[CallMeMarc]

I’ve used Stripe in the past and it was a joy to use. Used it for an simple online shop selling shirts.

In my case I only sold to one country within the EU which is my home country and therefore I didn’t have any problems with EU taxes and stuff like that. If you plan to sell in the EU from outside or to multiple EU countries I’d strongly recommend a merchant of record.

The most known I think is Paddle, as also mentioned in this thread. But their pricing is hidden deep inside their ToS and in general you don’t get that many information just from the website, best to contact their sales department and check with them if they would like to onboard you. But it’s definitely more expensive than Stripe for fees but in my opinion you’ll save that money in accounting as you only get one invoice per month and don’t have to worry about taxes in X countries.

Also a small tip, check if your country has laws on “fake self-employment” (Scheinselbständigkeit in German) because I know for a fact that some (at least German) finance authorities don’t understand how a merchant of record works because even though you have multiple customers, on the paper you only have one, Paddle.

[make_it_sure]

I don't think "bogus self-employment" applies here. If you're a company that contracts people instead of hire them as employees you might have troubles, but not the other way around.

[CallMeMarc]

I can only speak for Germany and from my experience. Their argument was that you only have „one“ customer and therefor should be employed by, in this case, Paddle.

Edit: Should mention it was for a kind of SaaS, the case may be different if you sell physical products online.

[make_it_sure]

Well, I guess it's quite similar where I'm from (in EU) where it depends if you're an individual or have an LLC like form of organization.

Even if you're sole proprietorship there are a things to happen to risk being classified as employee, like not setting your own working hours, working with company tools, not being able to sell to other clients (of course you can do that) and so on.

I really doubt it's an issue with Paddle, they have lots of german customers.