When building an OTT video business you can choose to operate in one of the two models — non-merchant or merchant — which determine who will be your merchant of record.
A merchant of record (MoR) is an entity that is authorized, and held liable, by a financial institution to process a consumer’s credit card and debit transactions on your behalf.
Beyond accepting payments, an MoR also ensures your business is compliant with tax laws (local and global) and maintains relationships with financial institutions.
Non-merchant
Choose someone else to be your merchant of record if you want to focus on growing your business and have finance experts take care of all payment, tax, and compliance topics.
When you use Cleeng's Merchant solution, Cleeng acts as your merchant of record and offloads you with merchant responsibilities. For example, Cleeng signs the contract with the payment facilitator, handles all the additional work concerning payments like consolidating the reports, tax management, and payouts, etc.
Alternatively, you can build a more extended ecosystem for your business and find another, third-party merchant of record.
Merchant
Be your own merchant of record if you want to build more complex in-house business operations and focus on scaling the business, including payment, tax, and compliance topics yourself.