Christian Owens and Harrison Rose incorporated Paddle in August 2012. The early company was a marketplace for software.
Paddle then moved into payments infrastructure. As seller of record it takes on sales tax, VAT, fraud and refunds, so a developer can sell to customers in many countries without a finance team. Rivals include Stripe, FastSpring, Chargebee, Lemon Squeezy and Recurly.
In May 2022 a $200 million Series D led by KKR, with FTV Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Kindred, Notion and 83North, valued Paddle at $1.4 billion. It then bought ProfitWell for more than $200 million.
By March 2024 Paddle had about 300 staff, 3,000 customers and about $300 million raised. Owens is the former CEO, and Rose later led the company before co-founding Good Fit.