FinTech Focus

MoR platforms are exploding because compliance is getting uglier: EU VAT One-Stop Shop, India GST, plus half the U.S. now enforces digital-services tax. Outsourcing that liability is suddenly cheaper than a single audit.

The Pain I Hit (so you don’t)

A few months ago, I needed to launch a tiny usage-based feature. Stripe handled cards fine, but the tax side melted me:

• 27 different EU rates

• Stripe Tax still made me register in DE + FR after €10K 🙃

• PDF invoices in three languages

• Separate flows for Apple Pay vs cards

Eight hours later I still hadn’t shipped—and users kept DM-ing “when is billing live?”. Every hour was zero revenue.

Forget billing & taxes. We’re your MoR.

Polar is “the reseller in front of you.” Think Amazon Marketplace for your code. Customers buy from Polar, Polar buys from you. They collect the tax, fight the chargebacks, and cut you a Stripe Connect payout.

The magic: one CLI (npx polar-init) scaffolds products, webhooks, and a hosted checkout so slick I didn’t bother with custom CSS. 

Polar powers thousands of devs already and just raised $10M from Accel with Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch on the cap table. 

Key Information

🪄 Ridiculous DX – Adapters for Next.js, Hono, Better-Auth & friends. Five minutes from npm i @polar-sh/nextjs to first sale.

💸 Flat 4% + $0.40 fee (vs Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30) — but Polar eats Stripe’s cut inside theirs, so you never see two invoices.

🌍 Global taxes handled – VAT, GST, US state sales tax, the lot. No registrations, filings, or local entities.

🔧 Open-source core – Inspect every line on GitHub and fork adapters to your weird stack. 

Honest limitations

• Higher take-rate than Stripe — you’re trading margin for speed.

• MoR lock-in — customers’ receipts say “Polar”, not your company.

• Physical goods banned — pure digital only. 

The Bottom Line

Polar does one thing freakishly well: turns global billing + tax chaos into a single checkout link. At 4% + $0.40, it pays for itself the moment you skip your first overseas VAT registration.

Who it’s for: solo-devs to Series A teams selling digital goods, API usage, or SaaS subscriptions who’d rather write product code than tax code.

Who should pass: multi-seller marketplaces, physical-goods shops, or finance teams that need deep rev-rec tooling — Stripe or Paddle still win there. 

MoR isn’t new, but Polar’s developer-first open-source stance feels like Vercel or Supabase for payments. Expect more infra primitives to flip from “build” to “buy” the second they hit compliance complexity. If you’re iterating fast, Polar buys you the runway to focus on what matters: shipping.

Try it: https://polar.sh/

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