I'm a bootstrapper. I use a merchant of record service to handle this because I need to spend my time building and growing, not doing paperwork.

Yes, it sucks that it costs more. Yes, it sucks that I have more platform/vendor risk. Yes, it sucks that I can't use the platform I know best (Stripe).

But yes, it's worth it to know that if our efforts succeed and we grow a lot then we won't have to drop everything to get compliant with the 87 countries and countless local jurisdictions we've made sales in.