For a long time, global payments looked like a later problem. You shipped the product, plugged in Stripe, and told yourself you would handle VAT when the numbers got serious.

In 2026, that timeline flipped. For indie teams selling software worldwide, Merchant of Record went from a nice upgrade to the default path. The reason is simple: tax rules did not get simpler. EU VAT, US sales tax across dozens of states, and local invoice regimes stack faster than a one-person company can staff.

PSP and MoR are not the same job

A payment service provider moves money. You stay the legal seller. That means tax registration, remittance, disputes, and buyer support still sit with you.

A Merchant of Record becomes the legal seller for the transaction. They collect and remit the tax, take chargeback risk, and absorb a chunk of compliance work that would otherwise eat your week. You pay a higher take rate. In exchange, you stop building a tax department before product-market fit.

Neither model is "better" in the abstract. The right one depends on volume, markets, and how much fixed cost you can carry. For early SaaS, the MoR premium often costs less than the compliance work it replaces.

What founders are actually choosing

The market now has clear camps. Direct Stripe Billing stays strong when you sell mostly at home and already have tax tooling. Dedicated MoR platforms (Paddle, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, and newer indie-focused options) win when you sell digital products across borders from day one. Stripe even launched its own Managed Payments MoR layer, which proves the demand is mainstream.

The practical question for a small team is rarely "Stripe or nothing." It is "where do domestic customers check out, and who handles everyone else?"

A hybrid that matches how real products sell

Many products sell strongly in one home market and lightly everywhere else. Forcing every buyer through a single global MoR can feel expensive at home. Handling every foreign invoice yourself can feel impossible abroad.

That is why a dual setup keeps showing up in real stacks: Stripe for domestic charges on your own account, and a Merchant of Record such as Paddle for international buyers. Country routing at checkout decides the path. Signed webhooks from both providers unlock the same entitlements. The customer gets a clean purchase. You keep one product model.

Start with the product, not the plumbing

If you are about to rebuild auth, admin, catalog, and payment routing again, ask whether that week is the unique part of your SaaS. For a lot of builders, it is not.

CastorStack ships that foundation as code you own: React frontends, a .NET API, and billing wired for Stripe at home plus Paddle as Merchant of Record abroad. The point is not to skip payments. It is to spend the first weekend on what makes your product different, with global checkout already on the path.