Paysafe launches a merchant-of-record offering built on FastSpring

Paysafe announced on 26 August a co-branded merchant-of-record product built on FastSpring's infrastructure, aimed at software, gaming and digital-goods businesses selling across borders. The service takes on tax calculation, collection and remittance, payment localisation, regional compliance and chargeback management. FastSpring processes payments in more than 240 countries and territories.

Merchant of record is where cross-border digital sellers are moving to avoid running VAT and compliance themselves, and until now that has mostly meant leaving a traditional acquirer for a specialist. Paysafe keeping the relationship by reselling a specialist's stack is the defensive shape of that trend, and it is one more sign that the margin in cross-border digital acceptance is drifting from processing toward tax and compliance handling.

Whether Paysafe names launch merchants, how the pricing compares with going direct to a merchant-of-record specialist, and whether other European acquirers follow with resold rather than built offerings.

• thepaypers.com
• Financial IT