Dodo Payments

✍️ Notes from the Editors

We’re back from SF following a pretty busy week, and another incredible Unicorner founder dinner last Thursday.

Our dinner wasn’t the only reason we were in SF. We had the opportunity to attend Stripe Sessions this year and listen to some interesting talks.

If we had to boil down some points we took away from the week’s keynotes:

• Don’t build soulless products. (Jony Ive)

• The current iteration of AI tooling is leagues away from where it will be. Doesn’t mean the players will be different, though. (Michael Truell)

• Tim Cook is having a bad week. And Sundar Pichai is a cool dude. (Mark Zuckerberg)

• Stablecoins. (Patrick Collison)

And naturally, what better way to end a week of a payments conference than to dive deep into a company like Dodo Payments?

- Ethan and Arek 🦄

All-in-one global payments

Dodo Payments is a fintech startup that helps businesses enter the global market. It handles payments across different countries, multiple payment types (like Apple Pay, credit cards, and the instant Indian interbank payment system UPI), taxes and compliance with local laws, and fraud prevention. It aims to streamline the process of setting up globally so businesses can spend less time working out the intricate details of cross-border financial regulations. 

🔗 Check it out: dodopayments.com

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• Fireside chat with Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour 📈

• Fireside chat with Bilt Rewards founder Ankur Jain 💳

• Emerging Fund Managers Omakase 🍣 

• Secret Society Afterparty with Flite 👀 

💰 Business Model

Dodo Payments functions as a Merchant of Record, assuming responsibility for transactions made between businesses and their customers by becoming the legal seller. It offers its services through two pricing models: the pay-as-you-go model and the enterprise model. The pay-as-you-go model charges 4% plus 40 cents per transaction and includes cross-border sales tax compliance; built-in tools for billing, churn, and fraud; and has zero fixed costs. The second model, meant for enterprises, includes a dedicated customer success manager, migration and implementation support, and other premium features.

📈 Traction and Fundraising

• Raised $1.1 million in its pre-seed funding round led by Antler, 9Unicorns, and Venture Catalysts, as well as angel investors such as Nitin Gupta, Maninder Gulati, Raymond Russell, Preethi Kasireddy, and Nishant Verman

• Achieved #2 Product of the Day by Product Hunt

• Supports over 25 payment methods in over 150 countries and has onboarded over 1,000 merchants

👫 Founders

💼 Opportunities

Note: these roles are based in India.

• Brand & Community Manager

• In-House Legal Counsel

• Backend Development Intern

• Business Development Intern

• Social Media Intern

• Financial Operations Taxation Intern

• Developer Relations Intern

🔮 Our Analysis

Expanding globally is a mission often thought impossible for small businesses and inconvenient for larger ones. Many companies want to reach a global audience, and stand to gain tremendously by doing so, but find it challenging because of the endless complications faced in the process. Whether it be complying with various local laws, considering different currencies and payment types, or avoiding mistakenly committing fraud, the entire process of reaching foreign markets is both overwhelming and demanding.

That is where Dodo Payments steps in. Serving as the first Merchant of Record (MoR) platform tailored for India and emerging markets, it aims to open online businesses up to the global market. It takes care of all the tedious steps, such as managing cross-border regulations, handling fraud detection, and integrating with multiple payment methods, saving companies time to scale quicker and money that can be better spent.   

While larger enterprises have the means to scale their businesses globally, oftentimes, it is more difficult for small businesses to do the same. Dodo offers smaller online businesses the opportunity to enter the international market at an affordable cost. For these small businesses, which often have unpredictable revenues and tight budgets, the transaction-based payment model allows them to start with minimal financial risk. This model aligns Dodo’s growth with the success of the business. 

Larger enterprises can turn to Dodo for convenience purposes. Instead of juggling several services to fulfill payments, tax compliance, subscription billing, fraud prevention, and invoicing needs, they can use Dodo to centralize their efforts into an international expansion. It enables them to scale rapidly through its infrastructure, an offering that is quite attractive. 

The convenience of having several services bundled together, the affordability it offers to smaller businesses, and the instant global market entry it includes make Dodo a clear unicorn-to-be.

📚 Further reading

• Dodo Payments raises USD 1.1 million in a pre-seeding funding round [The Paypers]

• Dodo Payments Reviews in 2025 [SourceForge]

• E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments [Code Story]

Written by Mihir Patel

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