You are the merchant of record for what you sell on Aveiro: sales are charged on your own Stripe account, the money settles to you, and the platform takes an application fee per transaction.
You are the merchant of record for everything you sell on Aveiro. Sales are charged directly on your own Stripe account, the money settles to you on your own payout schedule, and the platform takes a percentage application fee per transaction — Aveiro never holds your funds. One thing runs the other way: for what you pay Aveiro, your plan and credit top-ups, Stripe is the merchant of record.
What merchant of record means
The merchant of record (MoR) is the business that legally sells to the buyer. It is the name on the buyer's card statement, and it carries everything that comes with being the seller: charging and remitting the right tax, issuing refunds, answering chargebacks, and standing behind the product.Platforms resolve this in one of two ways:
The platform is the merchant of record. It sells to your buyer, absorbs the tax and compliance work, and pays you a share of revenue later. Paddle, Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy work this way.
You are the merchant of record. Buyers pay you directly, and the platform charges a fee for the software that made the sale possible. Aveiro works this way.
Neither model is better in the abstract. One trades control of your revenue for less tax paperwork; the other keeps you in charge of your money and your customer relationship, and leaves the paperwork with you.
Who is the merchant of record on Aveiro
Transaction
Merchant of record
Charged on
Digital products — one-time and subscriptions
You
Your connected Stripe account
Sponsorships sold on your sites
You, the publisher
Your connected Stripe account
Your Aveiro plan and credit top-ups
Stripe
Aveiro's Stripe account
Fourthwall merch on /shop
Fourthwall
Fourthwall's own checkout
Fourthwall merch never touches Aveiro's payment rails — the buyer leaves for Fourthwall's checkout, and Fourthwall's terms govern that sale. Everything else you sell natively runs on the connected Stripe account you set up in Monetization → Payouts.
How a sale reaches your bank account
A buyer checks out on your site — a product page at /products/{slug}, a paywall gate, or a sponsorship offer.
Aveiro creates the charge directly on your connected Stripe account. Your business is the seller on the payment.
In that same charge, the platform's application fee is routed to Aveiro. Everything else stays on your account.
Stripe pays you out on your own account's payout schedule, to your own bank account.
There is nothing to withdraw from Aveiro, and no platform balance sitting between you and your revenue. If Aveiro disappeared tomorrow, the money already in your Stripe account would still be yours.
What the platform fee is
The application fee is a percentage of each sale, set by your plan:
Plan
Fee per sale
Free
20%
Starter
12%
Creator
8%
Professional
5%
Enterprise
3% (negotiable per contract)
This fee is charged on top of Stripe's own processing fees, which you also pay as the merchant of record. Sponsorship sales carry the same rate as content sales, and the rate that applies is the publisher's plan — the site owner taking the money, not the sponsor.
A $50 one-time sale on the Creator plan, with US card processing, looks roughly like this:
Line
Amount
Buyer pays
$50.00
Stripe processing (about 2.9% + $0.30 on US cards)
−$1.75
Aveiro application fee (8%)
−$4.00
Lands in your Stripe balance
$44.25
Stripe's rates vary by country, card and payment method, so treat that middle line as illustrative and check your own Stripe pricing. On a discounted one-time purchase the platform fee is calculated on the discounted amount, never the list price.
What being the merchant of record makes you responsible for
Tax. Aveiro does not calculate, collect, or remit sales tax or VAT on your sales. The price you set is the amount the buyer is charged. Whether you need to register for VAT, US sales tax, or anything equivalent depends on where you are and where your buyers are — this is the part of MoR that most often surprises people, and it is worth a conversation with a tax advisor before your first sale rather than after your hundredth.
Refunds. You issue refunds from your own Stripe dashboard. Aveiro has no refund button, because Aveiro is not the seller. Access reacts automatically: a full refund revokes the buyer's entitlements and marks the purchase refunded, while a partial or goodwill refund leaves their access intact.
Chargebacks. Disputes land on your Stripe account and are yours to fight, with your evidence. When a dispute opens, Aveiro marks the purchase disputed and pulls the buyer's access while it is open.
Terms and support. Your business name appears on the buyer's statement, so refund policy, product support, and customer communication are yours. At checkout, buyers of digital content confirm they understand the content is delivered immediately, that the EU right of withdrawal is waived, and that the purchase is non-refundable — but that acknowledgement supports your policy, it does not replace it.
What Aveiro is responsible for
Aveiro is the software, not the seller. It builds and hosts the storefront and paywall, creates the checkout session on your account, records the purchase, grants and revokes entitlements as payments succeed, refund and are disputed, and keeps subscriptions in sync. In exchange it takes the application fee above — and never takes custody of your money.
Your plan and credits work the other way round
When you pay Aveiro — a plan subscription, or a top-up of credits, email sends, or AI generations — the direction flips. Those charges run through Stripe Managed Payments, where Stripe is the merchant of record for the sale and handles tax on it. That is why your Aveiro receipts and your customers' receipts look different: two separate transactions, two different sellers.
Before your first sale
Connect Stripe in Monetization → Payouts, in the country your business is actually registered in — the country cannot be changed after the account is created.
Confirm the account shows charges and payouts enabled. Selling stays blocked until it does.
Publish a refund policy and contact route your buyers can find. You are the seller they will come to.
Check whether your sales create a tax registration obligation anywhere.
None of this is unusual — it is the ordinary paperwork of running a shop, which is what being the merchant of record makes you.
