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The company
Monica AI is the all-in-one AI-powered personal assistant revolutionizing how students and professionals manage their digital workflow.
Launched in March 2023, Monica integrates multiple AI technologies into a single platform, eliminating the need for a fragmented tech stack and significantly reducing productivity costs.
Available as a browser extension for Chrome or Edge, as well as a mobile and desktop app, Monica brings together the best AI tools on the market – including OpenAI o3-mini, DeepSeek R1, GPT-4o, Claude 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 – into a single, integrated platform.
The result is better chat, search, writing, and coding experiences for users who can use the tool for a wide range of tasks, including content creation, translation, summarization, and more.
Here’s a little more about their growth journey with Paddle…
The Challenge
In just two years, Monica has achieved remarkable results.
We have over ten million users worldwide, spread across developed and developing countries in the US, Europe, and Asia. Our ARR achieved 3x growth in the past year, and we expect to double that in the year to come.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
While much of Monica’s early growth came from organic sources, the company scaled its global marketing efforts considerably after the first six months of operation.
The resulting increase in demand led to an increase in payments complexity – and this prompted Monica to look for a payments solution that could keep up with its international growth efforts.
Before implementing Paddle, the Monica team knew they didn’t have the time or resources to build their own payments stack or to manage various payments solutions in a piecemeal suite.
This made the Merchant of Record (MoR) model – which reduces complexity, handles tax compliance and increases global payment performance – an obvious choice.
The company initially selected payment providers such as LemonSqueezy to help, but these services fell short of Monica’s expectations.
We had issues handling international payments, refunds, chargebacks, and billing support with other MoRs. We could see our revenues fluctuating but couldn’t identify the root cause. Moreover, there was a lack of personable customer service that we felt was necessary to grow internationally.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
The search was on for a more comprehensive MoR solution – one that could help Monica comply with sales tax regulations across different countries, provide true localization to fuel their growth, help drive conversions, and mitigate customer churn.
The Solution
Monica’s team heard about Paddle through another similar-sized startup and proceeded to reach out to the Paddle team.
That first interaction with Paddle was really positive. We went on to have a few more conversations and built a lot of mutual trust. I was concerned that we are too small to receive adequate attention and that time zone differences might create communication challenges, but the Paddle team was great at understanding our needs and was very quick to respond to us.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
Impressed by Paddle’s currency localization capabilities and wide range of payment methods for subscriptions, the Monica team began experimenting with the solution.
Early A/B testing against other payment providers demonstrated better payment acceptance. This swayed our decision to adopt Paddle.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
The implementation
Having decided on Paddle, it was time for implementation – and, following some initial technical integration by Monica early on, this was much faster than the team expected.
Implementation took us two weeks in total.The whole process was very smooth.”
Rimson Liu, Product Manager, Monica AI
Paddle was on hand throughout the process, providing clear next steps and faster identification of any issues and their causes.
We’ve had weekly and sometimes even bi-weekly support calls. We’ve felt very well supported throughout the process.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
Monica’s developers also felt reassured, praising Paddle for its strong API documentation and dashboard interface, as well as its promotions capabilities and well-designed checkout page – features that they felt were far superior to those offered by their previous payments solution providers.
The results
Improved payments success globally
Paddle’s localization and internationalization features have led to better payment acceptance rates in key countries.
With Paddle’s support for Alipay for subscription payments, up to 25% of Monica’s revenue now comes from Alipay subscriptions.
Monica is also benefitting from improved currency localization.
If there’s one feature about Paddle that I really love, it’s the currency localization...It has one-click simplicity and supports local payments in all our key markets.”
Rimson Liu, Product Manager, Monica AI
3x revenue during Black Friday
Implementing discount codes and promotions is extremely simple with Paddle – and Monica was able to use this to significantly boost sales over the Black Friday period.
Our Black Friday promotion tripled our revenue in under three weeks.
We have also been using Paddle to try new discounts, flash sales, and other offers, as well as influencer promotions.”
Rimson Liu, Product Manager, Monica AI
80% reduction in chargeback rate
With greater insights into its customers’ purchasing behavior, Monica has since eliminated its free trial which has helped it lower its chargeback rates significantly, leading to more consistent revenue.
Operational benefits
With Paddle operating as its MoR, Monica has been able to offload its global sales tax compliance responsibilities.
Sales tax is a big headache, particularly for startups, because we don’t have the resources to calculate different taxes in different regions. With Paddle, we no longer need to worry about any of that.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
Paddle’s dashboard and developer experience, as well as its robust support compared to previous providers, deliver additional operational benefits.
The future
With Paddle taking care of its payments, Monica is now free to fully focus on realizing its global growth ambitions.
The payment experience is a key part of our user journey, and we're excited to expand to more regions with Paddle’s support.”
Lucia Lu, Growth, Monica AI
Want to know more about how Paddle can help your SaaS or digital product sell globally with ease? Create your free account now or speak to our team. Get Started.