Leaving the app store used to be the hard part. Regulators pried the door open, alternative payment rails multiplied, and D2C stopped being a legal gray area for most publishers. Getting out is largely solved.
What happens after you get out is where publishers are stuck now. Two questions keep coming up: what do you actually keep on a $100 sale, and who ends up owning the player relationship once that sale happens outside the app store. This article answers both, plus how to evaluate a merchant of record for your studio without getting boxed in by either one.
What Is a Merchant of Record?
A merchant of record (MoR) is the legal seller on a transaction. When a player buys currency, a season pass, or a premium title through your webshop, the MoR is the entity that collects the payment, calculates and remits the applicable tax. It also handles payment localization, regional compliance, and chargeback management, then pays you out net of fees. Your studio never has to register as a local seller in every market or file VAT and GST returns yourself.
This matters more in gaming than in most digital categories. Digital goods, virtual currency, and in-game items are taxed differently depending on jurisdiction, and the rules keep shifting. Morocco introduced a 20% VAT on global tech platforms in August 2026. Indonesia rolled out its SPP-TDLN regime for foreign digital sellers in July 2026. Digital goods now face VAT or GST obligations in over 135 countries. A studio expanding into new regions is expanding into new tax jurisdictions every time, and an MoR is what keeps that from becoming a full-time compliance job.
Merchant of Record vs. Payment Service Provider
The two get confused constantly, and the difference decides who holds the liability.
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Merchant of Record vs. Payment Service Provider
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| Merchant of Record | Payment Service Provider | |
| Legal seller |
|
Your studio |
| Tax registration and filing |
|
Your responsibility |
| Chargeback and fraud liability |
|
Sits with your studio |
| Best fit |
|
Operating in one or two markets with an internal billing and compliance function already in place |
A PSP is cheaper per transaction if you already have the tax and compliance infrastructure to support it. Most studios below the largest publisher tier do not, which is why MoR platforms absorb tax and compliance liability while payment rails leave it with you, and why MoR is the default starting point for gaming.
Does a Merchant of Record just trade one gatekeeper for another?
This is the real objection studios are raising these days, and it deserves a straight answer.
The concern: an MoR sits between the publisher and the player in the same seat the app store used to occupy. If that provider keeps every scrap of transaction data and hands back nothing, the studio has swapped one intermediary for another and gained nothing on the customer-ownership side.
The concern is valid, but it is not automatic. What the MoR relationship actually looks like depends entirely on how it is structured. The MoR owns the transaction: it is the party to the payment and carries tax and chargeback liability. Subscriptions, stored card credentials, and billing history also sit with the MoR, as it is the party to those contracts. That is the legal definition. Whether the MoR also owns the relationship is a separate question, and it comes down to what the provider gives back.
A provider that hands you full transaction data, player emails, purchase history, consent flags, and lets you run your own checkout branding, is handing you the controls while taking on the liability. A provider that routes players through a generic, unbranded checkout and keeps the data to itself is recreating the app store’s position under a different name.
So the question to ask any provider isn’t “Can you act as an MoR, or not?” It’s: do I get the player data back, and can I email or retarget these players myself? If the answer is yes, you have outsourced liability without losing the relationship. If the answer is no, you have a new gatekeeper with a different logo.
What a gaming Merchant of Record actually costs
Every MoR publishes a headline rate. Almost none of them make it easy to see what you actually keep, because the headline rate is rarely the whole story.
Here’s the formula publishers are increasingly using to cut through it:
Effective rate = (Total processing fees ÷ Total transaction volume) × 100
To calculate your own, pull your last three months of settlement statements. Take the total value of transactions at the mid-market exchange rate, subtract what actually landed in your account, and divide that gap by the total invoiced amount. That percentage is your real cost, not the number on the pricing page.
The gap between the two usually comes from four places:
- Base processing rate. This is the number on the pricing page, typically a percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction.
- FX markup. Cross-border transactions commonly carry an additional 1% to 3% markup on the conversion, on top of the base rate.
- Payout and repatriation fees. Moving money from the MoR’s settlement account to your bank can pick up intermediary bank deductions and SWIFT fees along the way.
Gaming carries extra exposure here because dispute rates in the category run higher than most digital goods. In most MoR relationships, the provider is the one deciding whether a transaction is fraudulent, since it holds the liability. That means the studio is exposed to a decision it doesn’t get to make. Before signing with anyone, ask directly who absorbs the loss when a chargeback is disputed and the provider’s own fraud call turns out to be wrong.
The practical takeaway: don’t compare headline rates. Ask every provider you’re evaluating, including any provider you’re already using, for your effective rate in writing, based on your actual transaction mix.
What to look for in a gaming Merchant of Record
Once you understand the cost anatomy and the data question, the rest of the checklist is straightforward:
- Tax coverage that matches where you actually sell your game, not just where you sell today. Look for broad country coverage and a track record of adding new VAT and GST regimes as they roll out, since this shifts multiple times a year.
- Local payment method support for the regions where your players actually are, not just cards and PayPal.
- Fraud protection bundled into the platform, not billed as a separate line item. Also, find out whether it’s tuned for your specific monetization model.
- Full player data returned to you, so you can email, segment, retarget, and market future titles to your own player base.
- Support for your actual monetization mix: one-time purchases, virtual currency top-ups, subscriptions, battle passes, since most studios run more than one model at once.
- A written effective rate, not just a headline percentage, before you sign anything.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What’s my effective rate on my actual transaction mix, not the headline rate? Do I get full player transaction data back, including email and purchase history?
- Can I run my own checkout branding, or does everything route through a generic page?
- Is fraud protection built-in, or is it a separate vendor with its own fee?
- How many countries and tax regimes do you actively cover today, and how often is that list updated?
Where 2Checkout fits
2Checkout, backed by Verifone, is a regulated financial entity with two decades in digital commerce, which matters to studios weighing long-term stability against newer providers that don’t carry the same financial standing and stability. Merchant funds are held in escrow, kept separate from 2Checkout’s own operating funds, so a studio’s revenue isn’t tied up in how the provider runs its own business. Not every provider in this space keeps that separation, so it’s worth asking directly.
On pricing, gaming publishers typically work with 2Checkout under its full Merchant of Record model, priced through a blended rate or IC++ structure rather than a flat self-serve rate card. That means the number that matters is your effective rate on your own transaction mix, negotiated for your business. That advice applies for any provider you’re evaluating.
On data and fraud, the fraud engine is built in, so there’s no separate vendor cost stacked on top of the base rate. Tax compliance coverage spans 200-plus countries, with payouts available on a weekly cadence in USD, GBP, and EUR.
2Checkout’s product depth in gaming-specific tooling, like engagement features and webshop builders, is still maturing compared to gaming-native providers. Where it’s strongest is the fundamentals: regulated backing, transparent published pricing, a built-in fraud engine, and broad tax coverage, which is exactly the foundation a growing studio needs most before anything else.
FAQs
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Does a merchant of record own my player data?
The MoR owns the transaction and the liability that comes with it, not automatically your relationship with the player. Verify that any provider returns full transaction data, including email and purchase history, so you can communicate with your players directly.
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What does a gaming merchant of record typically cost?
Published base rates among gaming-focused MoR providers commonly start at 5% and up, but the real cost includes FX markup, chargeback fees, and payout deductions on top. Calculate your effective rate, total fees divided by total volume, rather than comparing headline percentages.
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How do I compare merchant of record pricing across providers?
Ask each provider for your effective rate in writing: total processing fees, including FX and chargeback costs, divided by total transaction volume. Compare that number, not the base rate on the pricing page.
Ready to see your actual effective rate? Talk to our team, or explore the platform.
The post Merchant of Record for Gaming: What It Costs, Who Owns the Data, and How to Choose appeared first on he 2Checkout Blog | Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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