Can a merchant of record put your customer's VAT number on the invoice?

Yes. A merchant of record can, and on an EU B2B sale where the customer is liable for VAT under the reverse charge must, show your business customer's VAT number on the invoice. Because the MoR is the legal seller, the invoice names the MoR as supplier, lists your customer's name, address and VAT ID as the buyer, charges no VAT, and carries the words "Reverse charge". Your company does not appear as the seller.

Accounts teams usually ask because the invoice comes from Paddle, Stripe, tiun or another MoR instead of from you. It is a valid VAT invoice they can book, provided it carries the information required under the applicable invoicing rules.

The MoR is the seller on the invoice

EU VAT law treats a business that sells a service in its own name, on behalf of someone else, as if it bought the service and resold it. That is Article 28 of the VAT Directive. Under this buy-resell arrangement, a merchant of record is the supplier for VAT purposes, and the invoice is its invoice.

For software and other electronically supplied services sold through a platform, Article 9a of Implementing Regulation 282/2011 adds a presumption: the platform is the supplier unless the underlying developer is explicitly identified as the supplier and the contractual arrangements and invoice or receipt reflect that treatment. The platform cannot rebut that presumption if it authorises the charge, authorises delivery or sets the general terms of sale.

The Court of Justice upheld the validity of Article 9a in Fenix International (C-695/20) on 28 February 2023, a case about the platform behind OnlyFans. The practical result for you: where the MoR is the legal seller under the buy-resell arrangement, its name goes in the supplier box, not yours. tiun's contracts say the same: tiun AG is the legal seller of transactions processed through its services and issues invoices in its own name (Master Services Agreement §4.1 and §4.2(b)).

The invoice, field by field

The sample above is illustrative: a Swiss merchant of record selling a monthly plan to a German business, with fictional names and numbers.

The last column gives the relevant provisions of Article 226 of the VAT Directive. The exact requirements depend on the invoicing rules applicable to the transaction.

The supplier tax ID (field 4) is where MoRs differ. An EU-based MoR generally prints the EU VAT number under which it makes the supply. tiun AG is Swiss: its published Swiss UID is CHE-389.987.008. That identifier is not an EU VAT number under Article 214 of the VAT Directive.

A supplier outside the EU does not need to obtain an EU VAT ID merely because it makes a service supply on which the EU business customer accounts for VAT under the reverse charge. Its EU consumer sales may instead be covered by the non-Union OSS scheme, which is a separate registration mechanism.

Article 219a determines which Member State's invoicing rules apply. For an Article 196 reverse-charge supply made by a supplier with no establishment in the EU, that will generally be the customer's Member State. Article 226a also permits certain invoice details, including VAT-rate and VAT-amount information, to be omitted in qualifying reverse-charge cases. For your customer's VAT records, the buyer's VAT ID, the supplier's identity and the reverse-charge notation are particularly important.

From checkout field to invoice

1. At checkout, the buyer marks the purchase as a business purchase and enters the VAT number, company name and address.

2. The MoR validates the number. For EU numbers, that usually means the Commission's VIES service, which queries each Member State's register. The VAT ID and other customer information should be consistent with the establishment or fixed establishment receiving the service. The VAT country prefix does not necessarily have to match the billing-address country.

3. If the buyer's business status is established and the transaction qualifies for reverse charge under the applicable rules, the MoR does not charge VAT and applies the reverse charge.

4. The MoR issues the invoice with the buyer's VAT ID and the reverse-charge note, and keeps the validation result and other relevant evidence.

Without a valid VAT number, many MoRs default to treating the buyer as a consumer for tax purposes: they charge the applicable local VAT or decline the sale. That is a checkout policy, not a universal legal rule. Under Article 18 of Implementing Regulation 282/2011, a business that has applied for but not yet received its VAT number may, in certain circumstances, establish its taxable-person status through other evidence accepted after reasonable verification.

Once payment goes through, the MoR normally emails the invoice to the buyer or makes it available through a customer portal, so the accounts team can download it again later.

VIES has outages, for single Member States or for all of them, and an MoR should only apply the reverse charge once it has sufficient evidence that the treatment is justified. A valid VAT number confirmed through VIES is the usual evidence for EU B2B sales, although alternative evidence may be accepted where the law and the MoR's process permit it.

If a valid number is rejected at checkout, your customer can check it on the VIES site and retry once the service is back. Paying with VAT and correcting the invoice afterwards works at some MoRs (next section), but it takes longer and depends on the MoR's process.

For the validation details, see our guide to EU VAT number validation for SaaS.

When your customer still pays VAT

A VAT number does not always mean an invoice with no VAT charged.

Same-country sales. For ordinary B2B SaaS services covered by Articles 44 and 196, reverse charge generally applies when the supplier is not established in the Member State where the customer is liable for VAT. Where the MoR's selling entity is established in the same country as the customer, an ordinary domestic sale generally carries local VAT instead. A Swiss business buying a normally taxable service from tiun AG in Switzerland would ordinarily pay Swiss VAT at 8.1%. A UK business buying a normally taxable service from Paddle.com Market Ltd in the UK would ordinarily pay 20% UK VAT. The buyer can reclaim input VAT to the extent permitted by its own VAT status and the applicable rules.

No VAT ID, or one that fails. If the buyer skips the field or the number fails validation, many MoRs default to B2C tax treatment and charge the applicable local VAT rate. The invoice then shows VAT, and the buyer cannot simply assume that the transaction qualifies for reverse charge. A missing or invalid VAT ID does not necessarily mean the customer is legally a consumer, but the MoR may require additional evidence before changing the tax treatment.

Countries where the MoR offers no B2B exemption. Outside the EU, some MoRs charge local tax on business sales too. FastSpring's published tax table marks Switzerland, Malaysia, Mexico, Serbia, Vietnam, Russia, Egypt and South Africa as "Exemption does not apply on B2B". Check your MoR's equivalent list before promising a customer an invoice without local tax.

A reverse-charge invoice also does not guarantee that the purchase is VAT-neutral for your customer. The buyer declares output VAT and, if entitled to full input-VAT deduction, generally deducts the same amount, leaving no net VAT cost. A partly exempt business, such as a bank or insurer, may only deduct part of that amount, so reverse charge can create a real VAT cost.

We bought without a VAT ID. Can you fix the invoice?

Once an invoice has been issued, corrections should preserve an audit trail rather than silently overwrite the original record. The correct mechanism depends on the jurisdiction and the MoR: it may involve a revised invoice, a corrective document, a credit note, or a cancellation and replacement invoice. If the VAT treatment changes, a tax refund or adjustment may also be needed.

Article 219 of the VAT Directive recognises a document or message that amends and specifically and unambiguously refers to the original invoice as an invoice. EU law therefore does not require every correction to follow one universal credit-note-and-replacement process.

MoRs differ in whether they offer corrections and whether the buyer can trigger them alone.

• Paddle lets buyers revise customer, business and address information on completed transactions, including adding a valid VAT number. Its API documentation says that when a valid tax identifier is added, Paddle automatically creates an adjustment to refund applicable tax. Revised transaction documents reflect the corrected information. Paddle allows a completed transaction to be revised once.

• Polar lets the buyer or seller correct billing details before an invoice is generated. Its documentation treats generated invoices as permanent records that cannot be directly modified, so later corrections depend on the available support or adjustment process.

• FastSpring handles tax refunds through a support request. Its Sales Tax and VAT/GST Policy says it can refund tax for eligible buyers within 90 days of purchase, where the order was paid by credit or debit card, PayPal or Amazon Payments. The policy sets no separate window by country. Invoice corrections are also requested through support.

• tiun states in its End Customer Terms of Sale (§4.4) that invoices and receipts are electronic and that individual changes to receipt content cannot be accommodated except where required by applicable law. Its public documentation does not describe a self-service process or a specific deadline for adding a VAT ID after purchase. Invoice questions can be directed to the current support address, support@tiun.app, and any correction depends on the circumstances and applicable legal requirements.

The simplest prevention is to tell business customers before they pay: enter the VAT number at checkout, under the company's legal name, with the address as registered for VAT. VIES can confirm VAT-number validity, but it does not consistently return company names and addresses for every Member State.

Other merchants of record compared

Every MoR below operates as the legal seller for transactions covered by its merchant-of-record service, but public documentation of B2B invoicing features varies. "Not documented" means that a specific capability could not be confirmed in the public documentation reviewed as of 4 November 2026; it does not necessarily mean the capability is unavailable.

Stripe Managed Payments operates through Sold through Link, LLC, and Stripe says it issues tax invoices where required. Stripe's documentation now expressly recognises reverse_charge as a taxability reason for Managed Payments transactions, distinguishing it from zero_rated: under reverse charge, the business buyer accounts for VAT; under zero-rating, a statutory 0% rate applies.

Link's terms also identify the buyer's tax identification number among relevant order information. What remains less clear in the public documentation is the exact process for adding or correcting an EU buyer's VAT ID and obtaining the corresponding reverse-charge wording on a specific customer-facing invoice.

The other invoice: your sale to the MoR

Under the Article 28 buy-resell model, there are two sales. Your customer buys from the MoR, and the MoR buys from you. That second sale is B2B, so your own books need documentation for it too.

In many setups you never raise an invoice by hand. Lemon Squeezy, for example, generates a "reverse invoice" for every payout, a self-billed record of what it paid you, and lets you add your business name, address and tax number to it. Because the MoR is often in another country, that leg may be a cross-border B2B supply, with the VAT treatment determined by the applicable place-of-supply and reverse-charge rules. Paddle's VAT guidance also describes the reverse-charge treatment of qualifying supplies from software providers to Paddle.

With tiun, the buyer on this leg is tiun AG in Zurich, with Swiss UID CHE-389.987.008. tiun's Master Services Agreement (§4.4) sets it up as a buy-resell: for each transaction, you are deemed to sell the product to tiun on the same terms tiun sells it to your customer.

You don't ordinarily invoice tiun separately under this payout arrangement. Each monthly payout comes with a credit note from tiun that "forms the basis of the payout" and lists the transactions, fees, deductions and adjustments, available in the dashboard (§7.4). That credit note is the principal payout document your accountant uses to reconcile the transactions.

For a seller established in the EU, the sale of an ordinary B2B service to tiun AG in Switzerland generally falls under Article 44 of the EU VAT Directive. The place of supply is where the business customer is established, so the supply is generally outside the scope of EU VAT and the EU seller does not charge EU VAT on that sale.

Sellers established outside the EU, including in the US or UK, must determine the tax treatment of their sale to tiun under their own jurisdiction's rules. The fact that tiun is based in Switzerland does not automatically mean that every seller applies the EU VAT Directive.

On the Swiss side, acquisition tax can apply when a Swiss recipient buys qualifying services from a business established abroad that is not entered in the Swiss VAT Register. Under Article 45 of the Swiss VAT Act, a Swiss VAT-registered recipient generally accounts for acquisition tax on applicable services whose place of supply is Switzerland. It does not follow that every purchase from every foreign supplier automatically triggers acquisition tax.

tiun's fees run the other way: they are charged exclusive of applicable VAT, GST or similar taxes, and tiun's Master Services Agreement (§7.8) makes suppliers outside Switzerland responsible for any reverse-charge VAT or similar local tax obligations that apply in their own jurisdiction. An EU or UK seller may therefore need to self-account for VAT on qualifying services received from tiun. A US seller does not automatically have a VAT obligation, because the treatment depends on its own country's tax system.

Ask your adviser how to report both sides of the arrangement in your local tax filings.

Your accountant should generally record the underlying MoR transactions as B2B sales to the MoR under the buy-resell arrangement, while separately accounting for the MoR's fees, tax adjustments, refunds and deductions. The net payout should be reconciled to those amounts rather than automatically treated as the full revenue figure.

E-invoicing and ViDA

Some countries already require structured e-invoices for domestic B2B sales, such as Italy through SdI, mandatory since 1 January 2019, and Poland through KSeF, phased in from February 2026.

Poland introduced mandatory KSeF issuance in three stages: from 1 February 2026 for businesses whose 2024 gross sales exceeded PLN 200 million, from 1 April 2026 for most remaining businesses, and from 1 January 2027 for the smallest taxpayers whose monthly invoiced gross sales do not exceed PLN 10,000.

Invoices issued by foreign MoRs without a relevant domestic establishment often fall outside these domestic issuance mandates, though the buyer may still have to report the purchase. In Poland, the mandatory KSeF issuance rules generally exclude suppliers without a Polish business or fixed establishment, as well as certain suppliers whose Polish fixed establishment does not participate in the transaction.

Italy, for example, may require the Italian buyer to report services purchased from a foreign supplier through SdI. For purchases of services from abroad, that commonly involves a TD17 integration or self-invoice document, depending on the transaction.

The bigger change is VAT in the Digital Age. Directive (EU) 2025/516, adopted on 11 March 2025, introduces harmonised structured e-invoicing and digital reporting requirements for covered cross-border EU B2B transactions from 1 July 2030.

The new rules expressly cover acquisitions where an EU customer is liable for VAT under Article 196. This means an EU business buying services from an MoR established outside the EU may have digital-reporting obligations even though the foreign MoR is not itself established in the EU. Member States may exercise certain options concerning acquisition-side reporting, so the practical requirements will depend on national implementation.

The supplier-side e-invoicing obligations depend on the transaction, the supplier's establishment and the applicable invoicing rules. A foreign MoR invoice should not automatically be treated as subject to the same issuance requirements as a domestic EU supplier invoice.

For the timeline and what to prepare, see our post on ViDA and e-invoicing for SaaS.

A note for your customer's accounts team

Paste this into your reply when a customer asks about the invoice, and fill in your MoR's name. This example applies to an ordinary EU B2B service purchase qualifying for the reverse charge. For background, link them to how reverse charge works for B2B SaaS.

Your invoice is issued by our merchant of record, [MoR legal name], which is the legal seller of the service under the applicable merchant-of-record arrangement. For an EU B2B purchase qualifying for reverse charge, the invoice identifies [MoR legal name] and its address as supplier, the applicable supplier tax identifier, your company's legal name and address, your VAT ID as registered for VAT, a unique invoice number and issue date, the service and billing period, the amount charged with no VAT collected by the supplier, and the note "Reverse charge". You account for VAT in your own return under the applicable reverse-charge rules.

If the transaction is an ordinary domestic taxable sale from an MoR established in your country, the invoice will generally include local VAT, which you may deduct as input VAT to the extent permitted by law. If you expected reverse-charge treatment but the invoice shows VAT, send us your VAT ID and invoice number so we can ask [MoR legal name] to review the transaction. Any correction or refund will depend on the applicable tax rules and the MoR's process.

FAQ

Will my company's name appear on the MoR invoice?

Not as the seller. The supplier box carries the MoR's legal name and address because, under the buy-resell arrangement, the MoR is the legal seller. Article 28 of the VAT Directive provides the relevant framework for supplies of services made in a business's own name on behalf of another party.

Your name, logo and product can still appear on it: tiun's Master Services Agreement (§4.2) lets tiun use them on checkout pages, invoices and emails.

Can the MoR add a PO number?

It depends on the MoR. Paddle can print a purchase order number on invoices for manually collected (invoiced) transactions. Stripe Managed Payments controls invoice creation itself, and custom PO-number support is not clearly documented. tiun's Terms of Sale restrict individual changes to receipt content except where required by law. Most other MoRs' public docs are silent, so if your customer's procurement team needs a PO number on the invoice, confirm it with the MoR before the deal closes.

What if my customer is in the same country as the MoR?

For an ordinary domestic taxable SaaS sale from an MoR established in the customer's country, the MoR generally charges local VAT rather than applying the cross-border B2B reverse charge. A Swiss business buying a normally taxable service from tiun AG in Switzerland would ordinarily pay Swiss VAT at 8.1%, subject to the applicable tax treatment.

The customer can deduct input VAT to the extent permitted under its VAT status and local rules. Domestic reverse-charge exceptions can exist, so being in the same country does not rule out reverse charge for every possible transaction.

Can a customer add a VAT number after paying?

At several MoRs, each with its own process. Paddle lets buyers revise completed transactions to add a valid VAT number and creates a tax-refund adjustment where applicable. FastSpring handles requests through support and can refund tax within 90 days of purchase for eligible orders paid by card, PayPal or Amazon Payments.

At tiun, customers can contact support@tiun.app. No self-service post-purchase VAT-ID correction process is publicly documented.

The legally appropriate correction may involve a revised invoice, a corrective document, a credit note or a replacement invoice, depending on the jurisdiction and the circumstances. A credit note followed by a new invoice is not the only legally permitted route.

Is the MoR invoice valid for input-VAT recovery?

For a reverse-charge purchase, there is no supplier-charged VAT to reclaim. Instead, the customer accounts for output VAT under the reverse charge and, to the extent it has an input-VAT deduction entitlement, can deduct the corresponding amount under its country's rules.

The invoice should contain the required supplier, customer and reverse-charge information, but the right to deduct under the reverse-charge mechanism is not determined solely by whether every Article 226 invoice field is present. The applicable national documentation and reporting requirements still need to be met.

For the seller's side, see EU VAT compliance for US sellers.

Does this change in 2030?

From 1 July 2030, ViDA introduces harmonised structured e-invoicing and digital reporting requirements for covered cross-border EU B2B transactions.

Those rules expressly include acquisitions where the EU customer is liable for VAT under Article 196, which can include services bought from MoRs established outside the EU. Member States retain certain options concerning acquisition reporting, while supplier-side e-invoicing obligations depend on the applicable rules and the supplier's circumstances.

The key point is that an EU buyer may have a reporting obligation even where the MoR issuing the invoice is based outside the EU.