Set up payments, servers, and support to sell anywhere.
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1. Pricing in USD/EUR from the start
I structured the company to serve international customers from the beginning. That meant:
- Billing in USD and EUR, not NZD
- Hosting on US and EU servers for performance
- Support coverage across time zones (Iʼm a hopeless insomniac, so this bit was easy!)
We built for healthcare training providers outside of New Zealand because thatʼs where the scale was. We didnʼt wait for domestic demand—we went straight to clinical simulation leads in the US, UK, and EU.
2. Stripe vs Paddle — which works when
Your backend systems, how you bill, onboard, and support customers, determine how easily you can operate across borders.
- Billing and compliance: Stripe’s tax tools were too immature at the time. Paddle let us outsource sales tax, VAT, and invoicing globally.
- Onboarding: Our flows were localised for EN-US and DE markets. We used browser language detection to auto-suggest copy and tailored terminology to local curriculum formats.
- Support: We avoided live chat. Async ticketing and structured help docs worked across time zones. Many clients were academic or hospital-based and required documentation-based workflows.
Stripe is powerful, but unless you’re ready to build compliance yourself, it’s not fit for early SaaS exports. Paddle acted as Merchant of Record:
- No need to register VAT in every country
- Fully managed receipts, tax rates, invoicing
- Cleaner reporting
Rule of thumb:
- Use Paddle if you don’t want to register VAT everywhere.
- Use Stripe if you need control and have compliance resources.
3. Async support & localisation beyond translation
We localised onboarding, emails, and pricing:
- Different medical credentialing paths for Spain vs. US
- Emails rewritten with local clinical education terminology
- Currency symbols and buying triggers mattered:
- Germany = invoice compliance
- US = card convenience (and reminding them we don’t accept checks)
- Data hosting and support aligned to academic calendars
For example, German customers cared deeply about invoice structure and data protection. US buyers didn’t. UK NHS-aligned clients required security briefings as part of onboarding.
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