Merchant of Record: Your key to a global expansion

Have you ever thought about what it takes for a game developer to start selling their games globally? Let's take a Korean company trying to penetrate the European market as an example. To accept payments in the EU, the company will have to account for new EU VAT rules under the one-stop-shop (OSS)  scheme – a new regulation that came into force in July 2021. The company would have to open local entities or register for foreign VAT IDs. Then it would have to correctly calculate taxes for all countries where they accept payments (consider different VAT rates in Europe!) – and, finally, remit taxes to the EU member countries. No way you can dive into all that without an experienced tax consultant. Not so thrilled already, huh? Wait, there's more coming.

When you have payers from foreign markets, you have to take care of the local acquiring. In simple words, if you're a Korean company, you should be able to accept payments from European payers to the European account – not the account in Korea. With local acquiring, you can increase your conversion rates up to 28% and generally provide a better customer experience since your customers can pay in their local currency. You'll need help and support from an experienced accountant at this stage.

And what about customer support? Who will be dealing with all these payment-related questions from the European customers of a Korean company? At this point, you should start thinking of launching customer support in Europe – or of abandoning the whole idea as it is so enormously complicated and expensive.

But there's a better way.

You can outsource all these issues to the Merchant of Record.

What is a merchant of record?

You've probably already Googled lots of definitions for merchant of record. In simple words, MoR is a legal entity that acts as a reseller on a merchant's behalf. It handles all payments from the end customers and takes responsibility for every transaction – like calculating all applicable taxes, ensuring payment card industry (PCI) compliance, risk management, and chargeback disputes. Businesses are often their own records merchants of record, primarily when they sell their products and services in the same country where the company is registered. But if the business is going global, they prefer to offload all the hassle of local payment processing and tax compliance to the merchant of record – and focus on what they can do best: crafting their product and acquiring new users. And you can do that, too.

Is Terminal3 a Merchant of Record?

Yes, we are!

Terminal3's MoR service solves the need for globally ambitious merchants who want to expand to new regions very quickly – but who don't have the time to go and open local offices and branches, hire local employees and accountants, broker payment processing deals, research the tax regulations. With our MoR, merchants don't need to do any of this – they can sign one contract, integrate one API and launch globally.

Terminal3 MoR services:

• Tax calculation, compliance, and remittance – in 200+ countries worldwide.
• Payment Card Industry Data Storage Standard (PCI DSS) compliance. We provide the highest security level available in the industry. With Terminal3, you'll process the cards without having to store the sensitive card data and be responsible for it.
• Risk and fraud management. We equip your business with our in-house fraud prevention solution. It learns from all the global transactions we process, identifies potentially risky operations, and alerts you. Then, our Risk Management Team investigates all suspicious payments to ensure that fraudulent transactions get declined.
• Chargeback prevention. We monitor the chargeback ratios of your accounts following the requirements of the credit card associations and our acquiring partners. We have a highly professional team that ensures less than a 0,1% chargeback ratio!
• And if there happen to be chargeback issues, we'll dispute them on your behalf. Our experienced Chargeback Team knows all it takes about the rules of card scheme organisations and applies the best practices there are. With our 70% chargeback win rate, you're protected!
• 24/7 customer support. Our customer care agents speak 25 languages and handle all payment-related issues on your behalf – around the clock and the globe.

And it's still not the complete list of how Terminal3 can help you monetize your game globally.

Terminal3 is one of the merchants of record examples – you might be aware of some other companies that provide similar services for gaming merchants. What differs us from the competitors is the fact that we are a truly global payments provider. We process payments via 200+ payment methods in over 200 regions worldwide – which basically means every country in the world. Where ever you plan to expand, on whichever market you plan to launch your products – with Terminal3, you can offer customers to pay you via their preferred payment option. For example, in Russia, your users can pay via Yandex.Money, in China you can offer them to use AliPay, or they can choose Mercado Pago in Brazil – we have it all!

Not only do we provide you with the most popular payment options in every region – we can advise you which ones to choose to increase your conversion rates – with the 10+ experience in payments we do know the business! And there's even more!

In every country where you go, you can accept payments in the national currency.

You surely know that customers want to avoid conversion fees and prefer to pay in their local money. Well, with Terminal3, you can accept payments in over 30 currencies – and we mitigate currency fluctuation risks as well.

And… wait, there's more!

You get all of that in a single API.

That's right: one integration – and the world is yours.

Wanna try?

Make Terminal3 your merchant of record

Are you ready to get started? If you’re a games developer with global ambitions, don’t delay the start of your journey. Contact us for details on all the tools that you need to start selling worldwide: bizdev@terminal3.com

We’ll be happy to assist you!