Dodo Payments

Dodo Payments is a merchant of record for digital products, founded in Bengaluru in 2024 by Ayush Agarwal and Rishabh Goel and backed by roughly $1.1 million of pre-seed funding from Antler, 9Unicorns and Venture Catalysts. The model matters more here than the technology. As merchant of record, Dodo becomes the legal seller on every order. That means it registers for and remits VAT, GST and sales tax across more than 190 jurisdictions, issues the compliant invoice, and absorbs chargeback liability rather than passing it to the developer. It takes payment from buyers in 226 countries through more than 40 local methods, including UPI, Pix, iDEAL, SEPA, PayPal and buy-now-pay-later, and prices in over 80 currencies. That puts it up against Paddle, Lemon Squeezy and Polar rather than against Stripe.

Pricing and how it works

Dodo publishes the whole stack, which is more than several competitors do. The base rate is 4% + $0.40 on US domestic cards and wallets, or 4% + INR 15 on Indian domestic payments. International payments add 1.5%. Subscriptions and usage-based billing add 0.5%. PayPal and BNPL such as Klarna and Afterpay add 3%. Bring your own processor and the platform fee drops to 0.5%. Refunds cost $1 each and disputes cost $30, and the revenue-recovery features are free to switch on, with a 5% fee charged only on revenue actually recovered. There is no monthly fee, no setup fee and no minimum volume. Add the parts up before you compare anything. A cross-border SaaS subscription pays 4% plus 1.5% plus 0.5% plus $0.40, which lands close to 6% before currency conversion, and buyers absorb a 2% to 4% spread on non-USD payments. Payouts run twice a month by default, with the 1st to 15th period paid on the 18th and the 16th to month end paid on the 4th. Weekly cycles are available to higher-volume merchants on request, and Dodo can put higher-risk accounts on a monthly cycle. The wallet balance across all currencies has to exceed $50 before a payout runs, a payout under $1,000 costs $5, and a USD SWIFT transfer costs $25. Funds take one to two business days to land.

Who it is for

Solo developers, indie SaaS, AI tools and game studios selling worldwide who would otherwise spend more on tax advice than the fee costs them. It is most useful to founders in India, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where approval from a mainstream processor is often the hard part. KYC clears in 24 to 72 working hours, and minors can register with a parent or guardian's details.

What Dodo Payments is not

It is not a payment gateway or a merchant account. The gap between 4% and a gateway's card rate is the price of tax registration, invoicing and dispute liability moving off your balance sheet, and it is only worth paying if you actually sell across borders. It does not handle physical goods, offers no Shopify plugin and does not onboard ecommerce storefronts. The supported routes are the API, framework adapters for Next.js and Nuxt, payment links, a Framer plugin and a WooCommerce plugin for digital items. It is also young. Founded in 2024, it has a shorter operating record than Paddle, and Rebounce's review points to public Trustpilot reports of account holds and delayed first payouts. Treat it the way you would any early-stage merchant of record and start with part of your revenue rather than all of it.