E-commerce Basics: Merchant of Record
In order to start accepting credit or debit card payments for the products or service you sell online, you will need a Merchant of Record (MoR). The MoR is responsible for a lot of administrative tasks required for online businesses to effectively collect payments in a secure manner.
What is a Merchant of Record?
The Merchant of Record is an entity that is authorized and held liable by the financial institution to process the end consumer’s credit and debit card transactions. The MoR is also the organization whose name appears on the cardholder’s credit or debit card statement when they make a purchase.
A Merchant of Record handles the following administrative tasks:
- Maintain a merchant account and payment gateway to process payments
- Negotiate and manage ongoing credit card processing fees
- Ensure compliance with PCI-DSS standards for handling cardholder information and other data security regulations
- Manage all tax calculation, collection, and remittance
- Manage and maintain relationships with global service providers and payment processors
- Ensure compliance with country-specific payment laws and regulations
- Stay up-to-date and comply with ever-changing card association regulations
- Manage refund request and handle chargebacks
A business can either act as it’s own Merchant of Record or outsource to a reseller who will assume responsibility for managing all of these tasks on the business’ behalf.
As a full-service e-commerce provider, BMT Micro can assume responsibility as the Merchant of Record and act as a reseller on your behalf. All sales are processed through our merchant accounts so we handle the collection and remittance of the required taxes (including VAT) to the proper authorities. We also maintain PCI compliance and are scanned quarterly for both PCI compliance and network security so you can concentrate on your products and customers, knowing their information is safe and secure. If you would like to learn more about the services we offer, please contact our vendor services via email at vendors@bmtmicro.com for more information.
