10 Best Merchant of Record Platforms for SaaS

Charge a buyer in another country and the sale arrives with VAT, GST, or sales tax, a possible chargeback, a currency conversion, and that market's payment rules. Unless another company is the legal seller, all of it is yours to handle. For a solo founder or small team, that is a full-time job.

Most small teams with buyers abroad do better handing the legal-seller role to a merchant of record. Staying on a processor still works if you register, file, and remit the tax yourself. Even Stripe now sells its own legal-seller service, Managed Payments, next to its card processing and Stripe Tax.

Every dollar matters at this stage. A 3.9% + 40¢ rate and a 5% + 50¢ rate look close on paper. The gap widens once a monthly plan, a non-US card surcharge, a partner fee, or a payout transfer comes out of the same sale.

What does a merchant of record actually do?

A merchant of record is the legal entity selling your software to the customer. Its name appears on the customer’s card statement and invoice. It takes the payment, deducts fees and transaction taxes, and pays out your earnings.

That responsibility includes calculating and collecting sales tax, VAT, and GST, filing returns, and sending the tax to the authorities. When a consumer card from another country clears for your subscription, the provider calculates the VAT on that sale, collects it at checkout, and files and remits it. Your income and corporate taxes stay with your business.

The provider also issues invoices, processes refunds, and handles disputes and chargebacks when buyers challenge a payment.

Without a merchant of record, you sell directly to the customer. A processor moves the money, and tax software can calculate the tax. The legal duty still sits with you:

• Track nexus rules and registration thresholds to identify where you need to register for tax.
• Collect the tax due on each sale.
• File the required returns.
• Remit the money collected to the tax authorities.
• Meet international payment regulations governing your sales.

You still build, deliver, and support the software.

Check who legally sells to the customer before choosing a provider: ask whose name appears as the seller on the invoice and the card statement. If the answer is your company’s name, the tax filings are still yours, because processing the charge alone does not transfer that responsibility.

Merchant of record providers compared: fees, coverage, and billing

The 10 platforms, reviewed

1. Creem: Revenue splits and usage billing at 3.9% + 40¢

Creem pricing page: 3.9% + 40¢ per successful transaction, $0 monthly and setup fees, and a $100 sale netting $95.70

Creem automatically routes a share of each sale to collaborators and licensors from the same checkout, with usage and prepaid-credit billing in one account. Its core fee is 3.9% + 40¢ per successful transaction, including processing, below the 5% + $0.50 headline rate at Paddle and Lemon Squeezy.

As the legal seller, Creem handles applicable VAT, GST, and sales tax obligations, including collection, filing, and remittance, for supported sales worldwide. It also sends customer invoices, screens for fraud, and handles chargebacks. Those duties sit alongside billing and partner payments, so you can retire separate tools for tax, subscriptions, affiliate commissions, and collaborator shares.

Creem handles US sales tax in the 28+ states where it is registered, VAT in the EU and UK, and transaction taxes in South Korea. Setup takes minutes. The API is developer-friendly, and payouts go out on the 1st and 15th of each month.

For an AI product, the billing choice changes when cash arrives:

• Prepaid credits let customers pay before using your product, with usage drawing down their balance and auto-refill topping it up.
• Postpaid meters count generations, tokens, minutes, or API calls and invoice the customer at the end of the billing period.
• Subscription and seat plans support recurring access, trials, and discounts.

You can share a hosted checkout, embed it in your site, or run it on your own domain. License keys and file delivery handle purchase fulfillment. Short links show which clicks lead to checkouts, while revenue analytics track the resulting sales.

When Uneed moved to Creem from Polar, the switch changed more than 1,500 lines of payment code in minutes, with 3 AI prompts and 0 integration errors.

Switching daisyUI from Lemon Squeezy to Creem took a few hours, with support replies in under a day and no extra tools needed for revenue sharing.

Best for: Creem is for indie hackers, AI builders and bootstrapped SaaS teams that sell worldwide and want tax handling, usage or credit billing, and automatic partner payouts alongside checkout.

Pricing: The standard core fee is 3.9% + 40¢ per successful transaction, with no monthly fee, setup fee, or minimum sales volume. Processing, tax handling, invoicing, compliance, and dispute handling are included. Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ processor rate is lower, but it leaves tax filing with you.

On a $100.00 sale, the core fee deducts $3.90 plus 40¢, leaving $95.70. At the 5% + $0.50 headline rate of Paddle and Lemon Squeezy, the same sale leaves $94.50 before any additional charges.

Optional services and transfers have separate charges:

Pros:

• Dashboard, API, CLI, and MCP access let you manage the store directly or have an agent create products and open checkouts.
• The lowest published rate on this list with no monthly fee: 3.9% + 40¢.

Affiliate and revenue-split charges sit on top of the core fee. Review Creem pricing against your expected sales volume to budget for your setup.

Once that budget works, try Creem and choose between prepaid credits and postpaid meters before you share the first checkout.

2. Paddle: Established MoR for larger SaaS accounts

Paddle homepage: merchant of record for digital product businesses, handling payments, tax, compliance and billing

Paddle handles the commerce side of a software business in one platform: payments, recurring billing, fraud screening, chargebacks, and payment-related buyer support. As merchant of record, it manages payments, tax, and compliance across 300+ markets.

Paddle serves more than 10,000 customers. ProfitWell Metrics provides revenue reporting, while Paddle Retain uses automated dunning to recover failed payments. Together, they help you see subscription performance and act when renewals fail.

Best for: Paddle suits mid-market SaaS businesses with established revenue that want retention tooling and custom pricing.

Pricing: Paddle takes 5% plus $0.50 from each checkout transaction, with no monthly platform charge. From a $100 checkout, you keep $94.50 before payout costs, the same amount as Lemon Squeezy at its headline rate.

Custom pricing covers high-volume businesses and more complex billing needs. Sellers with products priced below $10 can contact Paddle for bespoke pricing. When choosing Paddle, count the full cost of billing and failed-payment recovery.

Cons:

• A rate below the published 5% + $0.50 requires a custom quote rather than a self-serve pricing tier.
• At 5% + 50¢, it is less suited to early-stage or bootstrapped teams.

3. FastSpring: Localized checkout and B2B invoicing

FastSpring pricing page with no published rate and a Get your pricing quote button

FastSpring sells SaaS, software, and digital goods as merchant of record. It accepts customer payments, pays out your earnings, runs recurring billing, and screens transactions for fraud. The service also collects transaction taxes, sends them to the authorities, and responds to sales-tax and VAT audits.

Its software and gaming focus, localized checkout, and B2B invoicing make it worth considering for more involved software sales. I see the invoicing as the reason to consider FastSpring: it covers the customer whose finance team pays an invoice instead of entering a card at checkout.

Best for: FastSpring serves larger software businesses, game publishers, and enterprise-software vendors looking to combine global digital commerce with B2B invoicing.

Pricing: FastSpring does not publish a rate. Pricing is negotiated per deal, so you cannot run your own sales month through its fees until you have a quote.

Pros:

• B2B invoicing supports software sales to business buyers.
• Gaming commerce is part of its focus alongside software and digital goods.

Cons:

• No published transaction price makes an initial cost comparison harder.
• Complex onboarding.
• Overkill for small teams.

4. Managed Payments by Stripe: Stripe's own MoR, at a higher all-in rate

Stripe Managed Payments page: Stripe as merchant of record, with tax collection and remittance automated in 80+ countries

Managed Payments is Stripe’s merchant-of-record option for software subscriptions and downloadable digital products. It collects and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST in more than 80 countries, screens payments for fraud, responds to disputes, and answers customers’ payment-related support requests.

If you use Stripe Tax today, it calculates tax and helps you register and file, but your business stays the seller and keeps the sale’s tax obligations. Managed Payments takes on indirect-tax responsibility in supported jurisdictions, making it worth checking before replacing an existing Stripe integration.

Best for: Managed Payments by Stripe suits software and digital-product businesses already using Stripe that want merchant-of-record services within their existing account. Its main attraction is avoiding a processor switch. Products that fail eligibility need another payment arrangement.

Pricing: The Managed Payments charge adds 3.5% to processing. On a US domestic card, Stripe’s 2.9% plus 30¢ brings the combined fee to 6.4% plus 30¢. From a $100 payment, $6.70 goes to fees and $93.30 remains, less than the $94.50 left at the 5% + $0.50 headline rate of Paddle and Lemon Squeezy.

Stripe Managed Payments pricing highlighting its additional fee on top of payment processing

Pros:

• Your existing Stripe account remains the place you manage payments, without moving to another processor.

Cons:

• Physical goods and other ineligible products cannot use Managed Payments and remain on standard processing.
• Tax responsibility transfers only within its coverage of more than 80 countries.

5. Lemon Squeezy: Creator-oriented selling with a per-sale cost

Lemon Squeezy sells your software to customers as merchant of record. As the legal seller, it takes responsibility for calculating, collecting, filing, and remitting transaction taxes on supported sales. Those filings no longer sit with you.

Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy in July 2024.

The interface is geared toward creators, with support for downloads, courses, memberships, and SaaS subscriptions. It is worth considering for straightforward digital-product sales. A bootstrapped software business faces a harder decision on fees.

Best for: Lemon Squeezy suits digital creators who sell downloadable products, courses, or paid memberships and want one platform to run checkout and handle transaction taxes.

Pricing: The base fee is 5% plus $0.50 per transaction, plus 1.5% on international payments, 1.5% on PayPal and 0.5% on subscriptions. Collect $100 and the base fee takes $5.50 before taxes or extra charges.

On a low-priced monthly subscription, the fixed charge takes more of each payment and returns with every renewal. On an illustrative $10 plan, the base fee is $1, or 10% of each payment. Billing frequency affects how often you pay it.

Lemon Squeezy pricing page, branded as a Stripe company, with a 2026 Stripe Managed Payments notice

Cons:

• A fixed $0.50 applies to every charge, renewals included.
• Limited SaaS-specific features, and an uncertain roadmap since the Stripe acquisition.

6. PayPro Global: Assisted setup with quote-based pricing

PayPro Global homepage: an all-in-one platform for selling SaaS, software and video games

PayPro Global brings software license management, subscriptions, and merchant-of-record services into one platform. It takes care of VAT and sales tax on supported sales, issues customer invoices, and gives you tools to run affiliate and partner programs.

The technical team helps configure products, customize checkout and emails, and connect your software through its API and IPN webhooks. Subscription billing supports manual and automatic renewals, with dunning and retries for failed payments. It is worth considering when software licensing and billing require hands-on configuration help.

Best for: PayPro Global suits B2B software vendors with complex licensing and billing requirements that want assisted integration alongside merchant-of-record services.

Pricing: A single negotiated price includes payment processing, subscription billing, fraud checks, merchant-of-record tax handling, invoicing, and onboarding. The commission is set per business rather than published as a standard transaction rate.

Pros:

• Premium onboarding and a dedicated team are included in the single price, giving you help with implementation.

Cons:

• Custom pricing requires a sales discussion before you can compare transaction costs.
• Not suited to B2C or indie products.

7. Dodo Payments: India payments and UPI at 4% + 40¢

Dodo Payments homepage: billing and payments platform for AI-first companies, with usage metering and subscriptions

Dodo Payments supports domestic India payments through local cards and UPI alongside international payment acceptance. Metered charges, credit purchases, and recurring plans are also supported.

Best for: Dodo Payments suits software businesses that need domestic India payments through local cards and UPI alongside global digital-product sales.

Pricing: The Dodo standard rate is 4% + 40¢, leaving $95.60 from a $100 US domestic card payment before other charges. International-payment fees apply to cards outside the US, and subscriptions, add-ons, and usage-based billing carry a 0.7% transaction charge.

Domestic India payments in INR cost 4% + 15¢. That local payment support is a reason to consider Dodo, while recurring and international sales need a fuller fee calculation.

Small credit refills need careful pricing too. On an illustrative $5 credit pack, the 40¢ fixed fee alone takes 8%. Add the 4% charge and the transaction costs 60¢, or 12% of the pack price.

8. Polar: Lower transaction rates require monthly commitments

Polar homepage: the billing stack for developer and AI products, with usage-based token billing

Polar helps developers sell software, offering a free plan and paid tiers that exchange a monthly charge for lower fees on each sale. I’d pick a Polar tier by its breakeven, not its percentage.

Best for: Polar suits software developers with steady sales who can use monthly plans to reduce their per-sale costs.

Pricing: You pay only transaction fees on Starter. The three paid tiers combine a monthly subscription with a lower percentage and fixed charge.

On a $100 Starter transaction, Polar deducts $5.00 plus $0.50 before taxes and additional charges. A non-US card brings Starter’s fee to 6.5% + $0.50, leaving $93.00 from the same transaction.

Early Member pricing applies only to organizations created before May 27, 2026. It charges 4% + $0.40, plus 0.5% for subscriptions. New organizations start on Starter, and upgrading an Early Member organization permanently retires its original rate. Downgrading then returns it to standard Starter pricing.

Other charges apply across the plans:

• Non-US card payments carry a 1.5% surcharge.
• A dispute removes $15 from your balance, whether you win or lose.
• Stripe charges $2 for each month in which you receive payouts, plus 0.25% + $0.25 for each transfer.
• Cross-border currency conversion costs 0.25% in the EU and 1% elsewhere.

Compare the monthly subscription, card mix, and payout costs together before selecting a tier. Check your slowest recent month against the breakeven, because the $20, $100, or $400 monthly fee is due in that month too.

For the fee math behind each tier, see our breakdown of what Polar actually costs.

Pros:

• Published breakevens provide a reference for comparing paid plans with Starter.

Cons:

• Monthly plan charges remain due when sales fall.
• Non-US cards add 1.5% on every plan.

9. Fungies: Game and software storefronts

Fungies homepage: merchant of record for SaaS, games and digital goods, handling payments, VAT and sales tax

Fungies handles checkout and international payments for software, downloadable products, and video games. Its merchant-of-record service also takes care of VAT and sales tax on those sales.

Selling games alongside software is the reason to consider Fungies. If you sell a standalone SaaS, compare support for your subscription model, usage metering, and prepaid credits alongside the fees.

Best for: Fungies serves game developers and businesses selling digital goods.

Pricing: Fungies charges 5% + 50¢ per sale, with no surcharge for international cards, subscriptions, or the customer’s payment method. Rates are negotiable at higher sales volume.

Pros:

• Daily payouts by default, with rates negotiable at higher sales volume.

10. Gumroad: Creator memberships at 10% + 50¢

Gumroad supports digital products, courses, and memberships with recurring payments. Since 1 January 2025, it has operated as merchant of record, handling sales tax collection and remittance worldwide. Its Discover marketplace offers another route to buyers, with a higher fee on sales it generates.

Best for: Gumroad suits creators selling courses, downloads, and recurring memberships who want a storefront with no technical setup and an optional marketplace channel.

Pricing: Direct sales cost 10% + 50¢, with no monthly charge. A $100 direct sale leaves $89.50 before other deductions. Discover sales cost 30%, leaving $70 from the same amount.

A growing SaaS business bringing its own customers will find the direct-sale fee difficult to justify. On an illustrative $20 membership renewal, Gumroad takes $2.50 and leaves $17.50, and it takes that again every billing cycle. Discover’s higher cut makes more sense when the marketplace supplies the buyer.

Gumroad pricing page headed Simple, transparent pricing

How to choose the right merchant of record for your SaaS

My first cut would rule out providers that leave your target markets’ transaction taxes with you or cannot bill the way your product charges. Then weigh what each remaining option costs and how soon the proceeds reach your bank.

1. Your stage.

   Polar Pro’s $20 monthly charge beats Starter at about $1,379 in monthly sales. Below that breakeven, the lower transaction rate does not offset the subscription cost.

   Money waiting for the next transfer, a withdrawal threshold, or risk clearance cannot pay your next compute bill. Price one month of your real sales, then check when that money can actually be withdrawn.

2. Your market.

   Stripe Tax calculates and helps with registration and filing, but you stay the seller. A merchant of record needs to take on the tax obligations in the places where your customers buy.

   That means checking state-level taxes for US buyers, VAT for EU customers, and the treatment of sales into South Korea or Brazil where those markets matter to you. Confirm who calculates and collects the tax, submits returns, and pays the authorities in each market.

3. Your product type.

   Recurring access needs subscription management and renewal handling. Postpaid usage needs meters and period-end billing. Prepaid credits need a balance your app can debit, while a one-time download needs delivery after payment.

   A download or simple membership can sit on a full merchant of record like Gumroad. An AI product charging for consumption needs a closer look at billing: a separate metering integration is another tool to wire and reconcile.

   Verify how each provider supports your charging model, what your app or another tool must handle, and whether that setup is practical for your team.

FAQ

Is Stripe a merchant of record?

Only through Managed Payments. With standard Stripe Payments, you sell directly to the customer, even if you add Stripe Tax. Stripe takes the merchant-of-record role through Managed Payments for digital products that meet its eligibility rules.

Is a payment gateway the same as a merchant of record?

No. A gateway authorizes the payment while you remain the seller, so the tax and disputes stay with you. With a merchant of record, the provider legally sells to your customer, collects and remits the transaction tax, and handles refunds and chargebacks.

Creem: Merchant of Record, Billing, and Partner Payouts

• For indie hackers and AI builders, I'd choose Creem: the lowest published no-monthly-fee rate here, global tax handled, and usage billing and partner payouts built in.
• Paddle is worth its higher cost for mid-market SaaS with churn problems, thanks to Retain.
• FastSpring and PayPro Global suit sales built around enterprise licenses and negotiated contracts.

Creem brings the money side of an AI or software product together. As your legal seller, it calculates, collects, files, and remits VAT, GST, and sales tax, issues invoices, and takes on fraud and chargebacks.

A processor remains a valid choice when you can manage tax compliance yourself. Staying on standard Stripe Payments without handling tax compliance leaves the registrations, filings, and liability with you. Payment acceptance and tax coverage are separate checks whichever route you choose.

All of it runs on one rate, 3.9% + 40¢, with no monthly fee.

With tax authorities tightening enforcement, a team selling across borders should decide whose name sits on the invoice alongside choosing hosting and a database. It is infrastructure.

Make that call while you are still choosing hosting and a database. Try Creem now, and Creem's name sits on the invoice from your first cross-border sale.