Paddle changelog vendors.paddle.com

New

As part of Paddle’s growth around the world - including in the United States where we support hundreds of software sellers - we have introduced a new US entity called Paddle.com Inc.

This has allowed us to make some improvements:

• To drive the best possible payment acceptance following the release of Paddle Pilot, all end customers located in the US will now purchase from this new entity
• This means ‘Paddle.com Inc.’ will now appear on the checkout compliance bar, invoices, and receipts where applicable, creating a more 'local' experience for US customers
• You will now receive a US payout invoice and a Rest of World payout invoice, which break down the sales in each region. This will also be accompanied by a ‘remittance advice’ document, which summarizes the amount paid out across those two. You will continue to receive a statement as well, which breaks down your revenue and fees. Read more about these documents on our support page
• You can now download all payout documents and statements from within your Paddle dashboard for the first time

If you have any questions about what this means for yourselves or the end customers please email sellers@paddle.com.

Improvement

We’ve changed the final - and arguably most important - button in the Paddle Checkout to help convert subscribers onto free trials. Previously when a subscription had a set Trial Period, the final step of the Checkout said "Subscribe Now". This occasionally had a negative impact on conversions, creating confusion about whether cards would be charged immediately.

From now on the wording in this case will say “Start Your Free Trial”, as on the image below. This is designed to reassure subscribers that they're not immediately charged.

Paddle is committed to helping you improve your conversions and acquisition. That's why we have a team on the Checkout to optimize changes like this. If you have any questions, please contact our team.

Improvement

To provide the best experience for customers and to meet 'best practice' on sales tax compliance, we've improved the display of tax in the Overlay checkout when selling into the United States and Canada.

For customers judged to be in those countries, where tax is often expected to be displayed alongside the total price, the Overlay checkout will now break out the tax amount and the rate charged as specified values. Showing these separate from the total product price better caters to US and Canadian customers and upholds tax standards. Note that:

• This is unaffected by your pricing settings of whether tax is 'inclusive' or 'exclusive' of the product price. We are simply displaying the amount of tax charged and the sales tax rate alongside the total price
• The Inline Checkout is unaffected because it never shows pricing. Instead you can show these details through your implementation
• This also doesn't apply to free items, where no tax is collected
• This will only display for US & Canadian customers

If you have any further questions please contact our team.

Improvement

In September of last year, the Irish Tax Authorities announced a temporary reduction in their standard VAT from 23% to 21%. As of February 28 the rate change has expired, and so Paddle have also reverted the Ireland VAT rate back to 23%.

Alongside this update we have amended the VAT rates in the Canary Islands, Channel Islands, and Livigno with all now set to the required 0%.

As part of Paddle's revenue delivery platform, Paddle Comply ensures sales tax rates are up-to-date and that all transactions are compliant. This includes staying on top of both permanent and temporary rate changes.

If you have any questions, you can get in touch with our team via sellers@paddle.com.

Announcement

Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of Paddle Pilot, a product that works to increase the amount of successful payments, whether at checkout, subscription renewal, or upgrade.

SaaS companies lose revenue to declined payments caused by overly sensitive fraud checks and technical hiccups. Pilot now gives payments multiple chances to convert. Using Managed Payments’ multi-acquirer banking infrastructure and high payment volume, Pilot :

1. routes payments to the acquirer with the best track record with similar payments

2. and then cascades any payments that do get blocked to fallback acquirers, to try again

Pilot has already driven increased payment acceptance for some software sellers by as much as 4%.

Routing and cascading payments for more chances of success means converting new subscriptions, retaining customers, and expanding them over time, capturing more of your hard-won revenue and supporting your scale-up effort.

Please ask our team if you have any questions!

New

The long awaited Paddle sandbox is finally here! Whether you’re already selling through Paddle or just looking to get started, you can now create a sandbox account to accompany your live Paddle account.

• Use test cards to simulate successful and unsuccessful transactions, with or without 3DS authentication flows
• Experiment with billing models, subscription updates, customer management & more
• Test your customers’ experience over the full subscription lifecycle
• Protect your production site and customers from your tests

If you’re new to Paddle sign up for an account first so we can get to know you. Then you can play with sandbox while we make sure you’re ready to start selling.

If you’re already with Paddle, you can create a sandbox account now.

The sandbox dashboard and checkout show you’re in Test Mode

We know this is something that has been often requested and we’re delighted to be able to deliver this for our software sellers. Please contact us for more information or if you need help getting started.

Improvement

Last November we announced the release of a new branded checkout experience, with dozens of additional styling options added to our inline checkout. This opened up new ways of designing the purchase flow to create a consistent brand design and customer experience.

We’re pleased to announce we have also now released 6 new system fonts! These include:

• Lato
• Lucida Grande
• Verdana
• Arial
• Georgia
• Times New Roman

These are fonts that come preloaded on Mac and Windows and therefore load quickly, ensure design consistency, and work with all supported languages and characters.

One of our software sellers, Renderforest, saw a 5% increase in conversions after using the branding options.

We hope you enjoy the new styling options - why not use our new sandbox to experiment with a branded inline checkout if you haven't already?

If you have any questions please ask our team and we'd be happy to help.

Improvement

To grow SaaS revenue you need to retain and expand your subscriptions. In other words, Net Revenue Retention has become your scale-up imperative. But previously the options available to you - from combating cart abandonment to retaining failed subscriptions - were dotted around the Paddle Dashboard!

So we’ve moved them all to a new area called 'Recover' where you can now:

• Enable checkout recovery emails, including a preview of the email templates sent
• Choose when, if at all, to send pre-billing emails (useful if you only offer long billing cycles, e.g. a year or more)
• Select the payment retry schedule to trigger after failed attempts
• Set an automatic action for unsuccessful subscriptions, by pausing them, moving them to past due, or cancelling them
• Decide whether to send dunning emails to help reduce involuntary churn

Because of the importance of NRR, we want to give you more control, visibility, and options to retain and grow your subscription revenue. Please ask our team if you have any questions!

Improvement

Earlier this year, VISA introduced new rules for subscription companies, demanding more transparent communications for subscribers in trial or promotional periods.

Paddle quickly started updating all emails, receipts, and invoices. Not only are all payment touchpoints now fully compliant, but in doing this work we also took the opportunity to roll out a new higher-performing design. We can now report this has seen a 3% uplift in email open rates.

Yesterday we introduced Paddle Comply as part of Paddle’s Revenue Delivery Platform. Paddle Comply is already keeping you compliant with legal, payment, and tax regulations, and covering you from sudden rule changes like this. So while our team of Engineers picked up 70 tickets, you didn’t need to pick up 1!

Please see our page on what emails we send for more information, or if you have any questions please let us know at sellers@paddle.com.

New

Your inline checkout is now a Branded Inline Checkout. Font size; color; border radius; hover and select states… These are some of the near 50 options Paddle has just launched, letting you better style your inline checkout flow.

This means your Revenue, Marketing & Design teams can quickly match your site design and create a seamless checkout experience, without first needing to run CSS changes past your Engineers.

Once you’ve embedded your Inline Checkout and reviewed the available options, go to the Checkout > Branded Inline Checkout section of the Paddle Dashboard. There you can instantly style its appearance and 'Publish' your design:

See our new blog post for tips on how to create a frictionless inline checkout. Or message support if you have any questions. Enjoy the design tools at your fingertips!