Which payment platform can legally pay you in USD? A map for developers outside the US
I spent the last few weeks on a boring problem: I wanted to know, for certain, which payment platform would let a developer in a country Stripe doesn't support receive USD legally.
Not "which one has nice docs." Not "which one everyone recommends." Which ones will actually onboard you and pay you out.
I ended up comparing 50 of them. Here's the useful part.
The three questions that decide everything
Most comparison articles start with fees. That's the wrong order. Fees only matter for the platforms that will accept you at all.
Answer these first, in this sequence, and most of the list disappears:
1. Your country — not your customers' country.
Every platform cares where you are. Stripe's supported-country list is far shorter than people assume. MoRs are usually more flexible here, but not infinitely.
2. Your entity type.
Individual, sole proprietor, or registered company? Most Merchant-of-Record platforms will accept individuals. Most raw processors won't, or will after a pile of KYC.
3. What you sell.
SaaS subscription, one-off digital product, course, license keys. Some platforms quietly refuse whole categories.
If you can't answer all three, no fee comparison will help you. You'll pick the cheapest option and then fail onboarding.
What "Merchant of Record" actually buys you
This is the part that changes outcomes for developers in restricted countries, and it's usually explained badly.
A Merchant of Record (MoR) is the legal seller of your product. The customer's invoice is from them, not you. That means they handle VAT/sales tax registration and remittance, fraud, chargebacks, and refunds.
For a solo developer, that's not a convenience feature. It's often the difference between selling globally and not selling at all, because it removes the need to register a local entity to collect tax in countries where you sell.
Five platforms worth knowing
Fees below were checked against official sources at the time of writing. They change — always confirm on the platform's own pricing page before you commit.
| Platform | Model | Confirmed facts | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polar | MoR | 5% + $0.50; lower tiers at 3.8%, 3.6%, 3.4% with $20 / $100 / $400 monthly plans. Onboarding open to individuals. | Subscription SaaS, OSS maintainers |
| Creem | MoR | 3.9% + $0.40 per transaction, no monthly fee, no minimum. No registered company required. | Bootstrapped founders, AI tools |
| Dodo Payments | MoR | US cards 4% + $0.40; international cards +1.5%; subscriptions +0.5%; ACH/SEPA 1.5% capped at $15. Minimum payout $100, reducible to $50. Payouts can land in a Payoneer receiving account. | Developers in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil |
| Payhip | Platform / MoR | No monthly fee, accepts sellers globally, runs a 50% recurring affiliate program. | Digital products, courses |
| FastSpring | MoR (quote-based) | Publishes no rate card at all — you build a custom quote. Heavier onboarding. | Established software vendors |
Two things I wish someone had told me
Lemon Squeezy was acquired by Stripe in 2024. It still runs, but treat it as a Stripe product now rather than the indie alternative it used to be. If your reason for choosing it was "not Stripe," that reason is gone.
Getting paid is two problems, not one. First the platform has to pay you. Then you have to get the USD into your local bank. The second half is where people get surprised.
On that second half: Payoneer gives you a US receiving account (Citibank, ABA routing number) that most platforms can pay into via ACH. The exact fee schedule depends on your account tier, so confirm these on your own Payoneer fee page before relying on them — the structure I see is:
- Free to register, no monthly fee
- A yearly fee that's waived in your first year and only charged if your annual received volume stays below a threshold
- Receiving from a US ACH / European bank: around 1%
- Receiving via card: higher, a few percent plus a fixed fee
- Withdrawing to a local bank with currency conversion: a percentage that your account shows at withdrawal time
The honest caveat
Every number in this post will eventually be wrong. Platforms revise pricing and quietly narrow their supported countries.
If a figure here conflicts with the platform's own page, the platform's page wins. That's why I keep the full list as something I can update, rather than a blog post I forget about.
If you want the full version, filterable by country, entity type, and product type across all 50 platforms:
- Interactive version: https://workspace-zeta-dun.vercel.app
- GitHub (corrections and PRs welcome): https://github.com/chenningdev/pay-usd-from-anywhere
Stuck on getting paid from outside the US?
I've mapped 50 platforms and helped developers in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh figure out which one will actually onboard them and how to get the money out.
Book a 30-minute paid consultation — $49, paid via Payoneer.
Email me: 3133371715@qq.com
If you've been through onboarding somewhere and hit a wall I haven't listed, I'd genuinely like to hear it — that's the part most comparisons miss.
