Stripe acquires Lemon Squeezy

mska

What will happen to the Merchant of Record feature now? Hopefully they still keep it. That was the best part of lemon squeezy

xyst

It’s scary how big stripe is becoming. Instead of competing just buy up other companies. Might be another company that will require regulatory intervention and break them up (same as when the govt broke up the railroads)

l5870uoo9y

> Nine months after our public launch in 2021, we surpassed $1M in ARR and never looked back.

Stripe is buying a lucrative business, but more importantly it is buying the complex knowhow of running an international tax-compliant merchant of record. They can then integrate this into their product. I switched to LemonSqueezy primarily out of concern for EU-wide tax ramifications (EU strikes again). Is there a reason to choose LemonSqueezy over Stripe if you are located in the US? There hasn't been a single VAT-compliance case to my knowledge and the need for MoR is unclear.

anilshanbhag

Merchant of record can be really big - the biggest issue today is price. 5% + 50c doesn't make sense if you are selling $5 per month subscriptions.

Reduce the price to Stripe pricing + 1%, and this will be the default for everyone!

thallavajhula

>Nine months after our public launch in 2021, we surpassed $1M in ARR and never looked back.

>Along the way, we received many acquisition offers and (Series A) term sheets from investors. But despite the allure of these opportunities, we knew that what we had built was truly special and needed the right partner to take it to the next level.

Wow. This is quite the smart and ballsy move. Congrats to the team. Looks like y'all knew what you were doing.

seanwilson

Are there any plans to adjust the extra % fees that get added to international, PayPal, and subscription payments, and payouts? (https://docs.lemonsqueezy.com/help/getting-started/fees)

I found these surprising as I didn't see them mentioned on the pricing page near "Transaction fees ... 5% + 50¢" (https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/pricing).

erulabs

Good to see M&A get back on track -- PC, whom I would trust much more than any living economist, must be somewhat positive about the near future? Congrats to the lemon squeezy team!

nerder92

This company screams “Stripe please buy me” so so much.

From branding to the all UVP, it was a fast exit because it was meant to be.

Still a massive achievement

mtlynch

I find this pretty disappointing.

There's so little competition in the payments space, and this acquisition means that there's even less. I know LemonSqueezy already relied on Stripe, but before the acquisition, there was still a potential path for them to break that dependency.

I tried out LemonSqueezy a bit last year and had a mediocre experience, but it was at least nice to see a payment provider focused on simple, straightforward use cases. Stripe and Paddle have so many different customers and flows that it's hard to use them for simple, standard things. I was hoping to see LemonSqueezy fill that niche, but now Stripe is folding LemonSqueezy into the rest of their complex systems.

th3w3bmast3r

I am always nervous about acquisition. Only time will tell if this is going to be good or bad.

xena

I wanted to build something on top of Lemon Squeezy because stripe banned patreon-like services. Are you gonna extend that to Lemon Squeezy?

TechDebtDevin

This is depressing.

mbStavola

Merchant of Record is a cool feature to have-- Stripe Tax works well but the pricing structure is horrible. Paying a flat fee for dedicated tax handling would be considerably better!

Now if only we could somehow get MoR for marketplaces...

purple_ferret

Did Stripe get spooked by this?: https://www.lemonsqueezy.com/blog/guillermo-rauch-vercel-ceo

jaundicedave

merchant of record was one of the few things that stripe was missing. i'd be pretty worried if i worked at paddle.

the_mitsuhiko

> Rest assured, we’ll continue delivering the same fantastic product and reliability you’ve come to trust. We’ll be in touch as we work through this process with any updates as they come along. We’re excited about finding the best ways to combine Lemon Squeezy and Stripe.

That sounds somewhat promising but not entirely committed.

wilg

Currently using Paddle, and would love to switch to Stripe. I'm concerned about the additional hidden fees mentioned elsewhere in this thread, as well as lack of B2B invoicing features. Though Paddle's invoicing features are pretty barebones (like you can't easily send someone an estimate/pricing before a purchase, only an invoice after one.)

arminiusreturns

These ISV's are really squeezing the juice out of their customers with those rates aren't they? Even Stripe's rates are horrible, but 500 basis points and 50c/tx is really something... but to be fair ISV's are by definition vertical integrators and have more feature offerings.

ewuhic

Since some other MoR were mentioned here, does anyone have experience with https://fourthwall.com/?

supportengineer

Instead of calling Stripe directly, customers call Lemon Squeezy directly - it’s an abstraction layer around the Stripe API.

What’s the barrier to entry for starting up a similar business?

alberth

I'm hoping this means Stripe Tax will finally get the capability of actually filing the appropriate paperwork & taxes in the geographies it's required.

mmckelvy

Is there a version of Lemon Squeezy for SaaS companies?

nikolay

Acquires the customers and the team?

sidcool

Stripe could easily replicate the features that lemon squeezy has. It's not about technology, it's about the clientele, brand and talent

b20000

selling digital products online… what is new? how did they get to 1MM ARR with all the competition?

localfirst

I find the whole aspect of having MoR a fear mongering tactic to get you to pay extra transaction fees

99% of SaaS won't reach the MRR needed to justify MoR

Of the 1% those breaking through 7 digit MRR can simply hire in house to manage tax remittance and not confuse their customers with invoices labelled with MoR's branding

All in all this seems like the fear campaign has worked beautifully for Paddle and Lemonsqueezy but some of us saw right through it and never really felt the need to pay 5%~11% (!!)

Looks like Stripe will shut down MoRs one by one

BoorishBears

Now I need to find a new payment provider. Stripe has burned too many people with too little remorse to ever risk something as critical as payments on them again.

pixxel

Congratulations Orman.

FractalHQ

Was nice when we had anti trust laws. This is gonna bite us all so hard as a society in the coming decades.

ertucetin

Now someone can create the new Lemon Squeezy, there will be a gap in the market.

guax

Easy peasy

MELEKE

[dead]

saltserv

[dead]

teresasovinski

[dead]

rvz

Now that's what I call horizontal integration, i.e. reducing competition.

antonellaleo

[flagged]

mgrandl

Yikes