PayPal and Cards from Ukraine: Who Is the Seller, Who Pays the Tax, What It Costs

If you sell from Ukraine on Etsy, eBay, Shopify, or your own site, you already know the core problem: Western payment providers will not open accounts for sellers in your country. Intermediaries exist to bridge that gap. There are three kinds, they are legally very different, and the difference decides who stands behind the sale, who owes US sales tax, and how much of each sale you give away.

Three models, three different contracts

1. The agency model: WesternBid

WesternBid has operated since 2001 and serves thousands of sellers from Ukraine. Their own About page describes the company, in Ukrainian, as a trade agency company and merchant of record in the same sentence. Those are two different legal roles, and which one applies at the moment of a dispute determines who answers to the buyer.

Their published price: roughly 4% of each payment (minimum $0.01, maximum $50 per payment), after processor fees. On $10,000 a month that is about $400 just for accepting money.

2. The broker model: SkladUSA

SkladUSA is first a warehouse and logistics company out of Minnesota, an official Etsy shipping partner for Ukraine. Payments were added because clients asked. Their agreement is explicit: the company acts as an agent or trading broker for a fee and is not the US seller. US sales tax stays with the seller.

That is an honest model for a warehouse. But if what you need is a legal seller in your buyer's country, a broker is not that.

3. The legal-seller model: ExosPay

ExosPay is built on the third model: we become the legal seller in the buyer's country. The buyer pays by card or PayPal and sees a statement name you know before your first sale. Disputes and chargebacks are answered by us, not you. The tax scope is written into your agreement before anything goes live. You keep your brand, your shop, your customer, and your shipping: keep whatever 3PL or courier you already use.

The price is public: 1% per transaction plus $30 a month, or 1.5% flat with no monthly fee. Processor fees pass through at cost, never marked up. Our fee never comes out of stated sales tax.

The comparison at $10,000 a month

Processor fees apply in all three cases; every provider passes them through. The comparison is what each intermediary keeps.

Honestly: by ticket size

The 4% desks cap their fee at $50 per payment, which makes their model cheaper on very large single payments. We would rather say that ourselves than have them say it:

Up to $5,000 per payment, our 1% is cheaper on every ticket. At $5,000 it is a tie. Above that, their cap wins if your business is a few large payments. For a typical marketplace seller averaging $30 to $300 per order, the difference lands in your pocket on every sale.

What this means in practice

• —If you need a US warehouse and shipping, SkladUSA and WesternBid have real logistics. You do not have to give that up: ExosPay does not ship parcels and does not ask you to switch.
• —If you need the sale legally carried by a company in the buyer's country, with a written tax scope and a recognizable statement name, that is the legal-seller model.
• —Run your own numbers. The break-even between our two plans is $6,000 a month: below it, 1.5% flat wins; above it, 1% + $30.

How to start

ExosPay is invite-based: sole proprietors, companies, and individuals, selling physical goods or digital products. We review every request and answer quickly, usually with a real plan, sometimes with an honest "not yet." Written terms arrive before anything goes live.

Request an invite

All competitor facts come from their public sites and agreements as of August 2026. If something has changed, tell us and we will correct it.