Launching late 2026 · enquiries open now
Sell to consumers in the European Union without becoming a European tax entity.
BorderRelay is a merchant of record service for companies established outside the EU. We become the legal seller towards your European customers: we charge and remit the VAT, issue the invoice that each member state requires, stand as the counterparty under EU consumer law, absorb the chargeback process, and settle the balance with you.
- Status
- Platform in build · launch late 2026
- For
- Non-EU companies selling digital products and training
- Established
- Belgium — inside the EU, which is the point
The problem
If your customers are in the EU, the EU is already your problem
Not because anyone reported you, but because the obligation attaches to the sale itself. These are the five points where a non-EU seller usually discovers that a European customer is not the same thing as a domestic one.
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VAT is due in your customer's country, from the first sale
The EUR 10,000 threshold that circulates in every forum applies only to businesses established inside the EU. If yours is not, there is no threshold: VAT is due on sale number one, at the rate of the country your customer lives in — and those rates differ, from 17% to 27%.
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Registration and filing, not just calculation
Charging the right rate is the easy half. The other half is a registration in an EU member state, quarterly One Stop Shop returns, payment in euro, and a record of every sale kept for ten years, per country, in a form a tax authority can audit.
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Invoices that satisfy a country you have never traded in
What a valid invoice must contain, in which language, with which sequence of numbers, is not uniform across the Union. A receipt from your checkout tool is generally not one.
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Consumer law that does not care where you are incorporated
A fourteen-day withdrawal right, pre-contractual information duties, a working complaints route. For digital content the withdrawal right can be waived, but only if the customer expressly consents and acknowledges the loss — and only if your checkout actually recorded that.
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Chargebacks, and the payment account that quietly closes
A dispute can arrive two months after delivery, and the burden of proof sits with the seller. Many processors will not accept a non-EU merchant selling to EU consumers at all — or accept it, and then suspend the account when the mix becomes visible.
The transfer
Who carries what, at each step of a sale
The whole service is one idea: for the sales that run through BorderRelay, the legal seller is us. Follow a single transaction and it becomes concrete.
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Checkout
We carry: the payment page and the merchant account it runs on, under our name.
You keep: the product, the price, the page it is sold from.
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VAT
We carry: the correct rate for the customer's member state, the EU registration, the One Stop Shop return and the payment to the authority.
You keep: nothing to file in Europe for these sales. Your own domestic obligations are untouched.
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Invoice
We carry: the compliant invoice to the consumer, numbered in an unbroken series, issued only once payment has actually completed.
You keep: your own invoice — one invoice, to us, for the settlement.
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Consumer law
We carry: the position of counterparty. Withdrawal requests, information duties, and the formal complaints route point at us.
You keep: the substance — questions about the content, access and support stay with you, where they belong.
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Dispute
We carry: the chargeback procedure with the acquirer, the deadlines, and the evidence file.
You keep: the delivery evidence we ask you for. How the economic outcome of a dispute is allocated is written into the agreement rather than implied here.
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Settlement
We carry: a per-transaction ledger you can see, a statement, and payment against your invoice.
You keep: the balance — gross receipts less the agreed commission and fees.
The unspoken question
What stays yours
Handing the seller role to another party is not a small decision, and the first worry is always the same one: how much of my own business am I giving up? The answer is: none of the parts that make it yours.
Your product
What you build, what is in it, when it changes.
Your pricing
You set it. We do not price your work.
Your brand
Your site, your voice, your audience. We appear where the law requires the seller to appear.
Your customer
Delivery, teaching, support and the relationship around the content remain yours.
Your other markets
Sales outside the EU can keep running exactly as they run today.
Your data
A full export of everything held for you, in CSV and JSON, on request and at no charge.
Operationally
From first conversation to monthly settlement
- 01
Assessment
We look at what you sell, where your company is established and registered, whether it is insurable, and what dispute rate the offering is likely to produce. Not every enquiry becomes a partnership.
- 02
Agreement
Commission, fixed fee per transaction, management fee, settlement rhythm, obligations on both sides, and what happens on exit. Written down before anything goes live.
- 03
Connection
Hosted checkout or payment links you generate yourself — including for a customer you invoice outside your website. An API for platforms that need one.
- 04
Live
Payments arrive with us as merchant of record. Access to the product is provisioned for the customer. Every transaction lands in a back-office both parties can see, each in their own view.
- 05
Settlement
You invoice us for your share against a statement that is already reconciled. We pay. Ten years of records stay retrievable, because that is the retention the law expects.
Self-check
Is this for you?
Four questions, answered in your browser. Nothing is sent, stored or transmitted — there is no form submission behind this. If the honest answer is that BorderRelay does not fit your situation, it will say so.
Selection
Partners are accepted after assessment
As merchant of record we become the seller in law. That means we answer for what is sold, and it makes an open sign-up impossible. We assess on four things:
The nature of the offering
What it is, what it promises, and whether that promise can be kept.
Provenance of the company
A verifiable legal entity, a registry extract, an identifiable beneficial owner.
Insurability
Cover appropriate to what is sold, kept current for as long as the partnership runs.
Expected dispute rate
Some offerings generate chargebacks by their nature. We would rather establish that beforehand than discover it.
Borderstride Morrow keeps firm red lines about what it will and will not sell on behalf of another party. If your offering falls outside them, a short conversation saves us both an assessment.
Questions
Frequently asked
What is a merchant of record?
The party that legally sells to the end customer. It appears on the invoice, charges and remits the VAT, is the counterparty under consumer law, and carries the payment relationship including chargebacks. You remain the owner of the product and you deliver it; we own the transaction.
Do I need an EU VAT registration if I work with BorderRelay?
Not for the sales that run through us. Because BorderRelay is the seller towards the EU consumer, the VAT obligation on those sales is ours — we are registered in the EU and file under the One Stop Shop. Obligations in your own country remain entirely yours, and you should keep your own adviser on those.
Is there a turnover threshold below which EU VAT does not apply?
Not for a business established outside the EU. The EUR 10,000 threshold applies only to businesses established inside it. A non-EU supplier of digital services owes VAT in the consumer's member state from the very first sale.
When exactly does BorderRelay launch?
Late 2026. The settlement back-office and the payment integration are being built now. Companies can be assessed and prepared before launch, which is why enquiries are open today — the first onboarding group is being formed.
Which products do you accept?
At launch: digital products, online courses, training and memberships delivered electronically. Physical goods are out of scope — customs, import VAT and returns logistics are a different service, and we would rather do one thing properly.
What does it cost?
A commission per transaction, a fixed fee per transaction, and a monthly management fee. The rates depend on volume and on what is being sold, so they are agreed per partner rather than published. Ask and you get a concrete quote, not a range.
Do I keep my own brand and my own customers?
Yes. Product, price, brand and the delivery relationship stay with you. We become visible where the law requires the seller to be visible: at the checkout, on the invoice, and in payment and consumer-law correspondence.
What happens to my data, and what happens if we stop?
The platform runs on dedicated infrastructure under our own management, not on shared hosting. Card data is never stored; the payment processor holds it. On termination you get a complete export in CSV and JSON at no charge. Invoice and accounting records carry a statutory ten-year retention and survive any deletion routine — that is law, not policy.
Who is behind BorderRelay?
Borderstride Morrow, established in Arendonk, Belgium, VAT BE0731511147. Being established inside the EU is precisely what makes the arrangement work.
Contact
The service launches late 2026. The conversation can start now.
Assessment takes time, and so does preparing a clean go-live. Companies that speak to us before launch are the ones that can transact on day one. Write to relay@borderstride.com, or use the fields below — they compose the message in your own mail programme. Nothing is transmitted or stored by this page.