You sell your app. Apple's own agreement calls Apple your agent, or your commissionaire.
You do. In both store agreements you are the principal and the store is acting for you. The phrase everyone repeats, that Apple is the merchant of record, does not appear anywhere in the Apple Developer Program License Agreement. Read end to end on 17 October 2026, that document uses two other words for Apple's role: agent, for 42 regions, and commissionaire, for 133. Google's Developer Distribution Agreement does use merchant of record, and it hands the title to Google in 54 countries and territories and to you everywhere else, the United States included. If you are choosing an app monetisation model, that is the sentence the whole thing hangs on.
What follows is the exact wording in each agreement, the two lists that actually decide anything, and the three places the answer changes what you do on a Monday morning. Then the one question an accountant will ask you that has no clean answer on the App Store side.
Start hereThe short version
The store acts for you. You carry the liability.
Both stores are built on the same legal shape, and both say so in their own words. You are the principal. The store is appointed to market and deliver your app on your behalf, for a cut. Nothing about your app becomes the store's property, and nothing about your promises to the customer becomes the store's problem. The licence the customer agrees to is yours.
Where the two differ is vocabulary, and vocabulary is what people get wrong. Apple never writes merchant of record. It writes agent and commissionaire, and it keeps two separate region lists: one for which Apple company is acting for you, one for who remits the sales tax. Google writes merchant of record, splits it by country, and gives you the title in most of the world. So the honest answer to who sells your app is the same on both stores, and the honest answer to who the merchant of record is depends on which store and which country you mean.
What words does Apple's agreement actually use?
Two, and the section heading gives them away. Schedule 2 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement is the part you sign to charge money, and its first section is headed Appointment of Agent and Commissionaire. Section 1.1 appoints Apple and its subsidiaries as your agent for the regions in Exhibit A Section 1, and as your commissionaire for the regions in Exhibit A Section 2. Section 1.3 then names the relationship twice over: principal and agent, or principal and commissionaire, with you as the principal and solely responsible for any claim or liability involving your app. The appointment is non-exclusive, which is why the same build can also ship on Google Play.
The agreement defines the odd word itself, in the clause that first uses it. A commissionaire is an agent who acts and concludes agreements in its own name while acting on behalf of another person, a form of agency recognised in many civil law systems. That is the practical difference. A plain agent is visibly acting for you. A commissionaire faces your customer in its own name and still acts for you behind the paperwork.
Five Apple companies take the agent role across 42 regions. Apple Canada, Inc. for Canada. Apple Pty Limited for Australia and New Zealand. Apple Inc. for the United States, under the California Civil Code sections on agency. Apple Services LATAM LLC for 37 regions across Latin America and the Caribbean. iTunes KK for Japan, under Article 643 of the Japanese Civil Code. Two take the commissionaire role across 133 regions: Apple Distribution International Ltd. in Cork for 114 of them, and Apple Services Pte. Ltd. for 19 more in Asia and the Pacific. That is 175 regions, two legal relationships, and seven different Apple entities that might be the counterparty on a given sale.
On the absence, here is exactly what was checked, because an absence is a harder claim than a presence. The phrase merchant of record occurs zero times in the full web text of the agreement, Schedules 1 to 3 and every exhibit included. It occurs zero times on the App Store Review Guidelines, zero times on the App Store Connect Help page Understanding taxes, zero times on the help page for providing tax information for commissions and fees related to external purchases and alternative distribution, and zero times on the App Store Small Business Program page. All five were read on 17 October 2026. That is not a proof that the phrase appears nowhere Apple has ever published. It is a statement that it is not in the document that defines the role, and it is not on the tax pages where you would look for it.
Check one storefront
Who is acting for you, region by region
Pick a storefront. The three answers come from Exhibit A and Exhibit B of Apple's agreement and from the Merchant of Record list Google's agreement points at. All three can differ for the same app.
United States
App Store, who acts for you: Apple Inc. is your agent
App Store, sales tax on the sale: Apple collects and remits
Google Play, merchant of record: You are the merchant of record
Read from both agreements on 17 October 2026. Apple says the version in your developer account is the binding one, and both lists are updated from time to time.
Who collects and remits the tax on a sale?
This is the question hiding behind the merchant of record argument, and Apple answers it on a list rather than with a label. Section 3.2 of Schedule 2 says responsibility for collecting and remitting sales tax, VAT, GST and similar levies is determined by Exhibit B. Exhibit B Section 1 lists the regions where Apple collects and remits if tax applies. It had 94 entries on 17 October 2026. Exhibit B Section 2 is the other half of the rule, and it is short: for any region not on that list, you are solely responsible.
Seventeen of the 94 carry a footnote that narrows them, which is where a one line summary goes wrong. Eleven apply only to developers who are not resident in that region, and two more say the same in different words, so a Korean developer selling in Korea is not covered by Korea's entry. China is limited to the taxes the Chinese government requires Apple to collect. Mexico applies only if you are not registered for VAT there. Uruguay covers only certain taxes on digital transactions. Vietnam excludes local corporate developers. And plenty of large markets are simply absent: an App Store sale in Brazil is yours to account for, in a country where Apple Services LATAM LLC is acting as your agent.
The word Apple uses for its own cut follows the same logic. Section 3.4 of Schedule 2 says Apple is entitled to commissions in consideration for its services as your agent or commissionaire. The rate is 30% of the price the customer pays, falling to 15% on an auto-renewing subscription once that customer has more than a year of paid service in the same subscription group, and 15% across the board for developers approved for the App Store Small Business Program, which asks for no more than one million dollars in total proceeds in the prior calendar year across associated accounts. A commission is what an agent earns. A fee is what a shop charges. Apple picked the first word on purpose, and it changes your invoice as much as what it costs to publish an app in the first place.
One more detail worth keeping, because it is the closest Apple comes to the idea people are reaching for. In the New Zealand section of Exhibit C, Apple Pty Limited will issue the required tax documentation to the customer in its own name, and you agree not to issue any documentation for those supplies yourself. That is a specific regional GST arrangement, not a general rule, and it is the shape of thing a merchant of record would do. Apple still does not call it that.
What does Google's agreement say about who sells?
Google uses the phrase Apple avoids, and then gives most of it away. Section 3.1 of the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement appoints Google as your agent or marketplace service provider. Section 3.4 is the sentence worth reading twice: acting as your agent, and with you acting as a principal, Google is the merchant of record for products sold to users in the countries and territories it lists, and you are the merchant of record for products you sell to all other users. Two roles, one clause, split by geography.
The list sits on the Play Console Help page the clause links to, titled Merchant of Record. On 17 October 2026 it held 54 countries and territories. It is the European Union, the rest of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and a set of European and French overseas territories from the Faroe Islands to Wallis and Futuna. What is not on it matters more. The United States is absent. So are Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, India and Switzerland. If you sell a subscription to someone in Ohio through Google Play, the merchant of record is you.
Google's tax clause has the same shape as Apple's and spells out more of the work. Section 3.5 makes you responsible for transaction taxes except in certain countries and territories, and then lists what being responsible means: deciding whether the transaction is taxable, charging and collecting the tax at the right rate, remitting it to the tax authority, and providing the paperwork to the customer or the authority. Section 11.3 calls you the principal to the transaction with the user and makes you solely responsible for compliance worldwide. Google calls its own cut a Service Fee rather than a commission, and the word seller does not appear in the agreement at all. Any of this is worth reading before adding payments to an app you intend to charge for.
So the contradiction is not where people put it. It is not that one store sells your app and the other does not. Both appoint themselves your agent and leave you as the principal. The difference is that Google publishes a merchant of record list and Apple publishes a tax remittance list, and those two lists answer different questions. Comparing them as if they were the same list is how the wrong numbers get into circulation.
Why does a one person shop care who the agent is?
Because three ordinary tasks change. The first is your terms. The licence the customer accepts is yours, not Apple's, and if you supply no terms the store's standard licence stands in for yours. A refund promise, a fair use limit, a claim about what the app does: those are your words and your exposure. Apple's Schedule 1 Section 3.1 says title, risk of loss, responsibility and control stay with you at all times and that Apple acquires no ownership interest. There is no shop between you and the person who bought it.
The second is bookkeeping. If you sell in Brazil on the App Store or in the United States on Google Play, the tax on that sale is yours to work out, charge, remit and document, and the store has told you so in writing. If you sell the same app in Germany, both stores handle it. That means the correct answer to your accountant is never one sentence. It is a region list, and both region lists are updated from time to time by the store rather than by you. Print the list with the date you read it and keep the copy.
The third is what you do when somebody asks for the merchant of record on a form. Payment vendors, accounting software and tax advisers all use the term, and on the App Store side there is no document to point at. The useful move is to answer the question underneath it. Name the Apple entity from Exhibit A that acts for you in that region, say whether the region is in Exhibit B, and attach the date. That is a real answer built from first party text rather than a label borrowed from a blog. It is also the moment to decide which payment layer to use, because a payment processor outside the stores puts the whole question back on you.
One warning about where the bad numbers come from. Search for this and you will find confident sentences about Apple being the merchant of record in a specific count of countries. The count usually turns out to be the Exhibit B tax list, repeated at a different size by whoever copied it last, and the label is not Apple's. The agreement is public, free and searchable. When the stakes are a tax return, read the clause.
Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement, Sections 3.1, 3.4, 3.5 and 11.3, read 17 October 2026
The same sale, described by two agreements
Both documents read on 17 October 2026. The rows where the answer is the same on both stores are the rows that decide who is actually selling. The rows where it differs are vocabulary and tax plumbing.
| The question | App Store | Google Play | Same answer on both |
|---|---|---|---|
| The word for the store's role | Agent in 42 regions, commissionaire in 133 | Agent or marketplace service provider | No |
| The word for your role | Principal | Principal | Yes |
| Uses the phrase merchant of record | No | Yes | No |
| Merchant of record for a sale in the United States | The phrase is never used | You are | No |
| The word for the store's cut | Commission | Service Fee | No |
| Regions where the store remits the sales tax | 94, listed in Exhibit B | Certain countries, on a linked help page | No |
| Who answers to the customer | You do | You do | Yes |
Where does this land if a builder generated your app?
In exactly the same place. The developer account is yours, the agreement inside it is yours, and the Apple entity in Exhibit A is acting for you rather than for whoever wrote the code. Apple has a guideline that keeps it that way. App Store Review Guideline 4.2.6, read on 17 October 2026, says apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content, and that those services should not submit apps on behalf of their clients.
Newly is an AI app builder, and it is built around that rule rather than against it. You describe an app in plain English and it writes a real React Native and Expo project you own, with two-way GitHub sync so the code is never trapped. It uploads iOS builds to TestFlight, publishes to Google Play internal testing and builds a standalone Android APK. It does not press submit on the App Store for you, because Apple requires the owner of the content to do that. It is $25 a month, with no free tier.
The honest limit is the same one every tool runs into. Nobody can take the principal's seat for you. A builder can get the project written and the build uploaded in an afternoon, and it can wire a store billing paywall so the commission and the tax lists above are the ones that apply. It cannot sign your agreement, answer your customer, or fill in your tax return. Those arrive with the first sale, and they arrive addressed to you.
Questions people ask about who sells your app
Apple's own Developer Program License Agreement does not use that phrase. Read in full on 17 October 2026, it uses two other words for Apple's role: agent, for the 42 regions in Exhibit A Section 1, and commissionaire, for the 133 regions in Exhibit A Section 2. Section 1.3 of Schedule 2 describes the relationship as principal and agent, or principal and commissionaire, with you as the principal. The question people are usually asking is who remits the sales tax, and that is a separate list, Exhibit B.
Build it, then read the two exhibits before you price it
Get the app in front of testers first. Then open Exhibit A and Exhibit B, find the regions you plan to sell in, and write down who is acting for you and who remits the tax. Half an hour, once, and the answer stops being a guess.
Start building