers may find it difficult to manage.

7. Sticky.io

Sticky.io (formerly Limelight) is a subscription management platform that integrates with popular ecommerce platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, and Shopify. They advertise the ability to: 

• Support nearly any subscription or pricing model.
• Create coupons, discounts, and special promotions.
• Offer add-ons, upsells, etc.
• Fight fraud and chargebacks.
• Manage automated dunning.

Like Chargebee, Sticky.io doesn’t provide a payment gateway; however, they do offer pre-built integrations with several payment gateways. 

8. PayPal Enterprise Payments

PayPal Enterprise Payments (formerly Braintree by PayPal) is a payment gateway provider that also provides merchant accounts. Other features include: 

• Subscription billing management.
• Optimized checkout flow.
• Flexible risk mitigation options.
• Reporting and analytics.
• Third-party integrations for recurring billing, accounting, and more.

PayPal Enterprise Payments supports payment from PayPal, Venmo (in the U.S.), Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

9. Recurly

Recurly is a subscription management software and recurring billing platform. Recurly offers features such as:

• Multiple pricing models.
• Item catalog.
• Recurring billing.
• Payments orchestration.
• Subscriber management.
• Churn management.
• Reporting dashboards and analytics.

Like Chargebee, Recurly doesn’t include a native payment gateway, but the platform does offer pre-built integrations with popular gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and more. Recurly also allows you to connect multiple gateways.

10. Paddle

Paddle is another Chargebee alternative that’s an MoR with a subscription billing platform, appropriate for use by SaaS and software companies. Paddle has features including: 

• Multiple payment gateways.
• Secure checkout.
• Recurring billing management.
• A robust payments toolkit.
• Fraud protection.
• Transaction and subscription reporting.
• Invoicing. 
• And more.

Learn more about Paddle alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions About Chargebee Alternatives

What’s the Difference Between Chargebee and FastSpring?

In short: Chargebee is a subscription management platform for SaaS companies, while FastSpring is an all-in-one payments and digital commerce platform (and merchant of record) built for digital-first businesses.

Who Are the Top Competitors to Chargebee in 2025?

Top Chargebee competitors include:

• FastSpring.
• Stripe.
• Maxio.
• Zoho Billing.
• Stax Bill.
• Zuora.
• Sticky.io.
• PayPal Enterprise Payments.
• Recurly.
• Paddle.

What Should I Consider When Choosing a Subscription Management Platform to Replace Chargebee?

The most important considerations include:

• Your business size, industry, and transaction volume.
• Support for localization and preferred payment methods in the jurisdictions where your customers live.
• Integrations with other tools in your payments and tech stack.
• Security and compliance.
• Budget, costs, and scalability.
• Customer support.

How Difficult Is It to Migrate From Chargebee to Another Platform?

In short, the complexity of migrating from Chargebee to another platform depends heavily on factors including:

• Your current Chargebee setup.
• The complexity of your subscription model.
• The platform you’re migrating to.

If you’re looking to migrate from Chargebee to FastSpring, FastSpring can import your subscriptions with payment details or without payment details. Either way, our team is always available to help — regardless of how big or small your operation is.

Need a Chargebee Alternative for Your SaaS, Software, Video Games, or Other Digital Products Business?

FastSpring can help!

Instead of managing a large software stack for just the subscription lifecycle, let FastSpring handle all of payment lifecycle management for you. FastSpring is more than a subscription management platform — we’re the merchant of record for global SaaS companies and many other digital businesses. 

Sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

This post was originally published in December 2022 and has been updated.

The post Chargebee Alternatives in 2025: 10 Competitors and How They Differ appeared first on FastSpring.

We are honored to receive the Golden Sail Award for Outstanding Global Expansion Ecosystem Service, further solidifying our reputation as a trusted growth partner for Chinese and APAC companies going global.

FastSpring’s Senior Account Executive Jay Jia was present to receive the award for FastSpring, accompanied by Account Executive Leo Ng and Sales Development Representative for APAC Jeslyn Ong. 

Jay received FastSpring’s Golden Sail Award for Outstanding Global Expansion Ecosystem Service.

Jeslyn, Leo, and Jay in the FastSpring booth, excited about our award!

Related: Are you an APAC mobile app developer wanting to take your app global? Learn more about the many things that entails — and what FastSpring can handle for you — in 5 Moves for Mobile App Makers in APAC to Maximize Revenue.

About the GICC Golden Sail Awards

The GICC is one of China’s most recognized global business summits, held annually in Beijing. This year, the event drew over 160,000 professionals and 3,000 leading enterprises from industries such as technology, SaaS, ecommerce, and digital services.

The event’s awards celebrate outstanding companies driving innovation, globalization, and cross-border business growth, highlighting those contributing to China’s global digital transformation and “going global” success stories.

Other award categories include Outstanding Global Expansion Brands, Outstanding Cross-border Technology Solutions, Outstanding Global Expansion Ecosystem Services, Outstanding Cross-border Marketing and Operations, Outstanding Global Expansion Potential, and more.

Partner With FastSpring for Global Growth

If you’re looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally, FastSpring can help. 

We provide an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, AI, eLearning, and other digital goods, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. 

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

To view our homepage in simplified Chinese, click here.
若想浏览 FastSpring 中文官网，请点击此处。

To sign up for a personalized demo using a form in simplified Chinese, click here.
若希望使用中文提交表单并预约产品演示，请点击此处。

The post FastSpring Wins GICC 2025 Golden Sail Award for Outstanding Global Expansion Ecosystem Service appeared first on FastSpring.

At FastSpring, we’re here to help you handle the surge, delight customers, and maximize sales well beyond the weekend itself.

Here’s your step-by-step game plan to stay ahead of the competition and maximize every opportunity.

1. Lock In Website Performance

• Stress-Test Your Site: Simulate peak traffic to make sure your store won’t slow down or crash.
• Streamline the Checkout: Eliminate friction so shoppers can move from cart to confirmation in seconds. Reduce checkout to as few clicks as possible — no unnecessary forms or fields — and offer plenty of different payment methods.

2. Play to Win With Conversions

• Optimize Product Pages: Use A/B testing to refine layouts, calls-to-action, and copy.
• Maximize Conversation Rates: Offer local currencies, payment methods, and regionalized experiences. The more familiar the journey, the higher the likelihood of conversion.

3. Prep Your Fulfillment and Inventory

• Forecast With Data: Review past sales to anticipate this year’s best sellers.
• Stock up on Licenses: Ensure that you have sufficient licenses uploaded to meet the increased demand.
• Check Your Systems: Confirm fulfillment workflows are ready to deliver without bottlenecks.

4. Create Offers That Stand Out

• Bundle and Discount: Craft compelling promotions and bundles that shoppers can’t ignore.
• Offer Smart Coupons: Use multi-discount options and FastSpring’s Combine Discounts feature for maximum impact.

5. Run Practice Drills: Test Everything (Twice!)

• Be Thorough: Products, coupons, checkout flows, and license keys — test them all.
• Prepare for Scale: One small glitch at scale can cost a lot of money. Don’t leave it to chance.

6. Kick Off Marketing Early

• Go Live Before the Rush: Launch campaigns now — across email, social, and ads.
• Build Buzz: Use countdowns, sneak peeks, and reminders to generate excitement.

7. Defend Against Threats

• Secure Your Site: Cyber threats spike with higher traffic. Protect your data and your shoppers.
• Trust FastSpring’s Defence: Our fraud prevention engine is your shield at checkout.

8. Coach Your Support Team

• Prepare for Game Day: Train your team to resolve payment and order questions fast.
• Tap Into FastSpring: Keep customer interactions seamless with our extensive resources. From detailed documentation to OwlBot, our AI-powered support tool, we’ve got everything you need to resolve queries quickly and confidently.

9. Manage Payment Hurdles

• Expect Some Declines: High volume = higher likelihood of declines.
• Have a Backup Plan: Guide customers to alternate payment methods while FastSpring filters out risky transactions.

10. Play the Long Game: Post-Purchase Retention

• Follow Up Strong: Thank-you emails, loyalty discounts, and re-engagement campaigns build lasting connections.
• Think Beyond the Weekend: Convert Cyber Weekend shoppers into holiday-season regulars and year-round fans.

FastSpring: Your Partner for the Full Season

Cyber Weekend is just the starting whistle. With FastSpring’s all-in-one payment platform — from checkout, to fraud protection, to global tax handling — you’ll be ready to win the weekend and the extended sales season ahead.

Sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

The post Your Cyber Weekend Game Plan: Maximize Conversions and Minimize Stress appeared first on FastSpring.

Mobile app installs in Asia have grown 10x since 2017. And one in five global app ad dollars now comes from Asian companies, as APAC companies target users in Western markets as well as emerging economies in Latin America and Africa. 

TikTok, born in China, is now a billion-download phenomenon across 150+ markets. 

The message is clear: APAC founders can go global.

But growth outside the region isn’t automatic. Cultural differences, varied payment preferences, and rising user acquisition (UA) costs can trip up even great apps. 

Here are five lessons to help APAC developers and founders expand successfully into global markets.

Lesson 1: Localize Beyond Translation

Localization isn’t just language — it’s currency, culture, and user experience. For example, a Udonis article reports that 87% of consumers prefer content in their native language, and one app saw downloads double in 40 days after localizing its App Store listings.

Effective localization goes beyond translating text. It means adjusting visuals, formats, and features to align with local norms. Ensure your app supports local currencies, date formats, and units so that prices and details make sense to the user. 

Adapt your marketing creatives and in-app imagery to resonate with cultural expectations (because what works in Tokyo might not work in Paris). 

A great example is how ByteDance approached TikTok’s global rollout to push fast adoption in international markets. The same Udonis article points out how ByteDance went far beyond interface translations by running country-specific challenges and trends in each market to make the app feel homegrown.

Pro tip: Test a “minimum viable localization” approach — start with app store pages and key flows, then expand once traction is proven.

Lesson 2: Match Monetization to Local Preferences

Subscription behavior looks different across regions. In Asia, monthly subscription retention is only around 75% versus around 85%-89% in the West, but annual plans perform just as well as global averages. 

That means Asian users are less loyal to monthly plans but stick with yearly commitments. Adjust your offerings accordingly by promoting discounted annual plans in APAC, while leaning into monthly trials and flexibility in North America and Europe.

Payment methods also make or break conversions.

In Europe, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services like Klarna are expected checkout options, with 85M+ active Klarna users. 

Brazil’s Pix now outpaces credit cards, processing 64B transactions in 2024. 

And in China and India, users expect Alipay, WeChat Pay, or UPI.

The point is to meet users where they are. If you only offer USD + credit cards, you’ll miss out. Platforms like FastSpring help by supporting local currencies and payment methods without requiring you to set up entities in each market.

Lesson 3: Use Hybrid Monetization to Maximize Revenue

Relying on just ads or just subscriptions limits growth. Hybrid models that mix ads, subscriptions, and in-app purchases (IAPs) are now mainstream. AppsFlyer reports that 43% percent of gaming apps use a hybrid model, and the concept applies beyond games. 

Consider the case of Viva Republica, the South Korean fintech behind the Toss app. Traditionally, finance apps avoided ads for fear of ruining UX, but according to a Think With Google article, Toss experimented with adding non-intrusive, native ads into its app’s rewards section. 

The result? A nearly 3x growth in ad revenue within a year and the company’s first-ever profitable quarter, all while keeping users happy with the experience. 

For APAC apps expanding globally, a freemium hybrid approach works well:

1. Free tier with ads or limited features.
2. Premium tier with no ads + extras.

This lets you capture both budget-conscious and high-value users. The key is thoughtful execution. Ads should enhance — not annoy — and premium tiers must deliver real value.

Lesson 4: Acquire Users Strategically

User acquisition (UA) costs vary dramatically by region. In 2024, the average cost per install (CPI) was ~$5 in the U.S. vs. just $0.30 in LATAM — a 17x difference! Within APAC, costs can vary as well: An install in Japan or Australia typically costs a lot more than one in India or Vietnam. 

These variations mean you should allocate your UA budget carefully. 

Balance your spend across high-value but expensive markets (e.g., the U.S.) and lower-cost growth regions (e.g., Southeast Asia, LATAM).

Adapt your acquisition channels. In China, for example, you’re more likely to rely on local Android stores and WeChat; in Europe, experiment with carriers or BNPL partnerships; in the U.S., TikTok and influencer campaigns are strong bets.

And make sure to localize your creative pieces. What resonates in Seoul won’t land the same way in San Francisco.

Retention is as critical as acquisition. Remarketing campaigns in APAC now outpace new UA efforts, because keeping an existing user is cheaper than winning a new one. Track 7-day and 30-day retention by region and double down on re-engagement tactics where needed. 

Lesson 5: Get Started With Direct Monetization (and Stay Compliant)

App store commissions eat 15%-30% of your revenue. With regulatory shifts loosening Apple’’s and Google’s grips on the market, more developers are embracing direct monetization (also known as “app2web”) models by selling subscriptions or in-app purchases (IAPs) via web stores or in-app webviews. 

The most obvious benefit here is higher margins (20%-30% more per transaction).

Ownership of customer data is also hugely valuable for optimizing your UA and monetization strategies further. 

Direct monetization does come with added responsibilities, however, in the form of global taxes, compliance, fraud, and payment routing. 

This is where partnering with a merchant of record like FastSpring pays off. We handle VAT, local invoicing, local payment methods (from Klarna to Pix), and compliance across the globe, letting small teams expand globally without needing to become tax or legal experts. 

Optimizing your checkout also builds trust. Mobile-friendly design, local currencies, transparent pricing, and familiar payment logos reduce abandonment and improve conversion.

Capitalize on a $600B Opportunity — and FastSpring Can Help

New global app success stories will continue to rise out of APAC. The opportunity is massive: The mobile app economy is projected to hit around $600B+ through 2025. To seize it, remember to:

1. Localize deeply.
   
2. Match monetization to regional habits.
   
3. Diversify with hybrid models.
   
4. Acquire users strategically.
   
5. Go direct and simplify compliance.

APAC founders are already known for speed and innovation. With the right mix of localization, monetization, and smart UA, your app can make the leap from regional success to global phenomenon.

Need an app-to-web payments solution to monetize your mobile app? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for mobile apps, SaaS, software, video games, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. 

Get started today: Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post 5 Moves for Mobile App Makers in APAC to Maximize Revenue appeared first on FastSpring.

For digital-first businesses, the easiest way to manage all aspects of billing is to choose a solution that acts as your merchant of record (MoR). A billing solution that acts as your MoR gives you access to multiple payment processors (which lets you accept more payment methods and is useful when accepting payments globally, as we explain below) while taking on the liability of all transactions for you. An MoR also takes the lead on chargebacks, fraud prevention, tax audits, legal compliance, and more.

When selling physical goods and services (online or in person), various Stripe alternatives built for physical goods payments (such as Amazon Pay, Square, etc.) can provide payment processing, order fulfillment, financing options, and more. (It’s worth noting that most of these solutions can also be used by SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods companies; however, none of them is a complete payment solution.)

In this guide, we compare eight of the best Stripe alternatives in each of these categories. Since our expertise is in providing MoR services to digital-first companies, we’ll start with an in-depth review of our solution, FastSpring.

Table of Contents

• MoRs for digital goods companies:
  • FastSpring: International payment solution for SaaS, software, video game, mobile app, AI, eLearning, and other digital product businesses.
  • Paddle: Payment infrastructure platform.
  • Verifone: Formerly 2Checkout.
• Billing software for selling physical goods and services:
  • Square: Popular payment platform for startups.
  • PayPal for Business: Available on major ecommerce platforms.
  • Authorize.net: For merchants and small businesses.
  • Adyen: Robust financial technology platform.
  • Amazon: Payment service and order fulfillment.

Note: Information in this article was validated at time of publishing and is subject to change.

If you’re looking for a Stripe alternative to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

All-In-One Payment Solutions (MoRs) for Digital-First Businesses

Most companies using Stripe (or something similar to Stripe) know it’s more than just a payment processing platform — but that there are challenges to making the system work for a global SaaS company. It can require tons of add-ons, a complicated pricing structure, and additional fees — and still lack or limit some key features.

For example, Stripe advertises subscription management features as part of the Stripe Billing package; however, many companies end up integrating with another service like Chargebee or Recurly to get the subscription management features and ease of use they need.

Often, digital goods businesses end up with a payment tech stack of over a dozen tools for:

• Calculating and remitting international taxes.
• Accessing additional subscription management features.
• Covering fraud protection.
• Handling chargebacks.
• Implementing a checkout.
• Getting higher authorization rates in other countries.
• And more.

Making it all work together puts a massive strain on the development team.

Plus, you’ll need to maintain a large team of tax and legal experts to stay up to date on regional regulations and maintain global compliance (because solutions like Stripe don’t usually help with legalities). For example, while it’s true that historically, SaaS and ecommerce companies haven’t always needed to pay VAT or sales tax, that’s no longer the case. If you don’t collect and remit the right amount of tax in each jurisdiction where you sell, you could face hefty fines — or even be banned from selling in that region in the future.

Choosing a payment processing solution that also acts as your MoR solves all these problems. 

A merchant of record (MoR) takes care of the entire digital goods billing process for you, including collecting and remitting local and international taxes (such as VAT and local sales tax), staying compliant with local laws and regulations, online payment processing, chargebacks, and much more.

FastSpring Is an International Payment Solution

FastSpring has been acting as an MoR for global software and video game companies for over 20 years, so we know what it takes to expand globally almost overnight. Here are some examples of how FastSpring helped other SaaS and software companies expand globally and increase revenue:

• Mailbird achieved over 100% growth by switching to FastSpring. They previously experimented with platforms like Stripe and PayPal. Read the Mailbird case study here.
• Capture One increased their conversion rate by 40% by switching from an in-house solution to FastSpring to help them with global payments. FastSpring offered them localized checkout experiences that automatically display accurate pricing, language, currency, and taxes around the world. Plus, it was clear that FastSpring is an invested partner with the scalability to grow with their business needs as Capture One expanded their global reach. Read the Capture One case study here.
• SocialBee doubled its monthly recurring revenue and managed tax compliance by switching from Braintree to FastSpring. Read the SocialBee case study here.

Next, we’ll take a deep dive into a few of FastSpring’s billing solutions. 

Note: The following solutions are also offered to digital-first businesses selling downloadable software, video games, app subscriptions, and other digital products. 

Leverage Multiple Payment Processors to Increase Revenue

Many digital-first companies and founding teams initially think they just need one payment processor to accept payments. However, most of those companies eventually end up needing more in order to:

• Accept more payment methods: Customers are more likely to complete a purchase if they can use their preferred payment method. However, not every payment processor supports the same list of payment methods. Working with multiple payment processors lets you accept more local payment methods and, therefore, increase revenue.
• Increase authorization rates for international transactions: Card networks are more likely to authorize transactions when the payment processor is in the same country as the buyer. Some payment processors will establish a legal entity in multiple locations; however, most companies still need to work with multiple payment processors in order to process all payments locally. 
• Accept payments from more countries: Some payment processors only support payments from select countries or regions. Working with multiple payment processors lets you reach customers in more locations.
• Minimize failed payments: Working with multiple payment processors can also solve connectivity issues or system failures. If one payment processor is experiencing a network failure, you can reroute the transaction to a payment processor that’s fully operational. 

With FastSpring, you’ll be supported by multiple payment processors that specialize in global transactions and accept the most common payment options around the world — including but not limited to Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfers, SEPA, Amazon Pay, Pix, AliPay, UPI, and more (with more added all the time).

Click here to see the full list of payment methods accepted by FastSpring.

FastSpring connects with multiple international payment gateways, and our platform uses intelligent payment routing to send each payment to the gateway with the highest authorization rates for that payment method and location. Then, if a transaction fails, we automatically retry the transaction using a secondary payment processor.

Related: Top 10 International Payment Gateways: An In-Depth Guide

Prevent Fraudulent Transactions Without Blocking Valid Transactions 

The right fraud protection can help you increase authorization rates, decrease chargebacks, and protect your company from attacks. However, if legitimate transactions get marked as fraud, you’ll lose revenue.

FastSpring takes the lead on fraud and risk activities by partnering with Sift for advanced risk analysis and fraud protection. Sift uses machine learning and AI to analyze millions of global transactions each month to identify risky transactions with higher accuracy. This means your fraud protection is constantly evolving to provide better security and improve approval rates.

FastSpring can also block transactions from countries and jurisdictions where companies are currently not allowed to do business. 

Note: You also have the option to block transactions from certain regions or limit products in each region.

If one of your customers does initiate a chargeback, or there’s an issue with fraud, FastSpring takes the lead to resolve it for you.

Discover more and read FAQs about FastSpring’s GDPR and PCI compliance, how FastSpring helps protect against high-risk transactions, and more.

Avoid High Fines and Penalties by Letting FastSpring Handle Local Legal Compliance for You

Even if all legitimate transactions go through, you could face hefty fines or be prevented from transacting in that region if the transactions don’t comply with local laws and regulations. (For example, the Reserve Bank of India limits automatic recurring payments to ₹15,000 INR, or approximately US$170; transaction attempts above that amount simply won’t go through.) 

Most companies need a full compliance department of legal professionals to keep up to date with all the laws and regulations of each jurisdiction they do business in. 

You can also face fines or penalties if you don’t file consumption tax. SaaS companies didn’t always have to pay tax, but tax regulations for digital sales are changing and being increasingly enforced.

Companies that use Stripe (or another point solution) must handle tax on their own. While Stripe will help gather sales tax, you’ll need other software to collect VAT, GST, and other forms of consumption tax. Plus, you’ll need a staff of tax experts to remit the tax at the end of each tax period. 

FastSpring handles the whole process of calculating, collecting, and remitting global sales and consumption taxes for you by: 

• Collecting all consumption tax (including GST, VAT, SST, etc.) and remitting it at the appropriate times.
• Taking the lead on legal compliance (including audits).

FastSpring collects and files taxes in more than 55 countries, 13 provinces, and all 45 U.S. states with sales tax (the other five states don’t collect sales tax). We even handle tax-exempt transactions in the U.S. and B2B reverse charges (when and where allowed) internationally.

FastSpring is fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Additionally, we renew our level one certification — which is the highest level possible — with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) every year. FastSpring also participates in the Data Privacy Framework (DPF) for international data transfers. Learn more at our Trust Center.

We build and maintain relationships worldwide with tax law specialists who keep us aware and up to date on laws and regulations as they change.

Manage Everything From Checkout to Subscriptions in One Platform

Instead of building and onboarding a payment stack of over a dozen different solutions to help you manage subscriptions, checkout experiences, reporting, analytics, and more, FastSpring lets companies streamline and manage all aspects of digital goods billing directly from their FastSpring dashboard. 

Below is a brief overview of these features. For a complete list of features (including digital invoicing and interactive quotes) visit FastSpring’s product overview page.

Custom, Localized, and Optimized Checkout Experience

FastSpring gives you full control over your checkout process with our Store Builder Library (SBL). You can customize your checkout, and our team will offer personalized customer support along the way.

We also offer three pre-built experiences. With minimal code, you can embed the FastSpring checkout into a web page or insert a pop-up checkout. Or, if you want to outsource the entire checkout process, you can choose the web storefront option to send customers to a secure web storefront managed entirely by FastSpring. You can also customize the storefront to match the visual branding of your website.

Whichever checkout experience you choose, FastSpring can automatically localize your checkout based on the customer’s location, including translation into 21+ languages and price conversion to many local currencies. You can also set your own language, currency, and price for each region or opt to let your customers choose for themselves.

Related: International Recurring Payments (How We Handle It for You)

Subscription Management

FastSpring lets you create a variety of custom trial and recurring billing models without writing a line of code. You can set up:

• Automatic weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom recurring billing.
• Prorated billing to accommodate upgrades — and downgrades — mid cycle.
• Free or paid trials of any length.
• Trials with or without collecting payment details.
• Automatic or manual renewal.
• Upsells, cross-sells, one-time add-ons, and discounts.
• Automatic failure handling, notifications, and retries to reduce churn.
• B2B digital invoicing.
• And much more.

You‘ll also have access to FastSpring’s developer-friendly API and webhooks library to build more complex custom subscription logic and integrations.

If you want to see how FastSpring compares to Chargebee, read this article. 

Dunning Management

FastSpring handles all failed payments and customer notifications for you — simply choose how you want it handled, and we take care of the rest. Our platform offers flexible dunning management options, which include: 

• Proactive reminders when payment information needs updating. Automatically send flexible, custom email reminders to your customers before a debit or credit card expires. We offer a pre-made email template — or you can customize your own email and set it to send two, five, seven, 14, or 21 days after a payment failure.
• Automatically retry failed payments. FastSpring retries the original payment method multiple times, including before sending each reminder email.
• Flexible failed payment logic. Continue (or pause) service until the last notification has been sent out. Pause (or cancel) the service once all notifications have been sent out and the payment is still getting declined.

With FastSpring, your customers will also have an easy-to-access and intuitive self-serve Customer Account Portal where they can view their order history, update payment information, and manage their subscriptions. The portal is managed by FastSpring but matches the branding of your checkout for a cohesive customer experience.

Reporting and Analytics

While Stripe does offer revenue recognition tools for accounting purposes, many SaaS companies using Stripe end up adding a reporting and customer analytics tool to give them more insight into stats such as MRR, churn rate, new customers by product type or geography, and more. 

FastSpring’s Reporting and Analytics, on the other hand, is a robust suite built for digital products businesses. You can view key performance indicators (KPI) for your customer base and subscription models to better understand:

• How each product contributes to your bottom line. 
• When customers are most likely to drop off.
• What coupons or promotions are working.
• Which subscription models generate the most revenue.
• Where your customers are located.
• What currencies and payment methods customers prefer.
• Chargeback rates by customer segment.
• Chargeback rates by product line.
• The status of your active webhooks.
• And much more.

Our platform features several dashboards, which include:

• Revenue Overview.
• Subscription Overview.
• Revenue Recognition.
• Chargeback Overview.
• Webhook Status.

If you don’t see exactly what you need, you can create and save your own custom reports. You can also reach out to our team for help finding or building the report you need. Export and share reports as a CSV, PNG, or XLSX file. 

For a complete list of features — including Digital Invoicing and Interactive Quotes — visit our website.

One Simple Pricing Model; All the Benefits

Most payment processors (like Stripe) typically charge a low processing fee; however, they’ll charge extra for features such as subscription management, additional payment method support, tax collection, and more. 

They’ll also usually pass along transaction fees such as network/scheme downgrade fees.

Plus, you’ll have to pay for any additional software needed for a complete billing solution — and the staff to manage the entire process. 

For most companies, what starts as seemingly low, flat-rate pricing ends up being an expensive route to take.

On the other hand, FastSpring manages your entire digital goods billing process for one flat rate. You’ll get access to our whole platform — including every feature and all services — in a single comprehensive package. 

Our team works with you to find an affordable monthly fee based on your transaction volume (and you’ll only be charged for successful transactions). Plus, you won’t need any additional software or headcount since we’re liable for transactions and take the lead on sales tax and VAT.

If you’re looking for a Stripe alternative to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Paddle: Payment Infrastructure Platform

Paddle is another Stripe alternative that acts as an MoR for SaaS and software companies. Paddle has features such as: 

• Multiple payment gateways.
• Secure checkout.
• Recurring billing management.
• A robust payments toolkit.
• Fraud protection.
• Transaction and subscription reporting.
• Invoicing. 
• And more.

Learn more about Paddle alternatives.

Verifone: Formerly 2Checkout

Verifone is a Stripe alternative that can act as your MoR or just as a payment service provider. This gives them the flexibility to support small- to medium-sized companies in different industries offering both in-person and online goods or services (e.g., retail and hospitality). 

Verifone functionalities include:

• Integrated point-of-sale (POS).
• Kiosks.
• Subscription management.
• Hosted checkout.
• Partner sales channel management.
• And more.

Some of these features are included with Verifone packages, while others are add-ons with their own additional fees.

With over 20 years of experience serving international software companies, FastSpring is one of the longest-standing MoRs for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products companies. Use our expertise to help grow your business quickly. To learn more, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

Stripe Alternative Billing Software for Selling Physical Goods and Services

While digital product companies can use almost any billing solution to sell their product (although some will be more effective than others), not every solution will be effective for companies selling physical goods or services. Companies selling physical goods and services need solutions that can manage both online and in-person transactions. 

When selling physical goods or services, most companies end up using two or more software solutions to build a complete billing solution. However, there are ways to minimize how many you need and how much it will cost you. The best place to start is to carefully consider your current needs (e.g., are you selling in person and online?) and plan for your future needs (e.g., are you a new business owner who might want to start selling online in the future?). 

Then, you can evaluate each billing solution by asking a few key questions: 

• How many aspects of billing does the software cover? Is each offering truly sufficient for your current needs (e.g., maybe they offer a subscription billing solution but don’t support the business model you need)? Do the features leave room for your company to grow?
• Does their pricing model allow you to get all features for one price, or will you have to pay extra for the features you need? Will the price be sustainably cost effective long term, as your company grows?
• Does the software offer seamless integration with other software you use?
• Is the software user friendly? 

Next, we cover five Stripe competitors for companies selling physical goods and services to help you get started with your search. 

Square: Popular Payment Platform for Startups

Square is a popular point-of-sale solution for companies of all sizes. With Square, you can accept payments from your online store, in-person, or via social media. Beyond payment processing, Square also offers solutions for: 

• Virtual terminals (so you can accept credit card payments using your computer).
• Business management.
• Customer engagement.
• Banking (including merchant accounts, savings accounts, and loans).
• Team management (including payroll, time off, etc.).
• And more.

PayPal for Business: Available on Major Ecommerce Platforms 

PayPal is a well-known digital wallet for personal online payments; however, they also offer payment processing for both online and brick-and-mortar businesses. PayPal supports debit card and credit card processing in store or from your online business.

(Digital-first businesses using FastSpring can also process payments using PayPal.)

PayPal for Business also includes: 

• QR code and POS systems.
• Donation tools.
• Built-in integrations with major ecommerce shopping carts (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, and more).
• Risk management and chargeback protection.
• Mass payouts.
• And more.

Note: PayPal also has a payments option called PayPal Enterprise Payments (formerly Braintree) that offers your own merchant account.

Authorize.net: For Merchants and Small Businesses

Authorize.net (a Visa solution) is a payment service provider that supports mobile payments, phone payments, and ACH. They also provide a card reader for in-person payments and support online purchases. 

Other features offered by Authorize.net include: 

• Simple checkout button.
• Recurring payments.
• Digital invoicing.
• Advanced fraud detection.
• Optional merchant account bundle.
• And more.

Adyen: Robust Financial Technology Platform

Adyen is an end-to-end solution for payment processing, data, and financial management. In addition to payment processing, Adyen offers features such as: 

• Virtual and physical card creation.
• Tools to optimize traffic in real time.
• Fraud detection.
• Automated dunning.
• Business bank accounts for your users.
• And more.

Amazon Pay: Payment Service and Order Fulfillment

Amazon Pay lets your customers use the payment information already stored in their Amazon account on your website. You can use Amazon Pay as a stand-alone payment solution without becoming an Amazon Marketplaces seller — or you can easily use Amazon Pay on your own website and become an Amazon merchant (which gives you the option for fulfillment by Amazon).

Amazon Pay includes: 

• Optimized checkout flow (modeled after Amazon’s own).
• Co-marketing campaigns.
• Self-service reporting dashboard.
• Fraud protection.
• Easy integration tools.
• And more.

Note: With FastSpring, your customers can pay using Amazon Pay and many other payment methods. 

Need a Stripe Alternative for Your SaaS, Software, Video Game, Mobile App, or Other Digital Product?

Let FastSpring help!

FastSpring lets you manage every aspect of global payments from one platform — without managing tons of different software solutions. We shoulder the liability for online transactions and take the lead on VAT and sales tax management, regulatory compliance across the globe, and much more for you. 

If you’re looking for a Stripe alternative to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, and other digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

This post was originally published in January 2023 and has been updated.

The post Stripe Alternatives for 2025: In-Depth Guide and 8 Options appeared first on FastSpring.

Your potential customers are no longer just Googling “best project management software” or “CRM for small business.” They’re asking ChatGPT to compare your product features, getting personalized recommendations from AI tools, and discovering solutions through conversations rather than traditional search results.

Google still handles more than 5 trillion searches annually, but that dominance is beginning to fray. As highlighted by recent industry research from Pubcon 2025, we’re experiencing a foundational shift: Search is no longer synonymous with search engines. From ChatGPT to social platforms, potential customers are finding software solutions outside of Google — and AI is accelerating this trend.

According to recent survey data, 66% of consumers believe AI will replace traditional search engines within five years, and 82% say AI-powered search is already more helpful than traditional search. 

This shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity for SaaS companies trying to reach customers earlier in their decision-making process.

How AI Search Changes SaaS Discovery

AI search doesn’t behave like traditional search engines, and this has significant implications for how customers discover and evaluate software solutions.

As industry expert Ryan Jones of Razorfish noted, “We used to optimize for humans who use Google. Now we’re optimizing for AI that reads Google for humans.” For SaaS companies, this shift changes everything about customer acquisition.

1. AI Search Provides Direct Answers

Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini synthesize information about your software directly in their interfaces. When someone asks, “What’s the best email marketing platform for ecommerce?,” they often get a comprehensive answer without ever visiting your website. 

Your product pages are no longer the destination — the conversation is the destination.

2. AI Uses ‘Query Fan-Out’ for Software Recommendations

When potential customers ask AI tools about software solutions, these tools don’t just process the exact query. Instead, they generate dozens of related sub-queries to gather comprehensive information about features, pricing, integrations, and use cases. 

This means that your content needs to address not just primary keywords, but the entire ecosystem of questions around your product category.

3. Product Information Is Atomized

AI doesn’t treat your website as a collection of pages. Instead, it ingests and references specific passages about features, pricing, integrations, and benefits. 

Every piece of content on your site — from feature descriptions to help articles — must be self-contained and structured for AI comprehension.

“We used to optimize for humans who use Google. Now we’re optimizing for AI that reads Google for humans.”

Ryan Jones, Razorfish

What This Means for SaaS Marketers

The ground is shifting rapidly, but SaaS companies can take specific actions now to maintain visibility and capture customers in this new landscape:

1. Optimize for AI-Driven Product Discovery

Traditional SEO still matters, but SaaS companies need to think beyond basic optimization. Your technical foundation — site speed, structured data, clean internal linking — remains crucial. But success now requires:

• Structuring product information for AI comprehension: Create clear, self-contained descriptions of features, use cases, and benefits. Avoid marketing speak that obscures actual functionality.
• Eliminating content bloat: Remove or consolidate weak product pages, outdated feature descriptions, and redundant content that confuses AI models about your core offerings.
• Thinking in terms of buyer intent: Structure content around the questions potential customers actually ask, not just the keywords they might search for.

2. Create Content That Answers Software Buyers’ Questions

If your product descriptions are vague, rely on industry jargon, or require context from other pages, they may be ignored by AI tools when customers ask for software recommendations.

Instead, focus on:

• Clear, benefit-focused feature descriptions that stand alone without additional context.
• Comprehensive FAQ sections addressing common software evaluation questions.
• Comparison content that honestly positions your product against alternatives.
• Implementation guides and use case examples that demonstrate real-world value.
• Integration documentation that’s easily discoverable and understandable.

The goal is to ensure AI tools have complete, accurate information about your software when making recommendations to potential customers.

3. Track AI Visibility and Expand Your Presence

Only 22% of B2B marketers currently track their brand visibility in large language models, representing a significant missed opportunity for SaaS companies where word-of-mouth and recommendations drive significant growth.

• Monitor AI mentions: Use tools like SERP Recon and BrightEdge to understand how often your product appears in AI-generated responses. Track whether these mentions are accurate and favorable.
• Build authoritative presence beyond search: Strengthen your visibility across channels where software buyers gather information:
  • Develop thought leadership content for industry publications.
  • Participate actively in relevant communities (Reddit, Discord, industry forums).
  • Create educational content for YouTube and podcast platforms.
  • Engage with software review sites and comparison platforms.
• Invest in digital PR and partnerships: Build relationships with industry influencers, participate in software roundups, and collaborate with complementary tools to increase your citation potential.

The New SaaS Marketing Playbook

AI search is no longer emerging — it’s here, and it’s already changing how customers discover software solutions. Organic traffic patterns are shifting, traditional keyword strategies are losing effectiveness, and customers are getting recommendations from AI before they ever reach your website.

This doesn’t mean traditional marketing is dead. It means SaaS marketing is evolving toward a more distributed, conversation-focused approach.

Focus on being discoverable across channels where your customers seek recommendations, not just via search engines.

Focus on content that educates and informs rather than just on converting visitors that are already on your site.

Focus on brand visibility that transcends individual marketing channels and builds authority in AI knowledge bases.

The companies that thrive in this new landscape won’t be those that game the algorithm, but those that consistently provide clear, helpful information about their software solutions wherever customers are looking for answers.

For SaaS, software, and digital product companies, this shift represents an opportunity to build more authentic relationships with potential customers by meeting them where they are — in conversations with AI tools, community discussions, and educational content — rather than waiting for them to find you through traditional search.

The post How AI Search Is Revolutionizing SaaS Marketing, and What You Should Do About It appeared first on FastSpring.

Many companies that expand globally reach a point where they can’t properly support their international customers with their current payment platform. They’ll start noticing issues like low conversion rates, low authorization rates, more chargebacks, and an overall plateau in global growth. That’s when many start looking at other solutions such as international payment gateways. 

Even the best international payment gateways can help with some of these issues, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. To accept payments internationally, you also need to offer local payment methods, collect and remit VAT and sales taxes, adhere to local transaction laws and regulations, and much more.

In this post, we clarify what an international payment gateway is, how it fits into the payment processing landscape, and how to choose the best one for your business. Then we compare nine of the top payment solutions, starting with a deep-dive into our solution, FastSpring. 

Table of Contents

• What is an international payment gateway?
• Factors to consider when choosing the best international payment gateway.
• FastSpring: Merchant of record for global SaaS companies.
• 8 other international payment gateways for SaaS and non-SaaS businesses.

FastSpring handles everything from maintaining high authorization rates to filing and remitting monthly and quarterly sales tax and VAT for SaaS companies. Sign up for a free account or request a demo today to see how FastSpring can help you expand globally.

FAQs About International Payment Gateways 

What Is an International Payment Gateway?

Traditionally, payment gateways and payment processors were offered as two separate services, and you would have different providers for each service:

• Payment gateways quickly and securely transfer the payment details from the checkout software to the payment processor.
• Payment processors verify that all necessary information is present and in the correct format and then carry it to the issuing bank or credit card network for final authorization. Some payment gateways integrate with multiple payment processors behind the scenes to optimize performance.

Fast forward to today, and these two services are often offered together, which is why many companies use these terms interchangeably.

For the remainder of this post, if we mention one, we assume the other is included.

Why Do You Want Your Payment Processor to Be International?

International payment processors let you immediately start accepting preferred payments from around the globe. Without an international payment processor, you could be locked out of cross-border transactions, your approval rates will suffer, and your associated transaction fees and processing fees will also suffer.

International payment processors take on the responsibility of staying in good standing with various payment schemes across different countries and localities, so you don’t have to.

Related: International Recurring Payments (How We Handle It for You)

Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best International Payment Gateway

When choosing an international payment gateway, the most important thing to consider is whether or not they also act as your merchant of record. 

A merchant of record (MoR) takes on the liability of SaaS transactions for you, which means they handle payment processing, collecting and remitting taxes, staying compliant with local laws and regulations, chargeback management, and much more. If something goes wrong in any of these areas, your MoR is liable and takes the lead to resolve it for you.

If your payment gateway does not act as your MoR, then you’re on your own to:

• Calculate tax, collect tax from your customers, and remit those taxes to the local government — everywhere you do business.
• Understand and adhere to local transaction laws and regulations.
• Improve conversions with an optimized checkout flow.
• Handle chargebacks and fraud.
• And make myriad more checkout, payment, and risk decisions.

Many payment processors will provide an API or built-in integrations with other solutions that will help you with those things. However, you’ll have to manage that entire software stack and you’ll still be held liable for everything from paying taxes to fraud prevention to remaining compliant with regulations everywhere your customers live. 

If taxes aren’t paid correctly, for example, you may face huge fines or be prevented from transacting in that region. 

Once you’ve determined if the payment gateway also acts as an MoR, there are two other factors to consider:  

1. What countries they let you transact in (it will differ with each payment gateway provider).
2. How they maintain high authorization rates (there are many reasons a payment can fail, even if you have a good relationship with the card network).

Next, we’ll take a deep dive into how FastSpring acts as your MoR, then we’ll compare nine other international payment gateway providers.

FastSpring: Merchant of Record for Global SaaS, Software, Gaming, and Mobile App Companies

Expanding your business globally is a very complex process that includes everything from localizing your website to learning about each region’s laws and regulations. To add to the complexity, many of these systems and regulations constantly change. 

The tax landscape for digital goods companies has dramatically shifted. Where once businesses selling SaaS, software, and apps faced fewer obligations than traditional brick-and-mortar stores, they now often contend with more stringent tax requirements. To complicate matters further, tax rates and filing requirements at the local level can change regularly and without warning. Businesses must diligently monitor these shifting regulations to prevent significant penalties from late, missed, or incorrect payments. 

And this is just one piece of what you need to manage international transactions. 

With FastSpring, you can scale almost instantly to over 200+ regions, because we:

• Stay in good standing with dozens of payment providers around the world so you can accept popular local payment methods (including but not limited to Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH bank transfers, SEPA, Amazon Pay, Pix, AliPay, UPI, and more).
• Collect and remit indirect tax (including GST, VAT, SST, etc.) for every transaction and file all necessary tax returns for you. 
• Take on the responsibility of adhering to local transaction laws and regulations. Our team of legal experts stays up to date on all relevant legalities and makes sure all the necessary procedures are in place for collecting payments. 
• Handle currency conversions and checkout localization.

FastSpring is fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Additionally, we renew our level one certification (which is the highest level possible) with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) every year. FastSpring also conducts an annual SOC 2 Type II assessment.

Visit FastSpring’s Trust Center for more information.

In the following sections, we cover in detail how FastSpring helps you: 

• Achieve high authorization rates in 200+ regions with advanced payment failure handling and local payment methods.
• Increase conversions with an optimized checkout experience.
• Reduce involuntary churn with proactive dunning.
• Handle complex billing logic and free trials without code.
• Scale quickly with transparent flat-rate pricing.

Achieve High Authorization Rates in 200+ Regions with Advanced Payment Failure Handling and Local Payment Processing

Many companies are able to maintain high authorization rates in their home country but quickly see a decline in authorization rates when they expand internationally. 

This is because transacting globally is much more complicated — so more things can go wrong. 

For example, the card network or issuing bank could mark the transaction as suspicious (and therefore deny authorization) because the seller isn’t in the same country as the buyer.

It can be very difficult — and a drain on resources — to identify what’s making the payments fail and find a way to solve those issues on your own. 

As your payment processing solution and MoR, FastSpring takes care of maintaining high authorization rates for you. Here are two ways that we maintain high authorization rates. 

1. Payment Processor Rerouting

While payments can fail for simple reasons like low funds or inaccurate payment details, payments can also fail because of network or system failures. If a payment fails on the first attempt, FastSpring tries again using a secondary processor. While this won’t solve issues like low funds, it often solves the issue of network or system failures. 

2. Local Payment Processors

Card networks and issuing banks are more likely to authorize transactions when the payment processor is in the same country as the buyer. FastSpring connects with multiple international payment gateways and uses intelligent payment routing to send payments through the gateway that offers the highest authorization rates for that location (and payment method).

Increase Conversions With an Optimized Checkout Experience

Before the payment details are even sent to the payment gateway, there are many reasons a customer may abandon the checkout process. For example:  

• They have to create an account in order to purchase and don’t want to.
• Additional fees and taxes are added but not clearly labeled, so the customer doesn’t know why the price is different.
• The checkout screen isn’t clearly labeled as secure, so the customer doesn’t feel safe entering personal information.
• Checkout translation and localization is incorrect, inconsistent, or missing, so the customer questions the store’s legitimacy.

FastSpring helps you reduce checkout abandonment and improve conversion rates with:

• Localized checkout. FastSpring can automatically convert currency for you, or you can choose your own fixed price for each product in each currency. You can let FastSpring select the language and local currency based on the customer’s location, set your own language and currency for each, or allow customers to select their preference from the 21+ languages and many local currencies FastSpring supports.

• Complete visual customization with Store Builder Library (SBL). Most payment gateways only provide checkout templates with a few basic options for customization (like adding your logo or choosing from a preset list of colors). FastSpring gives you the tools, functionality, and personalized support needed to customize, brand, and streamline your entire checkout flow. (We also provide a pre-built template that is optimized for high conversion rates.)
• An embedded, pop-up, or web storefront checkout. With FastSpring, you can embed checkout directly on your website, insert a popup checkout, or send customers to a secure web storefront managed by FastSpring. This gives you the flexibility to choose the solution that’s best for your team and customers. 

Reduce Involuntary Churn With Proactive Dunning Management and Revenue Recovery

Successfully converting potential buyers to paying customers is just the first step. For SaaS businesses, additional payment issues often come up between that initial purchase and subsequent billings. The most common way to deal with payment failures is to simply notify the customer; however, you’ll need to do more — like send out multiple reminders — if you want to significantly reduce involuntary churn.

FastSpring provides flexible dunning management, which includes: 

• Proactive reminders to update payment information. FastSpring will notify customers with flexible, custom email reminders when their debit or credit card is expiring. You can use our pre-made email template or customize your own message to be sent two, five, seven, 14, and 21 days after the initial failure.
• Multiple automatic payment retries. Before sending out each reminder, FastSpring automatically retries the existing payment method, minimizing disruption for customers and protecting your business from unnecessary failed transactions. 

• Easy to access self-serve Customer Account Portal. FastSpring provides an easy-to-access website where your customers can view their complete order history and manage their subscriptions and payment methods. This self-serve website is entirely managed by FastSpring, but the appearance of the portal will match the branding of your checkout to provide customers with a cohesive and user-friendly customer experience.

You can choose how many reminders it takes before the customer’s service is paused. We’ve found that allowing the service to continue through the first several reminders reduces involuntary churn and provides a better user experience. 

After the final reminder, you have the flexibility to choose whether to pause or cancel their service if they fail to update their payment information. Pausing their service makes it easier for them to restart service without going through the entire onboarding process again. 

Handle Complex Billing Logic and Trials Without Code

Building out recurring billing logic internally is often a drain on developer time, and it’s difficult to maintain. While some international payment gateways will support subscription billing, most providers only offer basic options (e.g., a free trial that automatically turns into monthly billing).

FastSpring, on the other hand, offers a wide variety of flexible subscription management options for free trials, billing periods, and payment — built specifically with SaaS and digital product companies in mind. Here’s an overview of the options you have with FastSpring’s recurring billing feature: 

• Free or paid trial periods of any length.
• Trials with or without collecting payment information upfront.
• Upsells, cross-sells, one-time add-ons, and discounts.
• Prorated billing to accommodate mid-cycle upgrades — or downgrades.
• Automatic weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom recurring billing cycles.
• Automatic or manual renewal.
• Automatic failure handling, notifications, and retries to reduce involuntary churn.
• B2B digital invoicing.
• And many more.

Most of these options can be set up in just a few clicks, without writing any code.

If you need custom subscription logic, you’ll have access to our API and webhooks library. Plus, our experienced developers are readily available to help you create the best solution for your business model.

Don’t forget: Without a global MoR like FastSpring, you’re responsible for ensuring your recurring billing models follow any and all local transaction laws and regulations. FastSpring handles this — and takes on the associated liability — for you.

Note: If you already have subscriptions set up on another ecommerce platform, our team can help you migrate over to FastSpring. Learn more here.

Related: Create, Manage, and Localize Your Digital Invoices

Scale Quickly With a Single Comprehensive Package 

With most payment processors, you’ll have to add additional software to your stack to manage recurring billing, taxes, dunning, etc. Additionally, many payment processors charge extra for each feature beyond processing payments. This makes it difficult to know what you’ll be paying, and the costs can rack up quickly as you grow.

FastSpring doesn’t charge extra for each feature. With FastSpring, you get access to the entire platform — and all services — for one simple, flat-rate price. Instead of charging per feature, our team works with you to find an affordable, monthly fee based on the volume of transactions you move through FastSpring. Plus, you won’t need to pay for or manage any additional software or headcount to handle things such as sales tax and VAT.

FastSpring is more than just an international payment gateway or payment services provider — we’re a merchant of record that can help grow your business internationally. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, and digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

8 Other International Payment Gateways and Other Payments Options

Verifone

Verifone (formerly 2Checkout) is a secure payment platform for digital goods and retail. Their solutions include: 

• Subscription management.
• Reporting and analytics.
• Global tax and financial services.
• Risk management and compliance.
• Partner sales channel management.

Some of these features are offered for an additional price as an add-on. Verifone is the only other option in this list that offers MoR services. They let you choose between an MoR model and payment service provider model. 

Stripe

Stripe is a popular cross-border payment processing platform that offers many different solutions, including: 

• A prebuilt or customizable payment form and checkout flow.
• Simple subscription management.
• Fraud prevention and risk management.
• Online invoicing.
• In-person payments.

Stripe can also assist you in issuing virtual and physical cards and help you manage business spend. It’s also fairly easy to set up and integrate with other systems. However, Stripe does not act as an MoR, and many of their features are à la carte and must be bundled, which can create a higher cost than it initially appears.

PayPal

PayPal is both a payment processor and a popular digital wallet (not an MoR). PayPal supports online businesses and brick-and-mortar businesses, with services including: 

• QR code and POS systems.
• Invoicing.
• Installment payment management.
• Support for preferred payment methods (other than PayPal’s digital wallet).
• Crypto payments.
• Risk management and chargeback protection.

PayPal now also has Braintree under its umbrella as PayPal Enterprise Payments.

Authorize.net

Authorize.net offers payment solutions for ecommerce merchants and in-person sales. Authorize.net’s products include: 

• Recurring payments.
• Virtual and mobile point of sale.
• Online payment processing.
• Advanced fraud detection.
• Simple checkout button.

They offer a package for payment gateways, or you can choose a bundle that includes a merchant account (different from a business bank account). Authorize.net serves companies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Adyen

Adyen is an end-to-end payment processing, data, and financial management solution. Here’s an overview of Adyen’s features:

• Online and in-person debit card and credit card payments.
• Fraud detection.
• Intelligent payment routing.
• Automated dunning.
• Subscription management.

Adyen serves companies offering digital goods, transportation services, retail, food and beverage, hospitality, and SaaS and subscription businesses. 

WorldPay (Formerly by FIS)

WorldPay, a global payment processing solution, announced in February 2024 that it had separated from Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. to become its own independent company. WorldPay’s features include:

• Hosted payment page.
• Multi-currency support.
• Support for many alternative payment methods, including mobile payments, digital wallets, pre-pay, and more.
• 24/7 support in most global regions.

While WorldPay can give you instant global reach, payment processing is just one of their many offerings, so you may not receive as personalized attention as if you used a more specialized payments company or MoR. 

Amazon Pay

Amazon Pay lets your customers use the account they’ve already set up on Amazon to pay you. When customers go to checkout on your ecommerce site, they’ll see Amazon Pay as an option and will be able to use the payment options and contact information already stored in their account. Amazon Pay includes: 

• Payment processing.
• Optimized checkout flow (modeled after Amazon’s own checkout experience).
• Recurring billing and subscription management.
• Fraud protection.
• Express payouts.

You do not need to become a seller on Amazon Marketplace to use Amazon Pay. Amazon Pay may be a good option for small businesses and online stores that are just getting started. 

Note: You can accept Amazon Pay with FastSpring. 

Checkout.com

Checkout.com offers: 

• Payment processing.
• Fraud detection.
• Chargeback protection and dispute management.
• Customizable checkout blocks and mobile SDK.

They also offer flexible incoming payment options that let you choose how to allocate money from split payments to commission fees. Checkout.com partners with over 50+ other vendors so you can build your global payment system. 

Looking at International Payment Gateways for Your SaaS, Software, Video Games, or Digital Products Business? 

Let FastSpring be your merchant of record!

If you’re looking for an international payments solution that lets you manage every aspect of global SaaS payments from one platform — and handles taxes and compliance for you — FastSpring can help.

Our all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, and digital products businesses includes VAT and sales tax management, payment and checkout localization, and customer support — so you can focus on building a great product. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

This post was originally published in December 2022 and has been updated.

The post International Payment Gateways: An In-Depth Guide and 9 Payments Options appeared first on FastSpring.

With 25+ years of experience spanning Comcast, Fiserv, and Digital River, Jeremy has seen it all — from brazen carding attacks to operationally overwhelming waves of chargebacks. In this discussion, he breaks down how fraudsters operate, the costly mistakes companies make, and what you can do to stay ahead.

Listen for the full insights into:

• Why carding and account takeover attacks remain the most common (and expensive) threats to payment systems.
• How overlooking small data anomalies — like approval rates by BIN — can cost companies hefty decline fees.
• Why payment fraud isn’t just about fines, but also reputational risk, operational overload, and long-term damage to approval rates.

Listen or watch now!

Jump to video.  |  Jump to transcript.

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

The post EP35: Payment Horror Stories: The How and Why Behind the Most Vicious Attacks on Your Payment Stack appeared first on FastSpring.

Likewise, in the tech-meets-ecommerce space, there were very few SaaS companies out there, live service gaming didn’t really exist yet, and software companies wanting to sell their software globally had very, very few options.

And the options that were available left a lot to be desired. 

That’s why on June 28, 2005, four tech founders — including Dan Engel, current Founder and Managing Partner of Santa Barbara Venture Partners — got together to found FastSpring. 

Twenty years later, we’re still going strong! Now led by CEO David Nachman and backed by Accel-KKR — and with technology more advanced and stronger than ever — FastSpring is celebrating its 20th anniversary by looking back on how we got here, applauding today’s team for our current successes, and looking forward to a bright future in the payments industry as an experienced partner our customers can trust. 

In this special celebratory post, we share:

• A special twentieth anniversary episode of Growth Stage, interviewing both FastSpring’s co-founder & first CEO Dan Engel and FastSpring’s current CEO David Nachman. Jump to podcast.
• A brief history of FastSpring, with some fantastically nostalgic photos of the team throughout the years. Jump to history. 

Growth Stage Podcast EP34: What It Takes to Build an Enduring Business

Building a lasting business isn’t easy. 

Knowing what really makes a company succeed long term can be even harder.

That’s why it can be helpful to learn from companies that have stood the test of time.

In this episode of Growth Stage, we celebrate FastSpring’s 20th anniversary with insights from its first CEO, Dan Engel, and current CEO, David Nachman. They share:

• What has helped FastSpring thrive for two decades.
• What mistakes to avoid when building your own business.
• What it really takes to build something that lasts.

Whether you’re planning to exit in two years or fifty, take a moment to step back and think about the long term future of your business. Watch or listen now!

Jump to video.  |  Jump to history. |  Jump to transcript.

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

Transcript available at the end of this post.

A Brief History of FastSpring (With Photos)

FastSpring was founded in 2005 with only $30,000, by a distributed team of four tech founders who only all got connected “through the transitive property,” Dan explains. “I only knew Jason, but then he knew Ken, and Ken knew Ryan.” 

Dan had had an idea for a shopping cart upsell product — which didn’t come to fruition — but after meeting Jason Foodman in 2005, Jason pointed out that the upsell product couldn’t even exist unless they owned the shopping cart in the first place. So Dan asked, “Well, what if we create our own shopping cart?” 

And since Jason was already working with someone who wanted to create a product with the ecommerce infrastructure to compete with Digital River, FastSpring was born. 

Dan recalls that he, Jason, Ken White, and Ryan Dewell all connected remotely from four different U.S. states via email and messengers, not even meeting in person for about the first four years as they worked on FastSpring; “Maybe every six months there’d be a phone call.” Dan and Jason handled front-end sales, while Ken led “phenomenal customer service,” and Ryan “just was an awesome coder.” He recalls Ken describing Ryan as “probably the best guy on the planet to build what we were building.”

Since all four guys had been CEOs already, they were all familiar with working on their own areas without needing much guidance. “We split up the business into silos, Dan explains. “Ken handled support, Ryan development, me on the sales side and also all the CEO role, and Jason on the sales side and some other stuff too. And that worked really well.”

The First Mission of FastSpring: The Golden Rule

Just what were the founders of FastSpring trying to build? 

“I think we wanted to build a business that treated its customers the way we thought we should have been treated as software vendors,” Dan says. They each had felt wronged in some way when working with Digital River or with payment companies that weren’t built to work with software companies, so they set out to build a solution with a driving force to “put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.”

He also describes Digital River in 2005 — only about nine years old then — as already having become an inflexible “technology dinosaur.” 

“So we wanted to build that next generation system.”

“I think that’s really what our driving force was: to put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.”

Dan Engel, Co-Founder and first CEO of FastSpring

“And we thought if we were just normal, nice people that cared, we could accomplish that,” he recalls. “And we did. Took a while, but we did.”

FastSpring’s Growth Trajectory

After a humble start in 2005 with only four ambitious people and $30,000, FastSpring took a little while to get off the ground. Dan remembers that “Not raising capital, going slower, sticking with Java, sticking with one developer — all those things made us go slower.”

But FastSpring eventually began growing quickly when they became popular in the Mac software community, which became their initial niche. “Eventually, we took over for Digital River and others as kind of the leading provider for Mac developers,” Dan explains. “But until then, it was a very slow moving train and we didn’t know what was around the corner.”

Besides having next generation technology and blowing away customers with service, FastSpring also offered pricing that contemporary competitors couldn’t beat.

“So how do you get anyone to switch away from FastSpring? They didn’t. We had retained I think 98.7 % of our customers, year after year after year, in an SMB business with thousands of customers,” Dan recalls. “I’m a venture capitalist now; I invest in software companies. I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.”

“I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.”

Dan Engel, Co-Founder and first CEO of FastSpring

By 2010, FastSpring had grown significantly, with Deloitte & Touche’s 2011 Technology Fast 500 awards ranking FastSpring the #1 fastest-growing company in the Greater L.A. area and #13 in North America. 

Then in 2018, Accel-KKR purchased a majority stake in FastSpring. By then, FastSpring counted companies such as Microsoft and Adobe among its customers, with services provided by around 80 FastSpring employees. 

FastSpring’s Mission Today: Unleashing Innovation Around the World

Today, FastSpring is a global leader in the payments, subscriptions, and tax management space as a leading merchant of record. With offices in Santa Barbara, Amsterdam, Belfast, and Halifax, FastSpring has grown to have over 130 employees serving 3200+ companies throughout more than 200 regions, with support for 21+ languages and 23+ currencies — all while filing over 1,000 tax returns every year, so that the companies who use FastSpring don’t have to.

Providing an industry leading platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital products businesses to sell and monetize their products around the world is a privilege we’ve earned over the last 20 years, but we haven’t forgotten where we came from. 

Current CEO David Nachman echoes original CEO Dan Engel’s thoughts about FastSpring’s mission, but builds upon it. What gets David excited is enabling and democratizing the software industry so that people anywhere in the world can build software and compete with bigger, more capitalized players in highly developed markets.

“It’s gotten dramatically easier to build software anywhere and do it in a really, really competitive way,” David explains. “What hasn’t gotten easier is selling it globally.” In fact, in many ways, thanks to increasingly complex tax codes, proliferating payments options, and the increase of fraud, selling software cross-borders or monetizing a game outside of an app marketplace has only gotten harder. 

“So you’ve got this paradox of, you can develop software now at any scale anywhere in the world, but it’s not easy to bring it to market successfully without a solution like ours,” he says. “And that’s what we do.”

“By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world.”

David Nachman, CEO of FastSpring

“By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world,” David continues. “That’s kind of the big lofty mission that excites me. And I think it excites a lot of people here.”

Twenty years is quite a milestone, so we’ll be celebrating all month! That includes cake cuttings and toasts with our team members around the world on June 28, our official incorporation day and 20th birthday. Check back later this month for photos, and here’s to the next 20! 🥂

Podcast Transcript

David Vogelpohl (00:04)

Hello everyone, and welcome to Growth Stage by FastSpring, where we discuss how digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products, and increase the value of their businesses. I’m your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community through my role at FastSpring, and I love to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. In today’s episode, I’m super excited. What we’re going to be talking about is what it takes to build an enduring business.

David Vogelpohl (00:32)

We’re going to do that through the lens of celebrating 20 years of FastSpring, the company that puts on Growth Stage and joining us for that conversation to celebrate FastSpring and talk about building an enduring business. I’d like to welcome first FastSpring’s original CEO and one of the original cofounders, Mr. Dan Engel. Dan, welcome to Growth Stage.

Dan Engel (00:53)

Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here and I’m excited we made it to such a successful 20 year journey.

David Vogelpohl (01:00)

I can’t imagine what it must be like to look back on your legacy and have this be something so enduring be part of that. And I know you’ve done a lot since then. And I’m kind of curious to learn a little bit more about that here in a bit. Also joining us for this conversation to kind of take a look at the past and where we are now. I’d like to welcome FastSpring’s current CEO, Mr. David Nachman. David, welcome.

David Nachman (01:23)

Great. Well, thank you, David. I’m also super excited to be here and I definitely owe some gratitude to Dan. Wouldn’t be in my role today if it weren’t for what he did 20 years ago today.

Dan Engel (01:30)

Mm-hmm.

David Vogelpohl (01:33)

Now it’s so interesting to think about those long-term effects our short-term decisions sometimes have. And so we’re going to try to peel back as much as we can here on this episode, ⁓ to give folks a view into what it takes to build an enduring business, what mistakes to avoid along the way and how to build a business that stands the test of time.

So ⁓ we’ll kick it off. David Nachman, I’d like to start with you. ⁓ For those, maybe this is their first time seeing the Growth Stage podcast or they’re not familiar with FastSpring. Could you explain what FastSpring is and what you do here?

David Nachman (02:13)

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. What we do is pretty straightforward. We are an end to end e-commerce platform for companies that sell digital goods on a global basis. So it’s often software companies, it may be gaming companies, maybe other forms of digital goods, but the commonality for everybody that’s selling on our platform is they’re trying to reach a global audience, which isn’t really an easy thing to do.

in commerce and payments. There’s a tremendous amount of complexity there. And they’re all selling digital goods. So that’s what we do. I am the CEO of the company. I joined the company about six years ago, just over about a month ago from six years ago.

David Vogelpohl (02:55)

Oh, wow. Congratulations on the six year mark there. A little over 25 % of FastSpring’s history, it sounds like. And then Dan, tell us about your connection to FastSpring and what you’re doing now.

David Nachman (03:01)

⁓ yeah.

Dan Engel (03:07)

Well, let’s see. It was ⁓ 2005 that ⁓ I met our co-founder Jason Foodman. And I had an idea for something we wanted to do having to do with upselling into shopping carts. And Jason said, well, that is a really good idea, but we’re not going to be able to do it unless we own the shopping cart. ⁓

And I said, well, what if we create our own shopping cart? And Jason said, well, it just so happens I’m working with a guy on that concept to compete with Digital River, which was the 800 pound gorilla at the time that had come out in 1994, went public, became worth a billion dollars. And so we decided that we would build that e-commerce infrastructure and shopping cart capability. We never ended up doing my idea

having to do with upsells, but obviously the foundational part that we needed is what became the business over time.

David Vogelpohl (04:05)

And this is you, right? Is this from around the time of the founding? These are the original founders, correct?

Dan Engel (04:11)

Yeah, that could be. I’d have to see exactly what year that was, but that’s uh — Jason’s all the way to the right hand side on the other opposite end of me. then Ken and Ryan. And what’s interesting is I only knew Jason, but then he knew Ken and Ken knew Ryan. So through the, I don’t know, transitive property or whatever it is, we all kind of knew each other. And that’s how we started working together. And we were all in four different states from one another.

And ⁓ we did it despite not being in the same place. And we actually went for about four years, I believe, without ever even seeing each other. Everything was just email and ICQ, which is chat. And maybe every six months there’d be a phone call. But some of the guys weren’t the type of people that were dying to get on the phone or meet in person that didn’t have the same personality as maybe Jason and I did as kind of the more salesy front of the business.

David Nachman (04:50)

Thanks

David Vogelpohl (05:05)

Was that the balance between you four where you and Jason were more on the business side and the other two for Ken and what’s the other person’s name? Yeah, Ryan. ⁓ and they were more technically focused.

Dan Engel (05:15)

Ken and Ryan. Yeah, totally. Yeah,

Ryan just was an awesome coder. He was probably the best guy on the planet to build what we were building. I mean, that’s what Ken said at the time, because he had built a company called RegNow, sold it to Digital River. By the way, all three of the other guys built and sold companies like FastSpring to Digital River. So we knew this space really well, and they knew it even better than I did. But yeah, Jason and I were on the business side, and Ken…

is amazing dealing with people through email. But he won’t pick up the phone. But we had phenomenal customer service that he led. And Ryan just wanted to code and wanted to own it himself. Didn’t want other coders. Didn’t want to spend time managing other coders. He just wanted to build his dream, again, the next generation of what he had built before using Java technology and doing things in a way that would be much more beneficial over the long term.

David Nachman (05:46)

answer.

you

Dan Engel (06:08)

over the existing solutions like Digital River, which became kind of the technology dinosaur that was inflexible. So we wanted to build that next generation system.

David Vogelpohl (06:17)

It sounds like there was a lot of synergy there between you four and a good balance. And it seems like you and Jason were able to kind of team up, I guess, on the business side and then Ken and Ryan on the technical and customer success side. It’s also interesting to hear about your virtual posture as co-founders back in that day and using ICQ and thriving in that kind of environment.

Um, of course, way pre pandemic, this was 2005 when the company was founded. Um, and then to hear about how much Digital River played a role in your company, in your lives back then, and to think of FastSpring’s enduring nature, even going beyond, you know, Digital River, um, uh, offering in existence, I guess, uh, recently kind of winding down there. Um, and to think about how that’s an interesting representation of FastSpring’s enduring

Dan Engel (07:06)

Mm

David Vogelpohl (07:13)

⁓ but maybe that’s one of the ways I might think about an enduring business. ⁓ I’ll start with Nachman on this question. David, to you, what does it mean to build an enduring business? What is that? How do you define that?

David Nachman (07:29)

Yeah, I think, I mean, the first thing I would say for a business to be enduring is it’s got to be adaptable. This business, like just about any business, there’s ebbs and flows and there’s times when everything is going great and there’s times when it’s a lot more challenging. And, you know, in my experience, like there’s a lot of things that need to go into strategy and execution to succeed as an enduring business. But I think the foundation of all of it is the team and the culture.

If you look at the businesses that I think have endured over time, it’s often the team and the culture that really, really stand out because the challenges are going to change over time. And you need a team that knows how to adapt to that. And if you’ve got the right team and people are passionate about what they’re doing, know, in my experience, generally they’re going to figure it out.

None of us have a perfect crystal ball. Certainly, I’m sure Dan, when you started this company 20 years ago, you had no idea what some of the challenges might look like today. But I think you built a great cultural foundation that I think still persists today. I think a lot of the elements of the culture that were there when you started it are still like a real, real strength for us. So to me, that’s kind of the foundation of all of it to build an enduring business.

David Vogelpohl (08:47)

Yeah. I like that idea of flexibility. What’s the saying — “Steady seas don’t make skilled sailors,” and like,

Dan Engel (08:48)

you

David Vogelpohl (08:53)

⁓ being able to roll with the punches and adapt and survive and thrive. I could see that being critical to building an enduring business. ⁓ Dan, what about you? What does it mean to build an enduring business?

Dan Engel (09:06)

Well, it’s kind of the same things because what he’s talking about there about adaptability and flexibility, that’s exactly what I was saying earlier. We specifically built a system from the ground up ⁓ that had the adaptability component that was missing from the competition.

That’s why Digital River doesn’t exist anymore. That’s why we were able to ultimately leave them some degree in the dust because they weren’t able to change with the times. And we knew, because we all had been customers of Digital River. mean, everybody was back then. It’s a long time ago. And we knew that they couldn’t deliver when we needed new functionality and features. They were stuck. Right. So that was a really big part of it. But I think culturally, you know, the biggest advantage FastSpring ever had

was based on culture and how we treated our people, meaning like the employees, the partners we had, and then how that trickled down to how they treated the customers. And we had a theory, which is not too novel, but isn’t practiced as much as it should be, that customers should be treated like gold. And we had happened to be in an industry where the competition felt very much the opposite. ⁓ They just

A lot of these companies were led by kind of arrogant folks that didn’t think too much about the customers. And, you know, you’d write into PayPal, nobody had ever sent you anything back or Digital River couldn’t get your account manager to respond. So we came up with rules like you’re going to hear a response within, I think it was 24 hours, even on weekends, even on holidays, ⁓ guarantees like that. And we absolutely delivered on it. We strive to wow.

every single customer, both the end user and our merchants, you know, the software companies. And the kind of things that they were saying were, and I don’t know if it’s still on the website anymore, but the old testimonials that I used to throw up on the website were like, I feel like I just left the spa, or I’ve never had this kind of experience in a services business before. We were blowing people away. And how were we able to do that when we had like four support reps and our competition had like 250?

because we’re just normal people that cared. That’s all. And those were the kind of people that hired and people like themselves who gave a damn. And we had been in the shoes of the customers who were frustrated working with Digital River. So we tried to build a business that would be the opposite. And it totally worked. And also it’s an advantage that we had, which didn’t really cost money, that nobody could beat. No competitor could beat. They could try to match it.

you know, blowing away your customers and wowing them with the experience, but they couldn’t ever beat it. And so part of what made the company so enduring is we had low prices and couldn’t really beat us on pricing. We had next generation technology instead of kind of the inflexible dinosaur tech of our competitors. And we blew you away with customer service. So how do you, how do you get anyone to switch away from FastSpring? They didn’t. We had retained

think 98.7 % of our customers year after year after year in an SMB business with thousands of customers. I’m a venture capitalist now, I invest in software companies. I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.

David Vogelpohl (12:16)

I can attest that nature has lived on and we see similar levels of success in ⁓ our business today, including winning awards like a ⁓ gold Globee and silver Stevie for that customer success. I think that foundation you laid and the seeds you planted are still bearing fruit.

Dan Engel (12:37)

Good. That’s great to hear.

David Vogelpohl (12:39)

Excellent. Yeah. Super cool to see that, ⁓ endure the test of time. Cause I know service can be one of those areas that definitely erodes over time, especially over like a 20 year history. ⁓ it was also interesting to hear you talk about how, if you have a team, if you hire a team and develop a team who cares, that’s like so critical to building that differentiation in that enduring nature.

And I thought that connected well to what David had shared a little earlier around flexibility and developing teams in that same way to address challenges that you have no idea what’s coming around the corner. ⁓ and I thought that was an interesting connection there. ⁓ speaking of like how, speaking of missions by sake of example, what was FastSpring’s mission in the beginning, you talked about like being better than Digital River, but like, was it more than that? Like, how did you view the mission of the company at that time?

Dan Engel (13:33)

I think we wanted to build a business that treated its customers the way we thought we should have been treated as software vendors. Everything that was wrong with the experience of working with Digital River and its competitors and non-software specific platforms like PayPal, we wanted to correct that because we felt wronged ourselves.

⁓ So I think that was a big part of the mission. And we thought if we were just normal, nice people that cared, we could accomplish that. ⁓ And we did, took a while, but we did. And we did displace a lot of those alternatives. ⁓ mission-wise, I think that’s really what our driving force was, ⁓ is to put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.

David Vogelpohl (14:21)

David, 20 years later, how do you define FastSpring’s mission now?

David Nachman (14:26)

Yeah, so I think a lot of what Dan just shared is still very true and very important in what we’re doing. ⁓ What gets me excited is kind of the bigger trend we’re playing into in enabling. And for me, it’s about democratizing the software development industry. And what I mean by that is if you look over the last 20 years, since the company was founded, barrier after barrier has come down that allows people

to build software anywhere in the world at any scale and compete with much bigger, much better capitalized players in highly developed markets. going way back, open source, developer tools, cloud computing, online marketing, now we’ve got the AI boom. So it’s gotten dramatically easier to build software anywhere and do it in a really, really competitive way. What hasn’t gotten easier?

is selling it globally. It’s actually kind of gone in some respects in the opposite direction. Tax complexity around the world has gone up a ton. Enforcement has gone up a ton.  The regulatory environment around data has gone up. Payments has gotten a lot more complex. The proliferation of payment methods around the world uh is pretty incredible, and the adoption of a lot of these payment methods  is really high. Fraud

⁓ is going up. I don’t know if it’s exponentially, but it’s certainly going up at a high rate and the complexity of that fraud is going up. So you’ve got this paradox of, you can develop software now at any scale anywhere in the world, but it’s not easy to bring it to market successfully without a solution like ours. And that’s what we do. ⁓ and if you look around the world, there’s, know, no monopoly on development talent in places like Silicon Valley. And there’s talented developers everywhere in the world now.

but there were barriers to them competing. So By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world. That’s kind of the big lofty mission that excites me. And I think it does excite a lot of people here.

Dan Engel (16:18)

you

David Vogelpohl (16:39)

Excellent. Love hearing that. ⁓ Dan, so we’ve talked about like it’s a 20 year episode, right? So we’re doing like the worm and fuzzy stuff, but I want to go to like the stuff that made you lose sleep at night in the early days of FastSpring. Tell me about a big mistake you made that like almost tank the company or just like took you in a really bad direction. I mean, we are publishing this, so like take that into heart there, but

Dan Engel (16:53)

So.

David Vogelpohl (17:08)

Was it, was it deprecating this website? mean, this is a fire of a 2025 website, but like, me about the mistakes you

Dan Engel (17:11)

Ha ha!

looks a little pruney to me. ⁓ Well, obviously we made lots of mistakes. think, you know, one key decision was we kept coding really just within Ryan’s domain and didn’t hire a bunch of developers. And I think there were benefits to that and costs. And sometimes we were frustrated we weren’t going faster. ⁓ Because when we came out, a company also came out around the same time. unlike us who did everything

by the way, with $30,000, I put ten grand in, that’s all I ever put into FastSpring. We had a competitor, the head also sold their company to Digital River and they put like 35 or 50 million into their company and they started eating our lunch. So that made us kind of frustrated and concerned because they were getting a lot of clients we had hoped to get. So that was one decision. And also I think using

Java, think, had a lot of benefits, but also I think it slowed us down as well. Now, in the long term, it was beneficial and a great decision because it kept us flexible and extensible. But let’s see. So one of the scarier things that happen is, so when you’re processing payments, there’s risks that you might process in payments that are violations of, say, your relationship.

in your agreement with say a Visa or MasterCard. And we got really good at policing and avoiding any transactions going through the system that would violate any of those agreements. like with hackers, you figure out a solution to avoid the hacking and then the hackers find a way around it and then you find a solution to solve that and then they find a way. So it wasn’t perfect, you know, it’s life. And we had a particular incident where some

content got through that we did processing for is a tiny amount, but it still was very problematic. And that was very costly to us. We had to deal with MasterCard and you know, to have an angry MasterCard is a real problem because you can’t stop working with MasterCard if you’re accepting credit cards, right? That kind of got this duopoly or whatever you want to call it. So that was an example of a really scary experience when we had to deal with, you know, people like Visa MasterCard and

some of the risks around processing that could have really hurt our business and changed things. ⁓ And I would say, in terms of the team that we had, we got along incredibly well. It probably didn’t hurt that we weren’t in the same office and hardly ever saw each other. That can really have a lot of benefits. The biggest fight we ever had, and when we had it, I thought, my God, this is gonna be such a battle for years, was picking the name.

⁓ After we had that, that was like a real battle and I didn’t know what the future would bring. And we went years and years with really not having any fights, maybe until the end when we were selling the business and not everyone wanted to necessarily sell at the same price and money gets people to fight. But ⁓ other than that, ⁓ we really made a great call with the kind of team that we had as founders because we had a team of four former CEOs.

which meant we were all able to kind of do our own stuff without anybody needing to help us. Right. And so we, we, we, we, we split up the business into silos, Ken handled support, Ryan development, me on the sales side and also all the CEO role and Jason on the sales side and some other stuff too. And that worked really well. but, ⁓ anyway, so those are some thoughts on some of the things that were challenges over the years. and,

not, raising capital, going slower, sticking with Java, sticking with one developer. All those things made us go slower. And for me, made me anxious. ⁓ but some of the other partners, they were okay with waiting and having the business take a long time. And it sure did. My wife, ⁓ nicknamed it “SlowSpring,” ⁓ because, ⁓ you know, it was like year three and a half or something and we still weren’t getting anywhere. And I kept telling her, it’s right around the corner.

David Nachman (21:15)

it.

Dan Engel (21:22)

Finally, things picked up. They picked up because we became popular in the Mac software community. We found a niche, right? ⁓ I don’t know what would have happened to FastSpring if we hadn’t found that niche. ⁓ But eventually we took over for Digital River and others as kind of the leading provider for Mac developers. But until then, it was a very slow moving train and we didn’t know what was around the corner.

David Vogelpohl (21:44)

think that’s a bold lesson for people watching and listening who are just starting out and thinking about how to get traction about how you were able to kind of niche down in your core ICP and find that, you know, kind of handhold foothold to start moving further up the mountain. I also thought you had tension in some of the mistakes where you talked about the desire to go faster and invest more, but then you talked about growing pains around things like dealing with hackers and

maybe processing transactions you shouldn’t have and how that affected and put risk into your business. And so like with FastSpring, you know, we’re offering payments and subscriptions and tax compliance and a lot of startups are like compliance. What are you talking about? I’m blowing and growing. I’m, ready to go. Do you think that like maybe moving slow and being more purposeful did have value other than just being, you know, “SlowSpring” and making you a little frustrated with the growth?

Dan Engel (22:41)

Probably. Two of my partners would say definitely yes. They would be, yes, they are more patient people than I am.

David Vogelpohl (22:44)

Would those be Ken and Ryan?

Nice. I like that. ⁓ But yeah, I think about that a lot, you know, in this day, I don’t know how much you’ve kept up with the merchant of record space, but there’s a decent number of startups getting into it. And so I just imagine what it must be like to start from near zero and develop these rules, and this experience, and this understanding, and a platform that reacts to it all. ⁓ Certainly a grand adventure, but definitely no easy task.

Dan Engel (23:15)

Yeah.

It

was, and I think one error was that we didn’t really have expertise in the whole merchant account payment processing business. I mean, yes, software and what used to be called shareware, and the Digital River side of things. But the actual — like all the intricacies of working with like, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AmEx, PayPal, and doing global payments and different currencies and different really didn’t know that stuff.

And so sometimes we learned some hard lessons because of our ignorance. ⁓ It would have, if I were to do it again, I would bring someone involved in the early days who really had spent, I don’t know, 20 years in that payment we didn’t have to figure out what we didn’t know. I think that was costly to us. And I think that was something missing, a missing ingredient that fortunately, we were successful despite it.

David Vogelpohl (24:07)

Did you underestimate the complexity of payments?

Dan Engel (24:10)

I think so. Yeah, I think so. ⁓ And the deep understanding that was needed to really know what we were working with and what we were doing and how it was viewed by others playing all different roles in the industry, the ISOs, IPSPs, the Visas and Mastercards, the acquiring banks, the gateways, we just didn’t really have a great understanding of how all of those different parties were seeing us in their world.

And so we didn’t necessarily navigate it the best way that we could have if we had known more.

David Vogelpohl (24:45)

Sage advice. ⁓ As you look back at your time with FastSpring, founding it, bringing it up, eventually selling it, and the roles and companies you’ve led since then, what lessons did you learn in your FastSpring days that you took forward into your future adventures?

Dan Engel (25:03)

Well, you know, we built FastSpring to not be able to fail because we had all been serial entrepreneurs and had built businesses. Some worked, some didn’t. And one thing that I figured out is if you don’t have a clock tied to money and burn, it’s really hard to go out of business. so…

We built the business from scratch with almost no money. Like I said, I put in 10 grand and the co-founders contributed their time for no cash, just for equity, right? Significant equity, founders equity. ⁓ And so the only way the business could fail is if we lost interest. Nothing external could really make us fail. It really was in our control. So it’s a question of, we lose interest before we get enough customers that this business is big enough that we care about it? And it’s making a difference for us. So with that,

⁓ It gave us quite a runway to be able to figure things out, which took really four years to really start taking off. And believe me, the first three years wasn’t just fun. And of course, while you’re building it, you don’t know if you’re ever going to make it, so you might be wasting your time. So it’s not always the most motivating every day. But I’ve built every business since like that, ⁓ where it’s either profitable for day one or it just doesn’t have that burn and that pressure.

Because what’s the number one reason businesses go out of business? They run out of cash. So if you can get rid of that risk, you’ve got a really good chance of making it. So I’ve had a lot of successes in my career. FastSpring is one of them. There’s a whole bunch of other things I’ve done and all that. And the thing that they all have in common is they all failed before they succeeded. I mean, people don’t see that. They just see the news headlines and great exit for FastSpring, or Picasa, or what I did at Google, or

GoTo Meeting in Santa Barbara. But all those things failed first. So the only reason I’ve been able to figure out how to build these businesses successfully now, including my venture capital firm, is because of all the things I did that failed in the past. And so I think that’s the biggest lesson that I bring forward to every business I do and hope to pass on to other entrepreneurs and to my children and whatnot, that it’s really the failures where you learn how to succeed.

David Vogelpohl (27:12)

I imagine what that must be like. So these are the years and the number of employees from back in those days. And you were saying like, it really took you better part of this time period to get it ramped up. And then you can start to see the business grow over time. It’s very efficient business still during that time.

Dan Engel (27:29)

Well, keep in mind, so in 2013, that was 23. They weren’t really employees, 12 full-time. The rest were part-time contractors. We made them employees later after we sold the business. But that was at a time we were doing over $100 million in revenue. We had 12 full-timers. So it was very efficient and we did not in any way measure ourselves by number of people. It was by revenue and profit.

David Vogelpohl (27:51)

That’s great to hear. ⁓ so Dan has founded the business with his co-founders and they’ve gone on this grand adventure, eventually selling the business. ⁓ Nachman, tell me the backstory between about when you joined the business and what you were kind of doing right before that.

David Nachman (28:11)

Yeah,

I’ve been in B2B tech just about my whole career. Immediately before joining FastSpring, I was running a business that had a very highly tailored content management platform for local government.

So it was cities and counties, they would host a website on it, but also we would power a lot of the constituent facing functionality. you we sort of powered the digital city hall strategy that, you know, a lot of local governments are moving towards. We had sold that business to someone who was really consolidating all of the gov tech industry.

Dan Engel (28:32)

.

David Nachman (28:53)

And I found my way indirectly to FastSpring, was drawn to it for a whole host of reasons. But that’s ultimately, you know, what brought me here or the backstory in terms of what I was doing before I got here.

David Vogelpohl (29:08)

And then as you entered the business, what were your perceptions at that time? ⁓ How did you think about FastSpring’s mission then versus now? ⁓ We had this great meeting the other day where we were like, where did you get wrong about FastSpring when you first joined the company? What about for you, David? What did you get wrong about FastSpring when you first joined?

Dan Engel (29:24)

Okay.

David Nachman (29:29)

Yes, I think some of

the same things that Dan mentioned. I’m not sure that I necessarily underestimated the complexity of payments, but I’m not a payments guy by trade and experience. We had a lot of generalists even at that point in the company. We had a lot of really passionate, a lot of really talented people. And I’ve kind of always been one of those people who believes, OK, if you get the

know, get smart people that are driven, they’re going to figure out problems. And yes, but they’re not going to figure them out as quickly. In many cases, it’s someone who’s got the pattern recognition of having seen that same problem 15 times before. ⁓ And I think I waited a little too long ⁓ to really bolster a lot of our domain expertise in the business. And as I started to do that, ⁓ just

Dan Engel (30:05)

you ⁓

David Nachman (30:23)

What it did in terms of accelerating the business was pretty profound. And it was one of those where I sort of stepped back and said, wow, I should have done that a long time ago. I’d say the other thing is when I came into the business, my perceptions were very positive of the business. Great solution, great customers, business growing at a very healthy clip. So it was a very healthy business. wasn’t a turnaround of any sort. It was how do we take it to the next level?

Dan Engel (30:30)

Okay.

David Nachman (30:52)

So what was missing in my mind was that it really wasn’t built to scale

to anywhere, you the size we are today or, where we think we’ll be over the coming few years. And like a lot of small businesses, a lot of single points of failure, you know, some of that was people, some of that was vendors, some of that was technology. The business sort of survived and thrived on individual heroics. So, you know.

not a lot of ⁓ systems in place, processes, et cetera. And we didn’t really have a leadership team that had scaled to where we wanted to go. So I felt like we did need to bring in people that were more experienced and kind of knew the journey that we were embarking on. And I think a little bit of what I got wrong there.

⁓ in some of these initial hires was I was very focused on getting people that, you know, kind of knew how to operate at scale. And culturally I missed on some of them in terms of abandoning a lot of what’s made the company so special and so effective, which is kind of the entrepreneurial scrappiness. And it’s a, you know, it’s a rare breed of person that has that hands on entrepreneurial scrappiness and can also scale. ⁓ you know,

Dan Engel (32:08)

you

David Nachman (32:14)

Often those are great founder type people that could do magic that a lot of more experienced company people can’t do, but they don’t scale as well. ⁓ So initially I did bring some of those people in and it just, they weren’t the right fit. ⁓ And over my first few years here, I started to really realize what’s the culture that really correlates with

success in our particular business. And part of it is this is the most dynamic, most complex business I’ve ever been at for its scale. I mean, we’ve got a very global footprint. We’re operating in highly regulated industries. We’re dealing with payments. We’re dealing with software. We’re dealing with complexity around tax. We’re dealing with a lot of regulation around data. It’s kind of infinitely complex. And this goes back to this notion of adaptability. ⁓

Dan Engel (32:47)

Okay.

David Nachman (33:11)

You have to have some level of scrappy entrepreneurialism to thrive in this business. But it also has to be paired with, you know how to scale a business and it’s not all about, hey, I’m just going to do the heroics to get us to the next challenge. It’s no, I’m going to build a foundation where if I’m not here, this business will still run quite well. So.

Dan Engel (33:25)

you

David Nachman (33:37)

So I think, you know, there are definitely things I got right, but there were some things I got wrong in trying to make that transition from more of a startup company to a really scalable company.

David Vogelpohl (33:48)

Yeah, that’s kind of like an awkward teenager-y zone a little bit. that’s a whole, sorry, go ahead.

Dan Engel (33:48)

Hm.

David Nachman (33:51)

That’s right. ⁓

We definitely went through our awkward teenage phase. I hope we’re out of that now.

David Vogelpohl (33:57)

Yeah.

Knock on wood on that one for sure. I still got to build the enduring business of the future, right? ⁓ We’re kind of getting towards the end here, so I want to make sure to hit on a couple of things here in the last little bit. Nachman, since I’m on you, I’ll stick with you for this one. But if somebody’s out there and they have a startup and they’re listening to all these points of view,

David Nachman (34:03)

That’s right.

David Vogelpohl (34:22)

maybe taking some notes along the way, but what’s the one thing that that person should ⁓ get from listening to you about building an enduring business? What’s your number one piece of advice?

David Nachman (34:33)

It’s embrace change and change before you have to. ⁓ You can’t build an enduring business doing the same thing for any period of time. period of time is shrinking with every given year. mean, given what’s going on with AI right now, ⁓ know, the timeframes over which things evolve is just collapsing. it’s, you know, constantly think about how your business is going to be.

reimagined and go do that. ⁓ Don’t let somebody else do that to you. You’ve got to get out in front of it.

David Vogelpohl (35:08)

Great one, embrace change and change before you have to. ⁓ Dan, what about you?

Dan Engel (35:14)

⁓ I would say treating your own people extremely well and having that then trickle down to how they treat your customers and the concept of treating your customers like gold and bending over backwards to ensure that they are just wowed by the experience of working with you compared to what they’re used to from alternatives. And then I think in terms of building a business, removing the obstacles as much as possible that

lead companies to fail, including dealing with things like burn upfront.

David Vogelpohl (35:46)

I it. I love the people first thing. I think this is like the Dan Golden Rule. Treat others as you want them to treat your customers. I love it. ⁓ All right. ⁓ Last question. Sorry about that little mic pop there. Dan, um we’re going to show this recording to the FastSpring team and they’re pretty much all going to listen to it and watch it. Do you have a special message for them to celebrate the 20 year FastSpring anniversary?

David Nachman (35:53)

Thank

Dan Engel (36:16)

A special message. Well, you know, I guess, you know, it’s I’m glad that everybody’s part of something with the humble roots and mission that we originally started on to try to offer a better alternative in an industry that was plagued with some negativity. But I think, ⁓ you know, I challenge everybody to really think about how to make the next 20 years of FastSpring successful, dealing with all the change. Change has been a big ⁓

theme here in our conversation. So we have all the different things happening around, say, AI, or how people purchase software, or what Apple’s Store looks like, and what they can and can’t do. All different facets are going to continuously change. And so I hope folks are thinking about how they can continuously adapt to ensure that FastSpring survives and thrives through all the shifts ahead. Some will be good and some will be bad for the company so that we can have this kind of a conversation again after another 20 years.

David Vogelpohl (37:12)

Nice, I like it. Dan, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. It was super interesting to hear about your backstory and some of the things that went into building such an enduring business. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Dan Engel (37:27)

You betcha. Thanks for having me and congratulations on the 20 years and thanks everyone for doing such a great job at the business.

David Vogelpohl (37:33)

Thank you, of course. then David, thank you for joining and picking up the torch and then sharing your backstory here at the helm.

David Nachman (37:41)

Well, thank you for having me. I’ve enjoyed the discussion. I’ve learned some things about the business. I don’t think I knew Dan, so it’s fantastic to get the time to interact and learn a little bit about our roots and history.

Dan Engel (37:50)

Okay.

David Vogelpohl (37:52)

Excellent. And for those watching and listening, if you’d like to learn more about FastSpring, you can visit FastSpring.com. Thanks for joining us for the Growth Stage podcast. I’ve been your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community as part of my role here at FastSpring. And I love to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. Thanks everybody.

The post What It Takes to Build an Enduring Business: Celebrating 20 Years of FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.