Polar

Polar is a Stockholm payments platform that operates as Merchant of Record: it becomes the legal seller for digital products, so it handles international sales tax, VAT, fraud, and chargebacks on the developer’s behalf. A developer-first API and SDKs cover checkout, subscriptions, usage-based and metered billing, license keys, and customer entitlements, with a focus on AI-native and SaaS sellers who want to monetise without operating their own tax and compliance stack. Compared with Stripe, Polar removes the merchant’s tax/VAT burden but covers a narrower set of rails, payment methods, and enterprise features, and is a younger ecosystem.

Polar is a Stockholm payments company founded by Birk Jernström (whose previous startup Tictail was acquired by Shopify). It acts as Merchant of Record, handling international sales tax, VAT, fraud, and chargebacks on behalf of digital sellers, with billing, entitlements, and usage-based pricing exposed through a developer-first API. It targets AI-native and SaaS developers who want monetisation without running their own tax and compliance stack. Founder-led; $10M seed led by Accel with Abstract and Mischief.