Paddle rejected my account. Here's the map of what actually works in 2026

Disclosure before anything else: I'm Oded, co-founder of UniPaaS, the FCA-authorised Payment Institution (No. 929994) behind paas.build, and we compete with Paddle. The title above is the sentence builders keep arriving with - right here on dev.to , in Hacker News threads , and in our inbox. This is the map I give them, including the branches where Paddle is still the right call. Why good products get rejected Paddle is a Merchant of Record. The moment it approves you, it becomes the legal seller of everything you sell. So its underwriting answers exactly one question: "do we want to legally own this business's sales?" A brand-new solo builder with no history is the riskiest possible answer to that question, regardless of how good the product is. Builders who have been through it report the same four themes: No prior processing history. The chicken-and-egg: you need a payments track record to get approved, and you need approval to build a track record. An incomplete-looking site. Missing terms, no pricing page, no live domain, no visible product. Reviewers open your site. Identity mismatches. The applying entity, the domain owner and the bank account don't line up. Category restrictions. Paddle has tightened around some generative-AI products. Very little of this is documented, which is why the rejection email feels random. It isn't. It's a business model doing exactly what it was built to do. The decision tree Two questions decide your next move. 1. Is "global tax handled for me" your top requirement? If yes, stay in the MoR category. This is Paddle's genuine strength, and it's a real one: as Merchant of Record it remits VAT/GST across 100+ jurisdictions, and that liability sits with them, not you. No PayFac gives you that. Don't switch categories - fix the application and get back in the queue: Make the site look finished. Live domain, real pricing page, terms of service, privacy policy, a working demo. Explain the business plainly. What you sell, to whom, expecte