See how Ruba changes the legal, payment, and tax roles in a software sale
When Ruba is Merchant of Record, Ruba resells your digital product to the customer. You still own the product and customer relationship, while Ruba becomes the legal seller for the transaction and takes responsibility for payment collection and indirect sales tax.
Your software → supplied to Ruba → resold by Ruba → customer ↓ payment, receipt, VAT/GST/sales tax
This differs from using a payment service provider directly. A PSP such as Stripe moves money and provides low-level payment primitives, but your company remains the seller and retains the tax, registration, filing, and transaction liability. A Merchant of Record adds a commercial and compliance layer above the processor.
You assemble products, subscriptions, access, and customer tooling
Dashboard, APIs, SDKs, checkout, and benefits are connected
Indirect tax
Your business determines, collects, registers, files, and remits
Ruba carries the reseller obligation
Cost
Usually lower payment-only fees
Higher fee for the added operational and liability layer
Best fit
Teams prepared to own payment and tax operations
Teams prioritizing faster global software monetization
Neither abstraction is universally better. A direct PSP is sensible when you already have the integration, need unusual payment control, and can operate international tax yourself. Ruba is designed for teams that want the catalog, checkout, recurring billing, access delivery, customer portal, and indirect-tax role connected in one system.
Digital sales can create VAT, GST, or sales-tax obligations outside the seller’s home country. Two jobs are involved:
Collection: determine the correct treatment and add or extract the tax during the sale.
Remittance: register where required, file returns, and pay the collected amount to each authority.
For example, a 10subscriptionsoldtoaSwedishconsumerat2512.50, including $2.50 for tax. A VAT-registered Swedish business may instead qualify for reverse charge. Stripe Tax can automate much of the calculation, but a direct merchant still owns registration, filing, and payment.Thresholds and rules vary. Some jurisdictions require registration before or soon after the first sale, while others begin only after significant volume. The United Kingdom and EU impose upfront obligations on many non-resident digital sellers; Texas uses a $500,000 threshold. Product taxability and business-buyer treatment also vary.
supports business VAT treatment such as EU reverse charge;
monitors thresholds and registrations;
files and remits through its accounting operations;
issues the customer-facing transaction documents.
This can cause tax to appear on more transactions than when a young seller operates directly below local thresholds. It also means you cannot use Ruba’s collected VAT as your own input-VAT deduction.
Merchant of Record coverage concerns transaction taxes. You remain responsible for income and revenue taxes owed by you or your company in its country of residence.
Ruba supports global payments subject to its country coverage and manages registrations as sales volumes reach jurisdictional requirements. The EU OSS VAT number is EU372061545. Software that does not recognize the EU prefix may require a manual override or an update from its vendor because OSS numbers are not country-prefixed like an Irish IE VAT number.
