Best payment processors for selling Mac apps

When you search for a payment processor for a Mac app, you’re actually choosing between two different jobs sold as one product. A payment processor moves money from your customer’s card to your bank account — you’re still the seller, so tax registration, chargebacks, and compliance are yours to handle. A merchant of record buys the sale from you at wholesale and resells it to your customer, taking on tax and legal liability for a bigger cut. Then there’s the Mac App Store, which does both and keeps a commission for it. All three get called “payment processors” loosely. They are not the same commitment.

The fee alone doesn’t tell you which is right. A processor’s headline rate looks cheapest on paper, but by the time you’ve registered for VAT in a dozen countries, hired someone to handle EU tax filings, or eaten your first chargeback, a merchant of record’s higher cut can be the better deal — especially for a one-person shop. The App Store’s cut is highest of all, but it comes bundled with distribution you’d otherwise have to build yourself.

This list ranks the actual money-moving options — processors, merchants of record, and the App Store — for selling a Mac app in 2026, checked against each vendor’s current pricing. It does not include licensing platforms, which do a different job entirely; that’s its own section below.

The best payment processors for Mac apps

1. Stripe — best if you want to own the account

Stripe is a payment processor, not a merchant of record: you are the legal seller, Stripe just moves the card charge to your bank account. Standard US pricing is 3.4% + $0.50 per successful charge (US card pricing; rates vary by country, card type, and Stripe products used), with no monthly fee. You keep the customer relationship and choose your own tax handling — Stripe Tax can automate registration and remittance for an add-on fee, or you can do it yourself. Stripe also offers Managed Payments, its own merchant-of-record product, generally available since Stripe Sessions in April 2026, but the default setup most Mac app developers use is standard Stripe Payments. See Stripe vs Paddle for the full processor-vs-MoR breakdown, or Stripe and license keys for how licensing attaches on top.

2. Paddle — best merchant of record for global tax

Paddle is a merchant of record: it becomes the legal seller, registers for and remits VAT and sales tax in the jurisdictions where you owe it, and absorbs chargeback and fraud liability. The all-in fee is 5% + $0.50 per transaction, with no separate charges for tax or billing stacked on top. That’s a real cost over running your own Stripe account, but it removes an entire category of compliance work. Best for teams selling globally who would rather pay more per sale than register for tax in dozens of countries themselves. Full comparison.

3. Lemon Squeezy — best simple merchant of record

Lemon Squeezy, now owned by Stripe, is a straightforward merchant of record built for indie sellers: 5% + $0.50 per transaction, tax handled, hosted checkout out of the box. That’s meaningfully cheaper than Stripe’s own merchant-of-record product, Managed Payments, which adds 3.5% on top of standard Payments fees (US card pricing; rates vary by country, card type, and Stripe products used) for an effective rate above 6% — so if you want MoR economics without leaving the Stripe family, Lemon Squeezy is currently the leaner option. Best when you want MoR simplicity without a larger platform underneath it. Full comparison.

4. Polar — best developer-first merchant of record

Polar is built around usage-based billing and an API-first workflow, which makes it a natural fit for apps with metered or subscription pricing. Its pricing changed in 2026: the free Starter tier now charges 5% + $0.50 like the rest of the category, and the lower rate it was known for is only available on paid plans, starting at $20/month and dropping to 3.4% + $0.30 on the top tier. If you remember Polar as the cheap flat-rate option, check current numbers before committing — that’s no longer automatic. Full comparison.

5. Creem — best indie-focused merchant of record

Creem is a merchant of record built for solo and small-team sellers: 3.9% + $0.40 per transaction, no monthly fee, tax handled in 50+ countries. That’s currently one of the lower flat rates in the MoR category. Best for an indie Mac app that wants MoR coverage without Paddle-scale platform overhead. Full comparison.

6. Gumroad — best for shipping today

Gumroad became a merchant of record itself in 2025 and charges 10% + $0.50 per sale through your own page or links (30% for sales through its Discover marketplace). That’s a higher cut than the dedicated MoR competitors, but you get a built-in audience, no setup, and a checkout live within minutes — most useful for a first launch or a low-volume side project rather than a mature product. Full comparison.

7. FastSpring — best for enterprise and procurement

FastSpring doesn’t publish self-serve pricing; you get a custom quote after a sales conversation, and typical commissions land in the high single digits depending on volume and contract terms. What you get for it is a full merchant of record built for the enterprise side of software sales — invoicing, purchase orders, and procurement workflows that indie-focused merchants of record don’t handle well. Best when your buyers are companies, not individuals.

8. Apple App Store — best for discovery, worst for margin and control

Selling inside the Mac App Store means Apple is the payment processor, the merchant of record, and the storefront, all at once — you never touch a card number. The commission is 30% by default, or 15% under the App Store Small Business Program for developers with under $1M in prior-year net proceeds (10% in the EU for Small Business Program developers who adopt Apple’s alternative business terms, before the Core Technology Commission and payment-processing costs that can apply on top). In exchange you get the App Store’s built-in discovery, which is real distribution you’d otherwise have to build — but Apple owns the customer relationship, and you can’t run your own checkout inside a sandboxed App Store app. See selling a Mac app outside the App Store for the direct-distribution alternative.

Payment processors do not do licensing

Every option above answers the same question well: who takes the money, and how. Several also issue license keys on top of that, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. Polar’s are the most developed — activation limits, expiry, usage quotas, a validation API, and automatic revocation when a subscription cancels. Lemon Squeezy, Paddle and Gumroad all hand out keys too.

The difference is where the answer comes from. Those keys are validated by calling the vendor’s API, which means your app needs a network round-trip to know whether it should run. That is fine for a web-delivered product and awkward for a Mac app, which has to open on a plane, in a studio with no wi-fi, or behind a corporate proxy. It also means the entitlement lives on someone else’s server rather than in something your app can verify by itself.

A licensing layer answers the same question with a signed lease the app checks locally, with no call out. That is the gap, and it is narrower than most licensing vendors admit — for a simple product with an always-online audience, a processor’s built-in keys genuinely can be enough. Keylight is built for the case where they are not: a payment on your own Stripe mints a signed license, the SDK handles device limits and offline validation, and Stripe stays exactly what it already is.

How to choose

• Want to own the Stripe account and keep the fee low → Stripe, direct.
• Selling globally and don’t want to register for VAT yourself → Paddle.
• Want merchant-of-record simplicity with minimal setup → Lemon Squeezy.
• Building usage-based or subscription pricing, API-first → Polar, after checking current tier pricing.
• Indie merchant of record without a big platform → Creem.
• Want to be selling within the hour → Gumroad.
• Selling to companies with procurement and invoicing needs → FastSpring.
• Want App Store discovery and are fine with the cut → Apple App Store.

Where Keylight fits

Several of the options above will issue a license key, and for a simple product with an always-online audience that can be enough. What none of them do is give your app a signed answer it can verify by itself, with no network call — because they are payment products, and licensing is a feature rather than the thing they are built around. Whichever processor you pick, Keylight sits on top of it: connect Stripe, and a payment mints a signed license your app verifies offline, with device limits and entitlements carried inside the signature. It also tracks what happens after the sale, which none of the processors above do: active devices by day and month, activation and validation counts, and a breakdown by country and platform — who’s actually running the app you sold, not just who paid for it. Plans start at $19/month, with a free tier.