Receiving Payments: Getting the Money Safely

Making money is only half the job. Actually receiving it — through the right channel, with taxes handled, without getting banned — is the other half. And one rule comes first.

Don’t Study Payments Before You Have Traffic

This is GeFei’s sequencing advice, and it’s worth stating bluntly: payment channels are a distraction until you have paying users. Beginners burn weeks comparing gateways for a site with 50 visitors. Get traffic first, validate that someone wants to pay, and then sort out the plumbing. Everything below matters only after that point.

Two Kinds of Money

Ad income is simple: AdSense pays you, monthly, by wire transfer, once you pass the threshold. Google handles the advertisers; you just cash out.

User payments need infrastructure: a payment gateway on your checkout page (to collect card payments) plus a bank account that can receive the settlement. This is where choices get real.

Gateway vs Merchant of Record

Two models, and the difference matters:

• Payment processor (Stripe): Stripe collects the money and settles it to you. Tax compliance is your responsibility — VAT in Europe, sales tax in the US, all on you.
• Merchant of record (Paddle, Creem, Lemon Squeezy): they sell in their own name and handle the tax paperwork for you. The barrier for individuals is much lower — but fees are higher and their risk control is stricter (they can freeze or close accounts more readily, since the tax liability sits with them).

Think of it this way: Stripe is cheaper and gives you more control, at the cost of handling tax yourself. Merchant-of-record services cost more but let a solo developer start selling almost immediately.

The Practical Options (Check Current Policies)

Payment policies change, so verify before you commit — but as of recent community reports, the landscape looks like this:

• Stripe doesn’t support individuals or companies registered in mainland China. Common workarounds are an overseas company entity, or a Hong Kong bank account paired with a Hong Kong personal Stripe account.
• Creem allows individuals to register with a passport and can withdraw to Alipay — a notably low barrier for solo developers.
• Paddle / Lemon Squeezy sit in the merchant-of-record camp: easier tax story, higher fees, stricter reviews.

Pick based on your situation, not on which brand sounds best. The “best” gateway is the one you can actually get approved for and withdraw from.

Do the Real Math

A real case from the community: $887.77 paid by 28 customers became $717.43 net — after $110.53 in automatically withheld tax and $59.81 in platform fees. Nearly 20% disappeared between “customer paid” and “money in hand.”

Always calculate profit on what you actually receive, not on the sticker price times conversion. Build this into your pricing from the start: if you need $X per customer to cover costs, your list price must be $X plus tax plus fees.

Preventing Disputes and Fraud

Stolen credit cards will find your checkout. A few chargebacks can get your account flagged; many can get it closed. Defend actively:

• Enable Stripe Radar rules and 3D Secure. These are built-in fraud filters — turn them on instead of learning the hard way.
• Listen to early-fraud-warning events and refund immediately. If the network flags a transaction as suspicious, refund first and ask questions later. A refund costs you the sale; a chargeback costs you the sale plus a fee plus a strike on your account.
• Patrol your orders daily. Large amounts, repeated payments from one card, and purchases with zero product usage are classic stolen-card patterns. Refund them proactively.
• Make contact and support easy to find. Many chargebacks happen because a confused customer couldn’t reach you and went to their bank instead. A visible support email or contact page directly reduces disputes.

Always Have a Backup Gateway

Account bans happen to legitimate businesses. GeFei’s own team had a site doing $30k MRR when its Stripe account was shut down. No warning that mattered, no quick appeal — revenue simply stopped.

The lesson: integrate a second gateway before you need it, and design your payment code so the provider is switchable — a configuration change, not a rewrite. When your primary goes down at midnight, you flip a switch instead of rebuilding checkout under panic.

What Your Site Must Have

Payment providers and card networks expect certain pages and features. Treat these as mandatory infrastructure, not nice-to-haves:

• Self-service subscription cancellation. If users can’t cancel easily, they charge back instead — and providers notice.
• Usage and order logs. Users should see what they paid for and what they used.
• Privacy policy, terms of service, and a refund policy. Written, linked in the footer, actually readable.
• Contact information. A real way to reach you, visible without hunting.

These aren’t just compliance theater. Each one reduces disputes, and fewer disputes keep your gateway account alive. The money is only yours once it survives the settlement, the tax withholding, and the fraud filters — build for all three.

Next in the series: one site working is partly luck. How to scale from one site to many.

---

Series: Build Overseas Websites with GeFei | Previous: Monetizing Traffic: Ads or Paid Subscriptions | Next: Scaling Up: From One Site to Many

Based on GeFei’s methodology (哥飞): https://github.com/qiayue/opengefei