Selling Digital Files From a Country PayPal and Stripe Skip: Who Can Actually Pay You

A developer in Iran posted his plan on a forum this summer: build a WooCommerce store, list thousands of digital products, and take payment in crypto and WebMoney because PayPal and Stripe do not exist where he lives. The replies told him to form a US company. Nobody in the thread opened a single payout page.

This page does that. For five places a person can sell a digital file, it reads the company's own list of countries it can pay into, the fallback when the bank list fails, what the platform keeps, how long the money is held, and the clause that decides whether a change of country costs you the balance. It does not tell you what to sell, and it cannot tell you what you will earn.

Start with the list, not the store

Gumroad publishes the clearest version of the answer. It supports direct bank deposits in the local currency for most countries and PayPal transfers where bank deposits are not available, and it does not support anything else: no Payoneer, no Wise, no check, no wire. Then it prints the bank list. On the day we read it there were 119 countries on it, each with a payout currency, from Albania (ALL) to Vietnam (VND), and the list runs through Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Turkey. Twenty-nine of the 119 carry a higher local-currency minimum than the standard $100, marked "(min X)" in the table: 600 THB for Thailand, 40,000 KRW for Korea, 3,000 ALL for Albania.

Lemon Squeezy publishes a list of the same length. Bank payouts are supported in 119 countries, PayPal payouts in 200+ countries and regions. It adds one footnote worth knowing: since May 2024 Stripe accepts new accounts from India by invitation only, so an Indian seller without an approved Stripe account is paid through PayPal instead. It also prints the other list, the one about buyers: payments cannot be accepted from customers in 18 countries, including Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, the Russian Federation, Syria and Yemen.

Shopify Payments has a page per country, and there are 40 of them, from Australia to the United States. If your country is not on that page, the help center says you need a third-party payment provider, and the pricing page says Basic then charges 2% on payments taken through one, on top of the $25 a month.

That is the first step and it costs nothing: find your country by name on those pages before you write a product description.

The PayPal fallback, and where it fails

Both Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy fall back to PayPal when they cannot reach your bank. Gumroad processes PayPal payouts in USD, usually within 1 to 3 business days, and charges a 2% processing fee for the route. Lemon Squeezy pays PayPal in USD too, to a verified Personal or Business account, and notes that PayPal may charge you to convert or withdraw once the money is there.

Gumroad then says the thing the forum thread was circling. PayPal does not allow accounts registered in some countries to receive money, even where Gumroad can offer PayPal. Where Gumroad also has no bank payout, its page names Zambia, Syria, Russia, Iraq "and a number of others", there is currently no way to pay a creator in that country unless their PayPal account is registered elsewhere. A rejected payout stops being retried, because the same rejection comes back every time, and the balance stays on the account.

So the fallback is real for most of the world and absent for the countries where people most need it. That is the honest map, and it is the reason the third step exists.

Bring your own processor

Payhip does not hold your money. It connects your store to a payment processor you own, and it now offers 13 of them: PayPal, Stripe, Mollie, Square, Mercado Pago, Flutterwave, Paystack, Xendit, Midtrans, PayU, Razorpay, Iyzico and PayTabs. In most cases you connect PayPal plus one other processor for card payments.

The regional ones are the point of this page. Paystack covers Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Flutterwave covers Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania and Cameroon, which puts Zambia, a country Gumroad cannot pay, back on the map. Xendit covers Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Razorpay serves sellers in India and takes payments from buyers in over 180 countries. Iyzico serves sellers in Turkey. Each help page repeats one rule: the currency on your Payhip account must match the currency of the processor.

Because the buyer's money goes straight to your processor at the time of purchase, Payhip has no payout cycle and no threshold of its own. Its price is the plan: the Free Forever plan costs $0 a month with a 5% fee on every transaction, and the processor's fee comes on top.

Sellfy works the same way with a shorter list. It sends money instantly to your PayPal or Stripe account, less the processor's fee of typically 2.9% + 30c, and its pricing page says in plain words that where neither PayPal nor Stripe allows receiving payments you can only offer free products. Sellfy is also the one door on this page that charges before the first sale: a 14-day trial, then $29 a month, or $22 on the yearly plan.

What each door keeps

Gumroad takes 10% + $0.50 per transaction on sales through your own profile or links and has no signup or subscription cost. Lemon Squeezy takes 5% + 50c per transaction, plus 1.5% for international cards, 1.5% for PayPal and 0.5% on subscriptions, and no monthly fee. Payhip's free plan takes 5% and passes the processor's fee through. Sellfy takes nothing per sale beyond the processor, and $29 a month. Shopify takes $25 a month on Basic and 2% of every payment that runs through a third-party provider, which for a seller outside its 40 countries is every payment.

On a $20 file, the platform's own cut is $2.50 at Gumroad, $1.50 at Lemon Squeezy, $1.00 at Payhip's free plan. The processor's slice sits on top of each of those, and the figure it takes is on the processor's page, not the platform's. What you keep when you sell a digital file works the arithmetic through for the platforms that hold the money.

The hold, the floor, and the weekday

Payhip and Sellfy have no hold and no floor because the money never rests with them. The two that hold it publish their clocks.

Gumroad needs a minimum balance of $100 USD, or the higher local minimum in the 29 marked countries. You choose weekly, monthly or quarterly payouts; each covers sales made through the previous Friday, and on those schedules a sale sits in the balance for a minimum 7-day holding period before it is eligible. Daily payouts exist but only for US users with eligible bank accounts. Then the weekday: Tuesday for bank accounts in most countries, the page's own examples being the Philippines, India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey; Wednesday for euro accounts and 16 other countries; Thursday for US banks; Friday for PayPal. Bank payouts then take 2 to 7 business days to process.

Lemon Squeezy needs $50. Payouts are created on the 1st and 15th, net sales are held for 13 days and released on the 14th and 28th, and the bank takes 1 to 5 days more. The page's own example: a sale on the 4th of the month is paid out on the 28th.

The clause about changing country

Gumroad prints a warning most sellers only read after it applies. Unpaid amounts on a country-specific connected account cannot move to a new country's account, so changing your payout country, or switching payout method in a way that needs a new connected account, forfeits those amounts. The confirmation screen names the sum and asks you to type "I understand". Amounts held in Gumroad's own payment accounts are not forfeited, and Gumroad says it will transfer what it can, but the rule stands. Finish the payout in progress before you touch the setting.

That clause matters more for the reader of this page than for anyone else, because a seller who starts on PayPal and later gets a bank account in a newly supported country is exactly the person who changes payout country.

What ends it

Gumroad may halt sales and suspend or terminate an account at any time, in its sole discretion, without cause or notice. Shopify may reject an application or cancel an existing account for any reason, at its sole discretion. Payhip warns that selling banned content risks permanent deletion without prior notice. Lemon Squeezy's exposure is of a different kind: store, checkout, customer list and payouts all sit with one company, now trading as Link, LLC.

With Payhip and Sellfy a closed store does not hold a balance hostage, because the money was already in your processor account at the moment of sale. That is the second reason, after country coverage, to prefer a door that never touches the cash.

What to do today

Find your country on Gumroad's bank list and on Lemon Squeezy's. If it is there, either will pay you, and the choice is the fee and the hold. If it is not there but PayPal can receive money where you live, both still pay you in USD, and Gumroad charges 2% for it. If neither is true, open a Paystack, Flutterwave, Xendit, Razorpay or Iyzico account first, match Payhip's currency to it, and build the store second. Price the file above the floor you will meet, $100 or $50, and do not change payout country while a payout is pending.

The store is the easy part. The list of countries on the payout page is the method.