Screw Sales Tax: Sell on the Web With Superwall + Stripe

Build the paywall and sell subscriptions through Stripe, while Stripe Managed Payments owns the merchant-of-record and tax work. Sales tax, VAT, currency conversion, compliance paperwork — none of it is why you build apps, so ship the experiment and let Stripe handle the boring stuff.

Why it matters

Web-to-app is a rising frontier, and growth teams keep asking to move faster on it — to sell outside the App Store and understand the value of web users. But standing up a web purchase flow usually means engineering time, payment plumbing, and a pile of tax and compliance questions nobody on a growth team wants to own.

Superwall web checkout removes most of that. You get a web purchase flow you can build and test like any other paywall — no authentication required for the customer — and the payment, currency, and tax responsibilities sit with Stripe. The result: a new revenue channel your growth team can launch and iterate without turning every change into an engineering project.

What you can do with Superwall

• Sell subscriptions and one-time purchases on the web through Stripe. Superwall presents the paywall via placement URLs and routes the purchase to Stripe checkout, supporting both subscriptions and one-time / lifetime purchases.

• Link web purchases back into your iOS app with one seamless flow. After purchase, customers are redirected back into the app via deep link to unlock content — no login required (requires iOS SDK 4.2.0+).

• Charge customers in their local currency. Stripe Adaptive Pricing detects the customer's location, converts the price, and charges in the presentment currency, with support for card, Link, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

• Track web revenue automatically. When you sell through Stripe, revenue tracking is automatic — conversions, revenue, renewals, cancellations, and refunds appear in your Superwall dashboard with no manual setup.

• Keep the tax and compliance work with Stripe. Stripe Managed Payments acts as merchant of record and handles tax remittance and compliance, so your team owns the paywall, not the paperwork.

How it works

• Connect Stripe. Install the official Superwall app from the Stripe marketplace, then add your publishable and restricted secret keys to Superwall for live and sandbox modes.
• Create products and paywalls. Add your products in Stripe and place them on your web paywalls.
• Publish a web checkout link. Use campaigns and placements to present web paywalls via shareable placement URLs for email, ads, and social.
• Redeem or redirect after purchase. Choose Redeem mode (Superwall manages the full redemption flow and deep-links into your app) or Redirect mode (send the customer to a custom URL with purchase data as query parameters).
• Let revenue and tax sort themselves out. Revenue tracks automatically in your dashboard, and Stripe owns the tax and merchant-of-record side.

Proof from customers

In a review of 184 genuine customer and prospect calls, web paywalls / web2app surfaced as a clear demand signal — roughly 30% of calls — with teams asking to move faster on web and to understand the value of their web users. The recurring theme across calls is the same job Superwall web checkout serves: run more monetization experiments faster, without waiting on engineering.

Pricing and offer tests are described as high-leverage but painful to run inside the app; a web channel where your team controls the paywall and Stripe owns the back office removes that friction.

Use cases

• Launch a web purchase channel alongside your in-app paywalls without an app release.

• Run price and offer tests on the web from one dashboard, then bring buyers back into your iOS app.

• Sell internationally with local-currency pricing while Stripe handles cross-border tax.

• Sell lifetime or consumable products via Stripe one-time prices.

• Skip the back office by letting Stripe Managed Payments own tax, remittance, and merchant-of-record duties.

Get started

• Read the Web Checkout overview and SDK setup.

• Follow the Stripe setup guide to connect your account.

• Sign up for Superwall and ship web checkout — and let Stripe handle the boring stuff.