A Merchant of Record (MoR) becomes the legal seller for a transaction and can take on key responsibilities like payment processing, tax handling (VAT/GST where applicable), invoicing/receipts, and dispute workflows. This topic hub collects Gruv’s best MoR guides for global freelancers and small agencies.
In the early days of a SaaS business, survival is the only strategy. You do what you must to ship code, find product-market fit, and conserve every dollar. Manually managing sales tax on a spreadsheet or using a payment processor’s basic add-on feels like the right call—it’s pragmatic, and it works.
You didn't trade the 9-to-5 for the constant, low-level anxiety of international compliance. You left the corporate world to gain autonomy and focus on high-impact work, not to become a part-time expert in global tax law. Yet, for the CEO of a global business-of-one, every cross-border invoice can feel like a risk. The freedom you've earned is real, but it comes with a significant, often invisible, operational drag.
The debate between Paddle and Stripe often gets lost in feature comparisons. But the strategic choice boils down to a single, fundamental question: Are you outsourcing a complex business function, or are you licensing powerful tools to build that function yourself?
