Not every MoR is built for your scale, complexity, or growth goals. Here’s how to find the right fit.
Choosing a merchant of record (MoR) isn’t a one-size-fits-all decision. When reviewing options, it’s not just about who can process payments — it’s about who can support your business model, growth stage, and revenue strategy.
Some companies just need help managing tax and compliance in a handful of markets. Others need a strategic partner who can support global expansion, customer retention, and recurring revenue.
So how do you know which MoR is the right fit for your software business?
In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the major considerations when evaluating a provider, and how they vary depending on your scale, digital product model, complexities, and long-term goals.
With that, here are some questions you may find yourself asking when weighing different MoR solutions.
For businesses with recurring revenue or high transaction volume, even small dips in payment success rates add up, affecting your bottom line. If optimizing authorization rates, minimizing declines, and improving cash flow matter to your model, your MoR should treat payment performance as a growth lever, not an afterthought.
For that reason, an MoR should proactively optimize payments through multiple acquirers and local processing partners, as well as solutions like smart transaction routing (directing payments to the most appropriate processing partner) and dynamic retry logic (using machine learning to automatically reattempt failed payments at ideal times).
Doing all the above minimizes unforeseen declines to keep payments flowing, leading to higher success rates and reduced costs. On top of that, it removes friction from the customer experience — 62% of consumers who experience online payment failures will not return to the website.
Global coverage is critical if you're expanding into new markets or operating across multiple jurisdictions with complex compliance requirements. The right MoR should eliminate market-to-market friction and make it easy to scale across borders, especially in key growth markets like India, Japan, and Brazil.
A top-tier MoR facilitates true global reach by supporting local currencies and payment methods, handling tax and VAT compliance, and adapting to regional regulations across hundreds of markets. Crucially, it lets you start selling in new countries immediately — without the time, cost, or complexity of setting up a local legal entity.
Without global coverage, you may find yourself limited by regional sales barriers — e.g., what if your most untapped market is blocked off by insufficient resources? — or forced to navigate various local tax and compliance issues on your own.
Customers expect to pay in ways that are familiar and trusted — if those methods aren’t available, you're at risk of losing sales. This is especially true in global markets where payment norms vary widely. While credit cards may dominate North America, regions like LATAM, APAC, and parts of Europe rely on digital wallets, bank transfers, BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later), or even cash-based vouchers.
Your MoR should offer deep support for a wide range of payment methods — including local, alternative, and emerging options — and continuously update them based on buyer behavior. Supporting the right mix of payment methods isn’t just about reducing cart abandonment. It’s about meeting customers where they are and creating a seamless buying experience across every market.
When selling internationally, it’s important to distinguish between “display currency” and “transaction currency.” Display currency refers to the prices customers see when browsing an online store (typically based on their location), while transaction currency, by contrast, is the currency that the payment is actually processed with.
The issue is, if an MoR doesn’t support multiple transaction currencies, customers can be hit with hidden foreign exchange (FX) fees when they complete a purchase, resulting in confusion, frustration, diminished loyalty, and greater churn.
A best-in-class MoR supports true transaction currencies, as opposed to display currencies. This ensures customers can pay in their preferred currency without facing unexpected FX fees or cross-border decline issues. At the same time, your finance team can transact with the MoR in its own preferred currency — independent of what the customer sees and pays with. This flexibility gives buyers a seamless, trustworthy experience while simplifying reconciliation and keeping your finance operations running smoothly.
Selling globally means more than just accepting different currencies and payment methods — it means delivering an experience that feels local from start to finish. A localized checkout should reflect cultural norms, reducing friction and making customers feel understood no matter where they are.
Localization, however, doesn’t end at checkout. Your MoR should support it across the customer journey — including translated UI elements, localized address and form fields, and region-specific compliance disclosures. Businesses should also provide localized transactional communications like receipts, purchase confirmations, and renewal reminders. Without this broader approach, even minor inconsistencies can undermine trust, hurt conversion rates, or create avoidable support tickets.
As your business scales, so do your platform requirements. The last thing you want is to outgrow your MoR — or be boxed in by rigid infrastructure that doesn’t adapt to your needs. Customization is essential, whether you're building unique subscription logic (e.g., custom billing intervals, trial-to-paid flows), personalizing the user journey, or integrating new tools into your stack.
The right MoR should offer both self-serve flexibility and hands-on support. That means no-code tools for business users, robust APIs for developers, and a services team that can implement custom workflows, checkout experiences, or renewal processes on your behalf.
If your revenue depends on keeping (and growing) existing customers through renewals, product expansion, or usage-based models, your MoR should do more than facilitate a single transaction. Look for one that supports the full lifecycle, not just the initial sale.
A holistic partner helps you boost Net Revenue Retention (NRR) by leveraging tools like renewal automation, flexible pricing, and customer value optimization (upsells and cross-sells) across any subscription or billing model.
By choosing an MoR that thinks beyond acquisition, your business can increase its NRR through seamless renewals and customer-centric strategies that maximize lifetime value. The most adept provider will do so by leveraging self-service options and automated processes, mitigating both voluntary and involuntary churn.
When it comes to improving conversions, simple A/B testing can only take you so far. While A/B tests compare isolated changes, multivariate testing (MVT) allows you to experiment with various elements — pricing, calls to action, checkout UX, and account messaging — at the same time. This approach provides a clearer picture of how different variables interact to influence customer behavior, making it far more robust for businesses operating across multiple geographies and customer segments.
The right MoR should support MVT at scale, enabling you to run complex experiments across your checkout experience, subscription flows, and product offerings without disrupting the user journey. With these insights, you’re not just identifying which version performs better; you’re uncovering the optimal combination of elements that drive higher conversion rates and long-term revenue growth.
Of course, testing is only one part of the equation. To truly maximize revenue, you need a structured, ongoing Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy that turns MVT results into actionable improvements. The right MoR won’t just provide testing capabilities; they’ll also help you analyze findings, benchmark performance, and apply proven best practices to continuously refine the purchase funnel.
That means going beyond surface-level experiments. A strong CRO program should include user experience audits, customer feedback loops, and competitive analysis to identify where friction occurs and how to eliminate it. Whether it’s refining form fields, tailoring payment methods and messaging for different markets, or optimizing the end-to-end customer journey, CRO ensures that every adjustment is informed by data and insights — not guesswork.
Your MoR is one piece of a broader ecosystem — and if it doesn’t integrate with the rest of your tech stack, you’ll end up with operational silos and manual workarounds. From customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to marketing automation and analytics tools, seamless data flow is essential to scaling efficiently.
Prioritize an MoR that offers robust APIs, pre-built integrations, and support for key enterprise platforms. The right provider should also help you connect customer data across systems — powering everything from churn prediction to customer lifecycle marketing. When your MoR is fully integrated, it becomes a strategic hub that supports automation, personalization, and insight.
If you rely on resellers, distributors, or channel partners to drive revenue, your MoR should be able to support those relationships without introducing compliance risk or operational friction. Indirect sales channels often involve different tax implications, billing models, and invoicing requirements — all of which your MoR needs to handle seamlessly.
Look for an MoR that enables partner-led sales by supporting branded storefront and link generation, deal routing and registration, opportunity management, and commission payments. The right provider should also give you the flexibility to configure different commercial models (e.g., partner markup, margin sharing) and automate key processes so your partners can focus on selling — not paperwork.
Affiliate programs can be a powerful growth lever — think of them as low-cost demand gen channels that increase awareness, drive conversions, and help you scale marketing efforts in new regions without the need for a local presence.
Success, however, requires more than just signing up partners; it depends on having the right network (a large pool of high-quality affiliates), the right platform (ability to accurately track, attribute, and compensate their performance), and the right expertise (to launch, manage, and continuously optimize programs) all in tow.
Another important consideration is the incentive structure of the affiliate program. Effective programs tie rewards to outcomes, most commonly through a CPL (cost per lead) model, where affiliates are paid per lead generated. Meanwhile, a CPA (cost per acquisition) model is often better suited for digital businesses, since it allows you to track and attribute partner influence from first click to final sale — directly aligning marketing costs with revenue generation for stronger ROI.
With real-time visibility into affiliate-driven transactions and competitive payouts across global markets, the right MoR turns affiliate marketing into a self-funding engine: partners earn when they perform, and your business scales without unnecessary overhead.
Growth doesn’t follow a script. As you expand into new markets, experiment with pricing, or launch new products, you’ll need more than reactive tech support. You’ll need a partner who’s invested in your success.
The right MoR should function as an extension of your team: offering strategic guidance, sharing best practices, and helping you anticipate what’s next. From onboarding to optimization, choose a provider that grows with you, not one that leaves you to figure it out alone.
Finally, we get to the buying factor every company must weigh — price. It’s tempting to choose a lower-cost MoR, but those savings often come at the expense of flexibility, support, and long-term scalability. If you're a growth-stage or enterprise business, expect to pay a slight premium for a solution that acts like a true partner — not just a platform.
For businesses migrating from one provider to another, it can be a disruptive and time-consuming process. That’s why it’s worth paying more upfront for an MoR that can support long-term growth — letting you avoid the inconvenience and expense of having to switch providers multiple times.
It’s also critical to look beyond the headline transaction fee. That low “5% rate” may sound attractive, but if it doesn’t include premium features like payment optimization, retention strategies, or partner enablement, you may end up sacrificing the very tools you need to grow.
One last note on cost: it's important to know that all MoRs operate on a revenue share model. When you grow, they grow — meaning your provider is directly invested in your success, not just processing your transactions.
Not every merchant of record is built for your growth stage or business model. Some are great for smaller startups with basic billing needs. Others are built to support complex digital products, global scale, and high-volume recurring revenue.
When choosing a partner, start by asking what you need today and where you're headed next. At Cleverbridge, we work with growth-stage and enterprise-level businesses to deliver not just ecommerce, but revenue acceleration. From global payments and tax handling to customer retention and lifecycle support, we’re the MoR partner built for scale.
👉 Ready to find the right fit — no matter what your exact MoR needs are? Contact Cleverbridge to learn more about our services.