How Do You Price International vs Domestic Deals in 2027?
Set one global list price, then decide four things deliberately for each market: the currency you quote and invoice in, whether a regional price tier applies, whether tax is shown on top of or inside the price, and who carries the exchange-rate risk. Reseller margins and discount approvals come after those, and they should be written down before the first deal, not negotiated deal by deal.
The published evidence is thin on exact percentages. What is documented is how the tools work: Stripe can show local currency in more than 150 countries with a 2-4% conversion fee paid by the customer, Paddle lets you override prices country by country, and Basecamp's 2023 India launch priced at 300 rupees per user against a global $15. I found no independent study that says what discount a given country should get, so this page gives none.
Everything below is sourced and dated where it states a fact. Lines marked Judgment are mine. This is pricing guidance, not tax, legal or accounting advice. Check tax questions with a qualified adviser.
Local currency versus USD: quote where the buyer pays
The first decision is whether an international buyer sees your USD list price or a price in their own currency. The payment processors document both options.
- Stripe Adaptive Pricing (Stripe docs, no date shown)Customers can pay in local currency in more than 150 countries, at an exchange rate guaranteed for 24 hours. Stripe says you pay 0% and your customers pay 2-4%, because the rate shown to them includes a conversion fee that Stripe sets and varies.
- Stripe currency support (Stripe docs, no date shown)You can charge in over 135 currencies and receive funds in your preferred currency. Stripe says converting prices to local currencies can improve customer conversion and authorization rates.
- Paddle price order (Paddle docs, no date shown)Paddle shows a country-specific override first, then an automatically converted local-currency price, then your base price.
- A limit to know aboutStripe says that for cross-border subscriptions, Adaptive Pricing supports only card payments, Link, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Two details matter for a B2B seller. First, the 2-4% is described by Stripe as a charge to the customer for paying in local currency; a customer who pays in your integration currency does not pay it, though their own bank's rate and fees may apply. Second, these are checkout tools. A negotiated enterprise contract is usually written and invoiced by your finance team, so the currency clause belongs in the contract, not in a checkout setting.
Judgment: quote in local currency for self-serve and small-team buyers, where an unfamiliar currency adds friction at the moment of purchase. For large contracts, ask the buyer which currency their procurement team can pay in, and treat a USD contract as the default you move off only for a reason.
Purchasing-power tiers: one documented case and one tool
A regional tier means the same product at a lower local price where buyers have less purchasing power. The best-documented public example is Basecamp. TechCrunch (Jagmeet Singh, July 18, 2023) reported that Basecamp offered new small-business customers in India 300 rupees ($3.65) per user per month, against a global price of $15 (1,200 rupees). The same article reported an annual Pro Unlimited plan at 4,800 rupees ($58.48) against a global $399.
Basecamp's own 37signals announcement (July 18) framed it as a test for new Indian customers that could expand to other markets. Jason Fried said in the TechCrunch piece that people in India wanted to use Basecamp but could not afford it. Two cautions: the offer was limited to new small businesses, and Basecamp's current pricing page showed only US dollar prices when I read it on November 5, 2026, so these 2023 figures may be out of date.
On tooling, Paddle's docs show how a country override works. In an example the page itself marks as illustrative, a base price of 100 USD is overridden to 90 GBP for Great Britain and 2320 INR for India. That shows the mechanism, not a recommended discount.
A worked example (an illustration with invented numbers, not data). Suppose a list price of 10,000 dollars a year and three tiers indexed at 100, 80 and 60. Tier A pays 10,000, tier B pays 8,000 and tier C pays 6,000. The point of the table is the process: assign each country to a tier once, publish the tier, and stop negotiating the tier country by country.
Judgment: keep the number of tiers small, assign countries to tiers by a rule you can state, and limit the lower tier to the segment you intend to reach (the Basecamp offer was only for new small businesses). For a related decision, see how many pricing tiers B2B SaaS should have.
Taxes, VAT and GST: decide tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive up front
Tax is added on top of the price you set, or sits inside it, depending on the market and your choice. Two published reference points show how it works for digital sellers.
- EU One Stop Shop (European Commission): the official page says the non-Union scheme is for a business that has not established its business in the EU and has no fixed establishment there, and covers supplies of services to non-taxable persons in any EU Member State. Place of supply for services to consumers is the Member State where the customer is established, has a permanent address or usually resides. The page is not dated; it records that the mini One Stop Shop began on 1 January 2015 and became the One Stop Shop from 1 July 2021.
- The EUR 10 000 threshold: the same page describes an annual EUR 10 000 threshold for cross-border consumer electronic services, introduced on 1 January 2019, and says suppliers established outside the EU cannot make use of it. It says nothing about business-to-business sales or tax rates, so do not read it as a complete rule.
- Merchant of record (Paddle docs): Paddle says that as merchant of record it calculates, collects and remits taxes for you, in over 200 countries and territories. That moves the filing work to the platform, along with a share of the revenue; check its current fees directly.
Judgment: decide, per market, whether the quoted price is tax-exclusive (common in business quotes) or tax-inclusive (common for consumer-style checkout), and say which in every quote. A buyer who sees a higher number at checkout than on your page is a pricing problem you created.
FX risk: decide who carries the exchange rate
Once you quote in a currency other than the one your bank account uses, someone carries the movement between the quote and the cash. Stripe's currency docs say that if the charge currency differs from your settlement currency, Stripe converts the charge to your settlement currency, and refer to its pricing page for conversion costs. In Adaptive Pricing, Stripe says it uses the mid-market rate, applies its fee to guarantee the rate through settlement, and refunds at the same exchange rate as the original transaction.
For scale, here is an illustration with invented numbers: on a 10,000 dollar annual list price, a 2-4% conversion fee would be 200 to 400 dollars. That arithmetic is mine, not Stripe's, and it applies to checkout payments, not to a negotiated invoice.
Judgment: the options are to invoice in USD and let the buyer carry the risk, to quote in local currency and carry it yourself, or to quote in local currency with a clause that reprices if the rate moves beyond a band you agree. Choose one per segment and keep it consistent. For modeling this across several currencies, see how to model FX risk across currency zones.
Channel and reseller margins: the published numbers are weak
International deals often go through a local reseller, which changes the price you net. I found no neutral, audited benchmark for SaaS reseller margins. What exists is vendor-side:
- Monetizely (December 23, 2025, no author named): says partners typically earn 20-40% margins, with value-added resellers at 25-35%, managed service providers at 30-40% and distributors at 8-15%. The page cites no study for these ranges and gives no guidance for international partners.
- eazyBI partner terms (no date): one app vendor's published terms give partners 20% off for new licenses and 10% for existing customers and annual renewals, give non-partner resellers 5%, and list an Atlassian Solution Partner discount of up to 20% on Cloud and Data Center licenses. These are one company's terms, not a market rate.
Judgment: set the partner margin before you set the regional price, so the reseller's discount comes out of a price that already reflects the market. Stacking a regional discount, a partner discount and a negotiated discount on the same deal is how a healthy list price turns into a loss.
Discount governance: write the approval path before the first deal
International deals invite exceptions, so the control is a written approval path. Monetizely (December 23, 2025) gives an illustrative structure it labels as typical, not a rule:
- 0-15% discount: rep or manager, immediate.
- 16-25%: deal desk, with a 4 hour response.
- 26-35%: VP of Sales and Finance, 24 hours.
- Above 35% or non-standard terms: CFO or an executive, 48 hours.
The same article says thresholds should reflect your own margin structure, not arbitrary numbers, and suggests auditing the last 50-100 closed deals to see real discount patterns. It also recommends setting thresholds so that genuinely exceptional deals, perhaps 10-15% of volume, need senior review, and documenting each exception. Its table lists 35% in two tiers, so decide which tier owns the exact boundary.
Judgment: add a market field to the approval record so you can see whether one region is taking most of the exceptions. If it is, the regional tier is wrong, and fixing the tier is cheaper than approving the same exception repeatedly.
What the public sources do not tell you
No source read here gives a country-by-country discount table, a measured conversion lift from regional pricing, or an audited reseller margin. The newest sources date from 2025 and none speaks to 2027. Treat the figures above as examples of how others structure the decision, test a regional price on a limited segment, and track win rate and net revenue by region before you roll it out.
Questions people ask
Should I price international deals in local currency or USD?
It depends on the buyer. Stripe says converting prices to local currencies can improve conversion and authorization rates, and its Adaptive Pricing shows local currency in more than 150 countries with a 2-4% fee paid by the customer. For large negotiated contracts, ask the buyer's procurement team which currency they can pay in.
Should every country get a different price?
Not necessarily. Paddle supports country-specific overrides, and Basecamp priced India at 300 rupees per user against a global $15 in 2023. I found no independent study of how much any country should be discounted. Judgment: use a few tiers assigned by a stated rule.
Do I have to charge VAT on international sales?
It depends on where the buyer is, whether they are a business or a consumer, and the product. The European Commission's One Stop Shop page describes a scheme for non-EU businesses selling services to EU consumers. This is not tax advice; confirm with a qualified adviser.
Who should carry the exchange-rate risk?
That is a commercial choice. You can invoice in USD, quote in local currency and carry the risk, or add a repricing clause. Stripe says Adaptive Pricing uses the mid-market rate and charges the customer a fee to guarantee the rate through settlement.
How much margin should a reseller get on international deals?
No neutral benchmark was found. Monetizely (December 23, 2025) says partners typically earn 20-40% margins but cites no study and gives no international guidance. Set the margin first, then the regional price.
Sources
- Stripe docs: Adaptive Pricing (no date shown) · Local currency, 2-4% customer conversion fee, 24 hour rate, refunds
- Stripe docs: Supported currencies (no date shown) · Presentment and settlement currency, customer bank FX fees
- Paddle developer docs: Offer localized pricing (no date shown) · Country price overrides, price order, merchant of record tax handling
- European Commission: VAT One Stop Shop (no last-updated date) · Non-Union scheme, place of supply, EUR 10 000 threshold
- TechCrunch: Basecamp India special pricing (Jagmeet Singh, July 18, 2023) · Rupee prices versus global prices, stated reasoning
- 37signals: Special pricing in Rupees for new small business customers in India (July 18) · Basecamp's own announcement of the India test
- eazyBI documentation: Partner licenses and discounts (no date) · One vendor's partner and reseller discounts
- Monetizely: Partner Discounts and Margins (December 23, 2025) · Vendor-side reseller margin ranges, uncited
- Monetizely: The Pricing Approval Workflow (December 23, 2025) · Illustrative discount approval tiers and governance advice
Pick the currency, tier, tax display and FX owner for each market, write the partner margin and approval path down, and test a regional price on one segment before you roll it out.
Top photo: Avij (talk · contribs) / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons