live at
8 Currencies,15 Countries,2 People
What Merchant of Record actually handles — and why we stopped trying to do it ourselves.
An evening with the Stripe London community
An in-person evening for anyone building with Stripe — focused on real user experiences, product insight, best practices and community. We are on stage to talk about what selling globally as a two-person team actually takes.
- Date & time
- Tuesday, 8 September
- 6:00 – 8:00 PM BST
- Venue
- Stripe London
- 201 Bishopsgate, London
60% off
any course
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Browse coursesWhat Mark Sailes will cover
We sell advanced AWS courses to engineers in 15 countries — and there are two of us. Here is what we learned about who is really selling when money crosses a border.
What "Merchant of Record" actually means
Not a payments feature — a change of who is legally selling. The name on the invoice, the party in the tax relationship, the party on the buyer’s card statement.
It isn't one tax problem. It's fifteen.
VAT, GST and sales tax across the EU, UK, US, Canada, Australia, Japan and more — each with its own registration threshold, filing cadence and invoice format.
The hidden cost for a two-person team
Registrations, filings, threshold monitoring and rule changes never stop. Every compliance hour is a course we did not publish.
What you actually hand over
Which tax applies, registrations and remittance, compliant invoices per market, local payment methods and currencies, fraud screening and chargebacks.
The honest trade-offs
A bigger cut than raw card processing, less control over checkout, and a real dependency. We decided a percentage of revenue beat a percentage of the company.
When it is the wrong choice
Single market, thin margins, enterprise procurement or a finance function you already have. We will show you how to check your case against ours.
Tax compliance is not a differentiator.
Nobody has ever bought a course from us because we filed a VAT return correctly. Treat it as infrastructure, price it, and buy it.
Local currency stopped being a project
It became a setting. Eight currencies, fifteen countries — still two people.
If you sell digital goods across borders
Know who your Merchant of Record is
If the answer is "us, I think", you have an unpriced liability growing in the background.
Cost it in founder hours, not just percent
The fee is visible on every invoice. The hours are invisible — and for a small team they are the expensive part.
Decide it before you need to, not after
Retrofitting who the seller is means migrating checkout, invoices and access. Cheaper on day one than day four hundred.
Thank you — ask us anything
Come and find us after the talk — we would love to hear about what you are building and answer any questions over a drink.
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