DEV Community: chenningdev

Receiving USD payments in Bangladesh as a developer: the routes that actually work in 2026

chenningdev — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:38:43 +0000

If you're a developer in Bangladesh trying to get paid by international customers, the first wall you hit has nothing to do with your product. It's that Stripe doesn't list Bangladesh among its supported countries, and most tutorials on the internet quietly assume you can just sign up.

So this post skips Stripe entirely and covers the routes that actually move USD into a Bangladeshi account — and the part people get wrong, which is the second half: bringing it home.

Two problems, not one

The mistake is thinking you need "a payment gateway." You need two things:

A platform that will onboard you and pay you in USD.
A way to get that USD into a local account, with a paper trail.

Solve only the first and your money sits in a foreign balance you can't use. Solve only the second and there's nothing flowing in.

The receiving layer

Merchant of Record platforms. An MoR is the legal seller of your product: the customer's invoice comes from them, and they handle sales tax/VAT in the customer's country, fraud, chargebacks and refunds. For a solo developer that removes a compliance burden that's genuinely hard to carry alone.

Several explicitly market to founders outside the US and EU:

Dodo Payments — lists Bangladesh among the countries it targets; payouts can land in a Payoneer receiving account.
Polar and Creem — MoRs onboarding individuals, no registered company required.
Paddle and FastSpring — established MoRs, heavier onboarding and more scrutiny of what you sell.

No fee tables here, deliberately. Rates go stale fast and a wrong number is worse than none. Check each platform's own pricing page the day you sign up.

Payoneer. The most common route for Bangladeshi freelancers. You get a US receiving account that platforms can pay into via ACH, then withdraw locally. Fees depend on your account tier — confirm on your own fee page.

Why local mobile money doesn't solve this

bKash and Nagad are excellent domestic rails. They are not how a US or EU customer pays you in USD, and they don't give you a foreign-currency receiving account. The same applies to local gateways that settle in BDT: they solve "accept money from someone inside Bangladesh" or "accept cards and settle locally," not "hold USD earned abroad."

If your product's customers are abroad, you need a foreign-currency receiving route first. Local rails come later, when the money is already yours in taka.

Bringing it home

This is the Bangladesh-specific part. Inward remittance for IT/ITES and freelance services has documented channels through authorized dealer banks, and Bangladesh Bank has run incentive schemes on such remittances. The specific percentages, eligible services, and paperwork change — sometimes at short notice — so confirm the current rules with your bank and a tax professional rather than relying on a blog post.

The general shape:

USD arrives in your foreign-currency receiving account (Payoneer, or a platform payout).
You transfer it to a Bangladeshi bank that handles IT/freelance inward remittance.
The bank credits you locally and generates the remittance documentation.
That documentation is what supports your tax position later.

Keep every step documented. The paper trail is the whole game.

What actually gets applications rejected

1. Proof of address. KYC wants a document tying you to an address — utility bill, bank statement, government letter in your name. Mobile top-up screenshots fail. Sort this before you start signing up.

2. Product category. Crypto, gambling-adjacent products, forex signals and some "get rich" info products get refused — sometimes silently, sometimes after you've integrated. Read the prohibited-business list first.

3. Minimum payout thresholds. Some platforms won't release funds below a set amount. A cheap product with low volume can mean months before your first withdrawal.

4. Tax registration. Freelance and IT-export income has its own filing requirements, and a TIN is typically part of operating cleanly. Rates and thresholds change — get advice specific to your situation.

The order to do it in

Pick your receiving route: MoR, or your own payment account.
Open the Payoneer (or equivalent) account first, so the destination exists before you sell.
Ask your bank about the IT/freelance inward remittance route before your first payout.
Prepare KYC documents.
Then integrate a platform — among those that will actually accept you.

Doing it in reverse is how people spend three weeks integrating something that rejects them at the final step.

The caveat

This is a map of which questions to ask, not tax or legal advice. Talk to someone who has handled Bangladeshi IT-export filings before your first significant payout. Rules here move, and one consultation costs less than an account that gets frozen.

I keep the full comparison — 50 platforms, filterable by country, entity type and product type — here:

Interactive version: https://workspace-zeta-dun.vercel.app
GitHub (corrections welcome): https://github.com/chenningdev/pay-usd-from-anywhere

Stuck on getting paid from outside the US?
I've mapped 50 platforms and helped developers in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh figure out which one will actually onboard them and how to get the money out.
Book a 30-minute paid consultation — $49, paid via Payoneer.
Email me: 3133371715@qq.com

If you've received USD as a developer from Bangladesh and hit a step that isn't covered, say so in the comments — especially anything about the bank-side inward remittance paperwork. That's the detail generic comparisons always miss.

Receiving USD payments in Pakistan as a developer: what actually works in 2026

chenningdev — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:13:19 +0000

Receiving USD payments in Pakistan as a developer: what actually works in 2026

If you're a developer in Pakistan trying to get paid by an international client or via a SaaS product, the first thing that doesn't work is the thing everyone else assumes you'll use: Stripe.

Stripe does not list Pakistan among its supported countries. You'll see tutorials telling you to "just sign up for Stripe," and then you'll hit a wall at onboarding that the tutorial never mentions. So let's skip Stripe and talk about what actually moves money into your account.

Two separate problems, not one

The mistake is thinking "I need a payment gateway." You actually need two things:

A platform that will onboard you and pay you in USD.
A way to bring that USD into a Pakistani bank account.

Solve only the first and you'll have money stuck in a foreign account. Solve only the second and you have nowhere for it to come from.

The receiving layer

Merchant of Record platforms. These act as the legal seller of your product, which removes the need for you to handle sales tax in your customers' countries. Several explicitly market to developers in Pakistan:

Dodo Payments — lists Pakistan among its target markets; payouts can land in a Payoneer receiving account.
Polar and Creem — MoRs onboarding individuals, no registered company required.
Paddle and FastSpring — established MoRs with heavier onboarding.

I'm not putting fee tables here on purpose. Numbers change, and a wrong number helps nobody. Check each platform's pricing page on the day you sign up.

Payoneer. This is the most common route for Pakistani freelancers. Payoneer gives you a US receiving account that international platforms can pay into via ACH, and from there you withdraw to your local bank. The exact fee schedule depends on your account tier — confirm it on your own Payoneer fee page.

Local gateways are weak for this use case. JazzCash and Easypaisa are domestic mobile-money rails; they are not how you receive USD from a US or EU customer. Don't build your international flow on them.

Bringing it home

This is the part that's specific to Pakistan. The State Bank of Pakistan has put in place arrangements for freelancers to receive export income through designated local banks, and there are documented routes for converting freelance USD earnings into PKR via your bank. The specifics — which banks are enabled, what paperwork each requires — change, so confirm with your bank before relying on a particular route.

The general shape is:

Money arrives in a USD-denominated receiving account (yours via Payoneer, or a platform payout).
You withdraw/transfer to a Pakistani bank that supports the freelancer inflow route.
The bank converts to PKR and reports it through the appropriate channel.

The cleanest outcomes come from keeping the paper trail intact — every step documented — because that paper trail is what your tax filings depend on.

What trips people up

1. Category refusal. Some platforms quietly refuse certain product categories — crypto, gambling-adjacent, forex signals, "get rich" info products. Read the prohibited-business list before you integrate, not after.

2. Minimum payout thresholds. If a platform only releases funds above a set amount, a $9 product selling twice a month may leave you waiting a long time for your first withdrawal.

3. FBR documentation. Pakistan's tax authority, the FBR, has a concessional tax regime for IT and IT-enabled services exports, but using it requires registration and the right filings. The exact current rates and conditions change — confirm them with a tax consultant who handles IT-export income. Don't take a blog post's tax number as your filing basis.

The order to do it in

Pick a receiving route: MoR platform, or Payoneer + your product.
Open the Payoneer account first if you'll need a USD receiving account — have the destination ready before you start selling.
Talk to your bank about the freelancer USD-inflow route before your first payout, so you're not figuring it out under pressure.
Prepare KYC documents (proof of address, ID) beforehand.
Then integrate a platform — only among those that will actually accept you.

The caveat

I'm describing the shape of the problem, not giving tax or legal advice. Talk to a professional who handles Pakistani IT-export filings before your first significant payout. One consultation costs less than a failed filing or a frozen account.

I keep the full comparison — 50 platforms, filterable by country, entity type and product type — here:

Interactive version: https://workspace-zeta-dun.vercel.app
GitHub (corrections welcome): https://github.com/chenningdev/pay-usd-from-anywhere

If you've received USD as a developer from Pakistan and hit a step that isn't covered here — especially anything about the bank-side inflow route — tell me in the comments. That's the part most comparison posts get wrong.

Getting paid in USD as an Indian developer: the part nobody explains

chenningdev — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:06:17 +0000

Getting paid in USD as an Indian developer: the part nobody explains

Search "accept international payments India" and you'll get a list of gateways. Razorpay, Cashfree, Stripe, PayU. Problem solved, right?

Not quite. Stripe does operate in India. The gateway question was never the hard part for Indian developers. The hard part is one step later: can you prove to a bank and to the tax department that this money is an export of services?

Get that wrong and you don't lose a sale. You lose the ability to claim back input tax credits, and you spend months in paperwork. So this post is about the part that actually trips people up.

Stripe India works, but it settles in rupees

Stripe India requires an Indian business entity and settles to an Indian bank account in INR. That's fine if your goal is "money arrives." It's a different thing from "I hold USD," and it's a different thing again from "my export paperwork is clean."

Three distinct problems. Most guides collapse them into one.

The real question: is this an export of services?

If you're selling software or SaaS to customers outside India, you're exporting services. India treats export of services as zero-rated under GST — meaning you shouldn't be paying GST on that revenue — but zero-rated is not the same as automatic.

To get the benefit, a few things have to be in place:

1. GST registration. If you're above the turnover threshold for services, you need to be registered. Below it you may not need to register at all — which is simpler, but limits your ability to claim refunds on input costs.

2. An LUT (Letter of Undertaking). This is the document that lets you export services without paying IGST upfront and then chasing a refund. Without an LUT, you pay the tax first and reclaim later. With it, you skip that entire cash-flow hole. File it — it's the single highest-leverage piece of paperwork here.

3. FIRC / FIRA. This is the certificate your bank issues when foreign currency lands in your account. It's your proof that payment actually came from abroad. When you file for a refund, this is the evidence. If your money arrives through a payment aggregator that doesn't produce a clean FIRC/FIRA per transaction, your refund claim gets messy.

That last point is where the gateway choice actually matters — not fees.

Where Merchant of Record platforms fit

A Merchant of Record (MoR) — Polar, Creem, Dodo Payments, Paddle, FastSpring — becomes the legal seller of your product. The customer's invoice is from them. They handle sales tax/VAT in the customer's country, fraud, chargebacks, and refunds.

For an Indian developer selling globally, that removes a large compliance surface on the customer side. It also means your customer relationship is one hop removed, which some buyers dislike.

But here's the part people miss: an MoR does not take over your Indian export obligations. Your income is still export of services. You still need the documentation chain on your side. The MoR simplifies the foreign tax question, not the domestic one.

So decide early: do you want maximum simplicity on the customer's side (MoR), or maximum control and lower fees (your own payment account + your own paperwork)? Both are legitimate. Pick one and build the paperwork around it.

Getting the USD to actually land

Whichever route you take, you eventually need a receiving account that accepts USD. Options Indian developers commonly use:

Your bank's USD account — cleanest for FIRC purposes, more paperwork to open, and correspondent bank fees apply.
Payoneer — gives you a US receiving account that platforms can pay into via ACH, then you withdraw to your Indian bank.
Wise — receiving accounts in multiple currencies.

The trade-off is always the same: the cleaner the paper trail, the more friction to set up. If you plan to claim GST refunds, favour the route that produces proper certificates over the route that's easiest.

The order that saves you weeks

Decide: MoR, or your own payment account.
Decide: do you need GST registration (i.e. are you above the threshold)?
If yes — file the LUT before your first export invoice.
Set up the receiving account so the money arrives with a paper trail.
Build an export invoice template with the right details on it.
Then pick a gateway, and only among the ones compatible with the above.

Most people do this in reverse: pick the gateway, integrate it, sell for six months, then discover they can't cleanly claim the refund.

The caveat that matters more than anything above

I'm not a chartered accountant, and Indian tax rules change. Talk to a CA who has done export-of-services filings before your first significant payout. The cost of one consultation is trivial compared to the cost of a refund claim that fails on documentation.

Treat this post as a map of which questions to ask, not as a filing guide.

I keep the full platform comparison — 50 platforms, filterable by country, entity type and product type — here:

Interactive version: https://workspace-zeta-dun.vercel.app
GitHub (corrections welcome): https://github.com/chenningdev/pay-usd-from-anywhere

If you've done export-of-services filings from India and hit something that isn't covered here, say so in the comments — especially anything about FIRC handling through aggregators. That's the detail I most want to get right.

How developers in Nigeria can actually receive USD payments in 2026

chenningdev — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:01:56 +0000

How developers in Nigeria can actually receive USD payments in 2026

Most articles about "accepting payments in Nigeria" answer the wrong question. They list gateways that will take a Naira payment from a customer. That's the easy half.

The hard half is this: a customer pays you in USD, and you need that USD to arrive somewhere you can actually use — without a US company, without a US bank account, and without lying about where you live.

I've been mapping this out platform by platform. Here's what actually matters if you're building from Nigeria.

Why Stripe usually isn't the answer

Stripe does not list Nigeria among its supported countries for standard accounts. This is the single most common dead end: a tutorial assumes Stripe, you try to sign up, and you can't complete onboarding.

There's an extra layer of confusion worth clearing up. Stripe acquired Paystack in 2020. Paystack is a genuinely good product and it's Nigerian-founded — but it is not "Stripe for Nigeria" in the sense people hope. Paystack settles to local bank accounts in local currency. If your goal is to hold USD, that's a different problem than "accept payments."

So before you compare fees, answer one question: do you need to accept money, or do you need to hold USD? They're different products.

The route that actually works: a Merchant of Record

A Merchant of Record (MoR) is the legal seller of your product. The customer's invoice comes from them, not from you. They handle sales tax/VAT registration and remittance, fraud, chargebacks, and refunds.

For a solo developer in Nigeria this isn't a convenience feature. It's often the difference between selling internationally and not selling at all, because it removes the need to register a local entity in every country you sell into — and it means the platform, not you, is on the hook for tax compliance.

The platforms that market themselves to founders outside the US and EU include:

Dodo Payments — explicitly targets developers in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil. Payouts can land in a Payoneer receiving account.
Polar — MoR with tiered pricing; onboarding open to individuals.
Creem — MoR aimed at bootstrapped founders, no registered company required.
Paddle — established MoR, heavier onboarding, more scrutiny of what you sell.
FastSpring — MoR, quote-based, heavier still; better fit once you have real revenue.

I'm deliberately not putting fee numbers in this section. Fee tables go stale within months, and a wrong number in an article is worse than no number. Check each platform's own pricing page on the day you sign up.

Your second problem: getting the USD out

Even after a platform agrees to pay you, you still need the money to reach you. This is where people get stuck, because they solved the "accept payment" half and assumed the rest would follow.

The practical route most Nigerian developers use is a Payoneer receiving account. Payoneer gives you a US receiving account (Citibank, with an ABA routing number) that most platforms can pay into via ACH. From there you withdraw to a local bank.

The exact fee schedule depends on your account tier, so confirm it on your own Payoneer fee page rather than trusting a blog post — including this one. The structure is roughly: free to register, a yearly fee that's waived in year one and only applies below a received-volume threshold, around 1% to receive from a US ACH or European bank, more if received via card, and a percentage on conversion when you withdraw locally.

Three things that actually kill applications

These come up repeatedly and none of them are about fees:

1. Proof of address. KYC asks for a document tying you to an address. Utility bills in your own name, bank statements, government letters. A phone bill screenshot usually fails. Sort this out before you start signing up, not after.

2. Product category. Crypto, gambling-adjacent products, forex signals, and some "get rich" info products get refused quietly — sometimes after you've integrated. Read the prohibited-business list first. If your product is borderline, ask support in writing before building.

3. Minimum payout thresholds. Some platforms won't release money below a set amount. If your product is $9 and you sell three a month, you may wait a long time for your first payout. Match the platform to your price point, not just to its fee.

The order to do things in

Decide whether you need to accept payments or hold USD.
If you need USD, shortlist MoRs that accept individuals from Nigeria.
Open the Payoneer account first, so you have a payout destination ready.
Prepare KYC documents before onboarding anywhere.
Then compare fees — only among platforms that will actually accept you.

Doing it in the reverse order is how people spend three weeks integrating a platform that rejects them at the final step.

I keep the full comparison — 50 platforms, filterable by country, entity type and product type — here:

Interactive version: https://workspace-zeta-dun.vercel.app
GitHub (corrections welcome): https://github.com/chenningdev/pay-usd-from-anywhere

If you've been through onboarding from Nigeria and hit a wall that isn't listed here, tell me in the comments. That's the part generic comparison posts always miss — and it's the part I want to fix.

Which payment platform can legally pay you in USD? A map for developers outside the US

chenningdev — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:55:41 +0000

Which payment platform can legally pay you in USD? A map for developers outside the US

I spent the last few weeks on a boring problem: I wanted to know, for certain, which payment platform would let a developer in a country Stripe doesn't support receive USD legally.

Not "which one has nice docs." Not "which one everyone recommends." Which ones will actually onboard you and pay you out.

I ended up comparing 50 of them. Here's the useful part.

The three questions that decide everything

Most comparison articles start with fees. That's the wrong order. Fees only matter for the platforms that will accept you at all.

Answer these first, in this sequence, and most of the list disappears:

1. Your country — not your customers' country.
Every platform cares where you are. Stripe's supported-country list is far shorter than people assume. MoRs are usually more flexible here, but not infinitely.

2. Your entity type.
Individual, sole proprietor, or registered company? Most Merchant-of-Record platforms will accept individuals. Most raw processors won't, or will after a pile of KYC.

3. What you sell.
SaaS subscription, one-off digital product, course, license keys. Some platforms quietly refuse whole categories.

If you can't answer all three, no fee comparison will help you. You'll pick the cheapest option and then fail onboarding.

What "Merchant of Record" actually buys you

This is the part that changes outcomes for developers in restricted countries, and it's usually explained badly.

A Merchant of Record (MoR) is the legal seller of your product. The customer's invoice is from them, not you. That means they handle VAT/sales tax registration and remittance, fraud, chargebacks, and refunds.

For a solo developer, that's not a convenience feature. It's often the difference between selling globally and not selling at all, because it removes the need to register a local entity to collect tax in countries where you sell.

Five platforms worth knowing

Fees below were checked against official sources at the time of writing. They change — always confirm on the platform's own pricing page before you commit.

Platform	Model	Confirmed facts	Good for
Polar	MoR	5% + $0.50; lower tiers at 3.8%, 3.6%, 3.4% with $20 / $100 / $400 monthly plans. Onboarding open to individuals.	Subscription SaaS, OSS maintainers
Creem	MoR	3.9% + $0.40 per transaction, no monthly fee, no minimum. No registered company required.	Bootstrapped founders, AI tools
Dodo Payments	MoR	US cards 4% + $0.40; international cards +1.5%; subscriptions +0.5%; ACH/SEPA 1.5% capped at $15. Minimum payout $100, reducible to $50. Payouts can land in a Payoneer receiving account.	Developers in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil
Payhip	Platform / MoR	No monthly fee, accepts sellers globally, runs a 50% recurring affiliate program.	Digital products, courses
FastSpring	MoR (quote-based)	Publishes no rate card at all — you build a custom quote. Heavier onboarding.	Established software vendors

Two things I wish someone had told me

Lemon Squeezy was acquired by Stripe in 2024. It still runs, but treat it as a Stripe product now rather than the indie alternative it used to be. If your reason for choosing it was "not Stripe," that reason is gone.

Getting paid is two problems, not one. First the platform has to pay you. Then you have to get the USD into your local bank. The second half is where people get surprised.

On that second half: Payoneer gives you a US receiving account (Citibank, ABA routing number) that most platforms can pay into via ACH. The exact fee schedule depends on your account tier, so confirm these on your own Payoneer fee page before relying on them — the structure I see is:

Free to register, no monthly fee
A yearly fee that's waived in your first year and only charged if your annual received volume stays below a threshold
Receiving from a US ACH / European bank: around 1%
Receiving via card: higher, a few percent plus a fixed fee
Withdrawing to a local bank with currency conversion: a percentage that your account shows at withdrawal time

The honest caveat

Every number in this post will eventually be wrong. Platforms revise pricing and quietly narrow their supported countries.

If a figure here conflicts with the platform's own page, the platform's page wins. That's why I keep the full list as something I can update, rather than a blog post I forget about.

If you want the full version, filterable by country, entity type, and product type across all 50 platforms:

Interactive version: https://workspace-zeta-dun.vercel.app
GitHub (corrections and PRs welcome): https://github.com/chenningdev/pay-usd-from-anywhere

If you've been through onboarding somewhere and hit a wall I haven't listed, I'd genuinely like to hear it — that's the part most comparisons miss.