Offshore payment setup guide for indie devs

A step-by-step path for mainland indie devs to actually get paid from overseas

Problem

Building a small site and wanting to accept overseas payments, PayPal requires registering a sole proprietorship, Stripe does not support mainland China, Lemon Squeezy passes payment tests but never activates the store, and most platforms AI or search recommends also require a business license. Developers burn weeks trying platforms while the money never arrives and the project stalls.

Solution

A guided wizard that breaks offshore payments into executable steps: based on region, business type and price point, recommend viable combinations (Stripe alternatives, Paddle, Creem, Ko-fi, PayPal, etc.), list required documents, review pitfalls and common rejection reasons, and generate a payment page plus reconciliation template.

Users

Mainland indie developers and small studios building overseas products, subscription sites and digital goods

MVP

Questionnaire on region plus business type yielding combination recommendations; document and review checklists per platform; common rejection reasons and appeal templates; simple payment page and reconciliation templates; alternative paths ranked by success rate

Revenue

Free basic path plus paid unlock of full checklists, appeal templates and a quarterly-updated platform policy library; affiliate commissions

Why now

AI has lowered the barrier to shipping overseas products for tiny teams, but payment compliance remains the biggest blocker and platform policies change constantly, making a maintained niche info product ideal for a solo dev