I’m working through payment setup for a few small digital products, and I’m realizing the hardest part is not always the API integration.
Sometimes the harder part is making the business, product, website, and fulfillment story clear enough for review.
For example, before applying to a payment processor or merchant-of-record platform, you may need to think through:
- what exactly the product is
- how customers receive it after purchase
- whether it is a SaaS, digital download, template, course, service, or something mixed
- whether the pricing page is clear
- whether the refund/support policy is clear
- whether the website looks real enough
- whether there are screenshots, a demo, docs, or a working product path
- whether the support email and company details are consistent
I’m curious how other solo founders handled this.
If you were approved by Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Polar, Dodo, Stripe, Gumroad, or a similar platform:
What did you actually have ready before applying?
And if you were rejected or delayed:
What was missing?
I’m not looking for hacks, shortcuts, or “how to bypass review” advice. I mean the opposite: what should a legitimate indie founder prepare so the product and business are easier to understand?
I’m especially curious about:
- pricing page
- terms / privacy / refund policy
- product demo or screenshots
- business email / company details
- what your website needed to show
- mistakes that caused rejection or back-and-forth
- whether AI/SaaS/digital-product businesses are harder to explain now
I’m collecting notes from my own setup process and may turn them into a small launch-readiness checklist for indie builders if there is enough interest.
Would love to hear what actually mattered in your experience.
Top comments (1)
the mental model that makes your whole checklist click: who is the merchant of record.
on Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Gumroad they are legally reselling your product, so they vet you the way a distributor vets a supplier. that's why the review feels strict, they're taking on the tax and chargeback liability for you. Stripe is lighter upfront because you're the merchant of record there, so they mostly care about fraud and chargebacks, not your product story.
what actually gets you approved fast is one thing: the website, the pricing page, and the refund policy all telling the same story. almost every rejection or hold I've seen traces back to a mismatch, the landing page says one thing and checkout charges another, or there's no visible refund and contact info, or it's a template site with no real path to the product. reviewers are pattern-matching for whether this is a real business or a fraud front, so consistency reads as legitimacy.
the part people underprepare: approval isn't the finish line. what gets funds held later is your refund and chargeback ratio, so the clear refund policy and responsive support email you listed matter more after launch than before. treat them as ongoing, not a one-time checkbox.
concrete: a real support email on your own domain, and identical company and legal details across the site and the payment account. mismatched or free-gmail contact details are a common auto-flag.