VAT and cost allocation
VAT is 16% of the base order price for international cards and Alipay. The merchant sets a customer share from 0 to 100% and covers the remainder from revenue. SBP and cryptocurrency have no VAT under these published terms.
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One base for fees and tax#
The base price is the order amount entered by the store. The 10% + $0.50 fee and 16% VAT are calculated independently from this price. The fee does not apply to the VAT added on top.
With a $5 base price, the fee is $1 and VAT is $0.80. Changing the payer changes the allocation, not the tax rate or its calculation base.
The customer pays VAT#
This is the default VAT rule: a 100% customer share, equivalent to the legacy customer value. The merchant covers the entire fee in this example. VAT is added to the base price. Checkout shows the order price, VAT and total due.
Only the acceptance fee is deducted from the base price. For a $5 order, the customer pays $5.80 and the merchant receives $4.
customerTotalMinor = baseMinor + vatMinor
merchantNetMinor = baseMinor - feeMinorThe merchant pays VAT#
In this example, customer shares are 0% for both VAT and the fee. The legacy merchant VAT value corresponds to a zero customer VAT share; the merchant covers both costs from the base price.
For a $5 order, the customer pays $5, the fee is $1, VAT is $0.80 and the merchant receives $3.20. VAT remains 16% of the base price; do not replace this rule with a 16/116 formula.
customerTotalMinor = baseMinor
merchantNetMinor = baseMinor - feeMinor - vatMinorA side-by-side example#
| Amount | Customer pays VAT | Merchant pays VAT |
|---|---|---|
| Base order price | $5.00 | $5.00 |
| Acceptance fee | $1.00 | $1.00 |
| VAT | $0.80 | $0.80 |
| Customer pays | $5.80 | $5.00 |
| Merchant receives | $4.00 | $3.20 |
When the setting applies#
The store preference supplies the initial allocation. The interface and API save independent integer customer VAT and processing-fee shares from 0 to 100 for each invoice. Changes to store settings do not recalculate issued invoices.
For a new live card or Alipay payment, the current gateway supports only feeCustomerPercent=0 and vatCustomerPercent=100: the merchant covers the entire processing fee and VAT is added in full for the customer. Other shares can be saved and calculated on an invoice, but execution is blocked with unsupported_allocation. The server never silently changes saved terms. SBP and USDT crypto payments support every processing-fee share and have no VAT.
Create a new link for different terms. VAT is zero for SBP and cryptocurrency.