Web checkout and Merchant of Record | Faceless AI - Dataspheres AI

The core swap Every route above replaces the store's checkout with your own. That means you now own payment, tax, and compliance. There are two shapes of s...

The core swap Every route above replaces the store's checkout with your own. That means you now own payment, tax, and compliance. There are two shapes of solution. Direct processor: Stripe Stripe (or a similar processor) gives you the most control and the lowest raw fee, around 3% plus a fixed amount. But you become the merchant of record: you are responsible for collecting and remitting sales tax and VAT in every jurisdiction you sell into, handling chargebacks, and managing subscription billing logic. Stripe Billing and Stripe Tax reduce that burden but do not remove the legal responsibility. Merchant of Record: Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and similar A Merchant of Record sells to your customer on your behalf. They take a higher cut (often 5% plus a fixed amount) but in exchange they become the legal seller — they calculate, collect, and remit tax worldwide, absorb chargeback and fraud handling, and give you one clean payout. For a solo developer or small team selling globally, this usually beats saving two points on processing and then owing tax in forty jurisdictions. How to choose Selling mostly domestically, with a finance function: a direct processor plus a tax service. Selling globally, small team, want to sleep at night: a Merchant of Record. Whichever you pick, the platform saving from leaving in-app purchase is far larger than the difference between these two — so optimize for compliance sanity first. Educational material, not legal or tax advice. App-store rules and the underlying court cases are changing month to month in 2026 — always confirm the current terms in Apple's and Google's own developer documentation before you ship, and get professional advice for your jurisdiction.