A Merchant of Record (MoR) is the company that becomes the legal seller of your product. It takes the payment, appears on the buyer's statement, and takes on sales tax, VAT and GST remittance, compliance and chargeback liability on your behalf. The trade is ownership: with an MoR you are not the seller of record, so it owns the transaction, the customer relationship and your funds until payout. With a payment facilitator like paas.build, you stay the seller.
In an MoR arrangement (Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, FastSpring, Creem, Dodo), the provider is the party the customer legally buys from. That is not a branding detail: it means the MoR calculates and remits sales tax, VAT and GST in every jurisdiction it operates, handles invoicing and refunds, and carries the chargeback and regulatory liability. You keep building the product; the MoR owns the sale and pays you a balance on its own schedule, minus its fee. For a solo seller who never wants to touch a tax return in 100 countries, that is a real service worth paying for.
Both models remove payments friction, and both are legitimate. They differ on one question: who is the legal seller? With an MoR, the provider is - your customer's statement shows their name, the transaction record is theirs, and holds or account decisions are their call. With a PayFac like paas.build, you are - your brand on the statement, your customer data, your funds safeguarded under FCA rules, and your tax to handle. Put simply: an MoR sells tax peace of mind; a PayFac sells ownership and speed. See the full MoR vs PayFac breakdown.
Pick a Merchant of Record if handing off worldwide tax is your number-one problem and you are happy to give up being the seller to get it - that is the honest case, and we will point you to the right MoR. Pick a PayFac if you want to charge customers this week under your own brand, keep your customer relationship, or run a platform that pays out your own users - something an MoR is structurally unable to do, because it is a single-merchant construct. paas.build is a PayFac built on UniPaaS (FCA-authorised Payment Institution No. 929994): a real merchant account, live the same day via progressive KYB, no company needed, 3.9% flat.
A Merchant of Record becomes the legal seller of your product: it takes the payment, appears on the customer's statement, calculates and remits sales tax, VAT and GST, and absorbs chargeback and compliance liability. You supply the product; the MoR owns the transaction and pays you out on its schedule.
With a Merchant of Record you are not the seller - the MoR is, so it handles tax but owns the customer and the funds. With a payment facilitator (PayFac) like paas.build you stay the seller under your own merchant account: your brand on the statement, your customer data, your money on regulated rails, and you handle your own tax. MoR sells tax peace of mind; PayFac sells ownership and speed.
Only if remitting sales tax, VAT and GST across many countries is your single biggest problem and you are willing to give up being the seller to get it. If you sell mostly in one or two regions, or your product is a platform that needs to pay out your own users, an MoR is usually pure cost or structurally impossible - a PayFac fits better.
Stripe's core product is a payment processor, not an MoR - you stay the seller of record. Stripe now offers a separate Managed Payments MoR option, and Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, FastSpring, Creem and Dodo are dedicated MoRs. paas.build is a PayFac: you stay the merchant, live the same day, 3.9% flat.