Strategy

Merchant of Record

The legal entity responsible for the sale — collects payment, pays taxes, handles refunds and chargebacks. Platforms like Shopify Payments make you the merchant of record by default.

The merchant of record (MOR) is the legal entity responsible for a given sale: collecting payment, remitting sales tax, handling refunds and chargebacks, and being liable for compliance. When you run a normal Shopify store with Shopify Payments, your business is the merchant of record.

Some platforms (Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and some buy-now-pay-later providers) act as the merchant of record themselves — they take on the compliance burden in exchange for a higher fee. In dropshipping, the Shopify Payments / Stripe / PayPal default means you're the MOR, and you're responsible for all the compliance that implies (nexus-based sales tax collection, chargeback handling, and consumer-protection obligations).

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A group of customers who first purchased in the same window (e.g., "January buyers"). Tracking cohorts over time reveals how retention is actually trending.
DMCA
The US copyright law used to take down content that infringes on intellectual property. Dropshipping stores get hit with DMCAs for copied product images, copied ads, and copied branding.
FTC
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