Paddle is a unified software sales platform with checkout, subscriptions, taxes, licensing, and insights all in one place. Weâre building the platform that all software companies use to run and grow their business.
We believe that software companies succeed when they can focus on building awesome products that the world loves and scale their business, rather than wasting time on juggling everything thatâs required to run and grow.
We require that our software sellers:
Paddle recommends that our software sellers:
Disputes (or Chargebacks) occur when a buyer calls their bank, or PayPal to dispute a charge.
This can be for many reasons, including:
Disputes are unfortunately a common part of dealing with online payments, especially for digital goods sales. A buyer can charge back a card payment up to 120 days after the product was delivered. We recommend that you try to resolve any customer payment issues early to avoid it escalating into a chargeback. Ensuring that your contact details are up to date with our Buyer Support Team will also ensure a seamless service and avoid delays that can lead to a dispute.
Itâs important that you keep your dispute rate low. An average rate is in the region of 0.1-0.3% of transactions, however a rate above 0.75% is unacceptable. Weâll send you a dispute notification whenever we receive a dispute from one of your buyers, we recommend keeping all dispute alerts always switched on (under vendor settings -> alerts).
When a dispute occurs, Paddle will fight on your behalf, submitting the relevant evidence to your buyerâs bank, or in the instance of misidentified transactions, we reach out to the buyer and attempt to resolve the situation for you. Weâll also email you asking for information we wonât have access to like any direct buyer communication or software usage logs that can aid your chances in winning chargebacks.
Chargebacks incur a fee of $15 (ÂŁ15 or âŹ15) for card payments and $20.00 (ÂŁ20 or âŹ20) for PayPal transactions, dependant on the currency the user was charged in. We generally do not see a lot of PayPal chargebacks. Once a chargeback is received, the chargeback fee is passed onto you in addition to the the original amount of the transaction and debited from your Paddle account.
If we win a dispute case for you, we return the original amount of the transaction back to your balance, and refund any fees associated with the dispute.
Our aim is to protect our sellers from fraud, so here are some tips to protect your online business from fraudulent buyers/purchases:
If you notice a suspicious buyer, please report them to help@paddle.com immediately.
Our aim is to protect our sellers from fraud and help keep their dispute rates within the acceptable threshold, therefore we utilize third party prevention tools to provide an additional layer of fraud protection. These alerts monitor and intercept transactions that have a confirmed chargeback risk due to fraud. We proactively return the funds to the authorised cardholder to avoid receiving a chargeback and keeping within the acceptable chargeback ratio as set out by the card payment networks. A positive alert incur a fee of $15.00, which is forwarded onto you. This would keep your accountâs dispute ratio within an acceptable threshold avoiding penalties including account closure.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to companies of any size that accept credit card payments.
Paddle is PCI DSS SAQ A Compliant - this means that we do not directly store card information and are PCI Compliant for web transactions only. As a result, any sellers who use Paddle for software sales cannot store, process and transmit cardholder data either physically or virtually.
An example of a transaction that isnât compliant is when a seller takes their buyerâs card details over the phone and processes a payment for software using the payment link themselves. The only way our software sellers can use Paddle for sales is through integrating our payment link into a working website or app.
The European Union (EU) introduced a landmark regulation called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR in short) in May 2018.
The goal of the GDPR is to give EU residents improved privacy rights and control over their personal data, protecting them from privacy breaches and leaks.
Every organisation that handles, markets or tracks the personal data of EU residents is liable, even if theyâre not based in Europe. In the case of software companies who sell their products globally, this new regulation applies to them, no matter where theyâre based.
There are strong penalties in place for non-compliance: up to âŹ20m or 4% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher.
Making sure we were compliant, and in turn that the personal data of the buyers buying your products was treated correctly, whilst continuing to provide a great buyer experience has been an important focus for us when implementing the GDPR. Here are the main concepts of the GDPR:
This means that you shouldnât buy email lists where you donât know how consent was acquired, and we canât enable newsletters to buyers if we donât know whether theyâve consented to them.
This means that the language explaining how you will contact them needs to be very clear and respect your buyers opt in preferences - leading to fewer unsubscribes and spam reports.
This means that theyâll be able to ask us for the data we store on them, as well as receiving it in a simple format.
This means that if asked, we will remove their personal data - letting you focus on the best buyers.
Just ask our in-house GDPR experts who have been looking into its correct application! Weâve rolled out changes to ensure that it is simple and straightforward for you and will always keep you informed.
To read more about GDPR at Paddle click here. For any data security questions or data removal requests email help@paddle.com.
Read more about tax and compliance at Paddle here.