Definition
The merchant of record (MoR) is the business whose name appears on the customer’s statement and who is legally liable for the transaction: collecting and remitting sales tax or VAT, handling refunds and chargebacks, and meeting local regulations. In the MoR model a third party resells your product and remits revenue to you minus a fee of 5-8%.
With a payment processor model you remain merchant of record, own the customer relationship and the data, and pay interchange-plus processing at a fraction of the cost, with tools such as automated tax handling to cover the compliance work.
Example
A software company selling globally compares a 6% MoR fee against HL Hunt interchange-plus with built-in tax calculation. At $5 million in annual revenue the difference is roughly $200,000 a year.
How HL Hunt handles it
HL Hunt keeps you as merchant of record while automating the hard parts: global tax calculation and filing, localized checkout, and AI agents that handle disputes and compliance monitoring.