💳 MoR is the right choice for indie devs in India (and I wish I knew this earlier)

A few weeks back, while building Launch Shots, I ran into something I hadn’t really dealt with properly before: web payments.

I’m a mobile-first developer. I’ve shipped iOS and Android apps, built web apps too, but payments were usually someone else’s problem. I integrated SDKs, wired things up, and moved on.

This time, though, it was all on me.

Subscriptions. One-time purchases. Indian users. International users. Compliance. Taxes. The stuff no one really talks about when you’re excited about shipping an MVP 😅

My instinct was obvious: Stripe.

I’ve used Stripe on the web recently and honestly love it. Clean APIs, great docs, everything just makes sense. It’s the kind of developer experience you miss once you don’t have it.

But if you’re in India, you probably already know where this is going.

Stripe is invite-only here. Getting access isn’t guaranteed, approvals can take time, and for an indie builder trying to move fast, that uncertainty was enough for me to pause.

I didn’t want to spend weeks figuring out whether I’d be allowed to take money.

So I looked elsewhere.

Naturally, Razorpay was next.

It’s everywhere in India, supports international payments, and is basically the default recommendation. I created an account and started integrating it in test mode.

And this is where things started to feel off for me.

Coming from Stripe, the dashboard felt overwhelming. I couldn’t figure out how to set up a simple one-time purchase from the UI. I eventually got it working through APIs, but it never felt intuitive.

Still, I pushed ahead. I had already bought the domain, deployed the app, and put up a coming-soon page. Once the tech side felt solid, I applied to enable live payments.

A few days later, I got a call from Razorpay.

They asked about the product, what it does, who it’s for. All fair. But then they told me I’d need to fully launch the web app first so they could review it before approving payments.

As a mobile dev, that felt heavy.

On mobile, the flow is dead simple:

• Ship the app
• Apple or Google handle payments
• They take a big cut 💸
• But you can start selling immediately

When you’re an indie, especially when you don’t even know if anyone will pay, that ease matters a lot.

I didn’t want to deal with calls, reviews, and approvals before my MVP was even live. I just wanted to ship, charge a few users, and see if this thing had legs.

That’s when I stumbled into MoR (Merchant of Record) solutions.

Paddle. Lemon Squeezy. Dodo Payments.

The idea clicked instantly.

They handle the messy stuff like payments, taxes, invoices, and compliance, and you focus on building. Very mobile dev energy. Very “just ship it” vibes 📱✨

After comparing a few options, Dodo Payments stood out. Lower fees than most, covered everything I needed for Launch Shots, and didn’t feel bloated.

I signed up.

And that was basically it.

No verification calls. No “launch first, we’ll see later.” No back-and-forth emails.

From account creation to accepting payments was shockingly smooth. For the first time in this whole process, it felt familiar. Almost like setting up in-app purchases on mobile, but for the web.

Yes, MoR providers take a cut. But honestly, as an indie, that trade-off feels completely worth it. I’d rather lose a bit on margins than lose weeks on friction.

My takeaway after all this is pretty simple.

If you’re an indie developer in India, especially if you come from mobile, MoR is probably the right move when you’re starting out.

Razorpay isn’t bad. Stripe is fantastic if you can get it. But speed matters. Momentum matters. Sanity matters.

For me, Dodo Payments just worked, and that’s saying a lot.

This is purely my experience building Launch Shots. Things might look different at scale, or outside India. But if you’re trying to ship fast and validate an idea without losing your mind, MoR is absolutely worth considering 🚀

If you’re a mobile dev stepping into web payments and feeling lost, yeah, I’ve been there 😄

Hope this saves someone a few headaches.