Who is the seller, who holds the money, and who eats the loss

01

The question the others depend on

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Who is the seller of record on a given path determines who contracts with the buyer, who owes a remedy, whose name appears on the money movement, and whose obligations attach to the transaction. The other four questions in this lesson follow from it.

It has no answer at the level of a business. The same catalog can sell on one surface where a marketplace is the contracting party and on another where the seller is, and the difference does not appear in the product record. The answer is therefore recorded per path.

02

Where the position is written down

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Google’s protocol documentation is explicit on each point. It describes how the integration works, separates a native checkout path from an embedded one, and names which party holds the merchant-of-record role on each. The embedded route is documented as open to specific approved merchants rather than to every merchant.¹ That is a document a seller can read and quote.

On the OpenAI side, the commercial relationship is defined in published merchant-feed terms.² Commerce policies covering participation, products, and merchant conduct sit alongside them.³ Both are continuously updated documents, so the roles they define are the current ones, and a decision resting on them carries the date they were read.

03

The five questions, per path

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

These are answered one path at a time. A row that cannot be answered is recorded as unanswered, which makes it a visible entry rather than an assumption held differently by different people.

The tax row is a routing question rather than a rules question. What applies to particular goods, jurisdictions, and roles is a matter for a professional with the seller’s facts; the sheet records only which party in the chain performs the work, so that it is not assumed to be happening elsewhere.

04

The collision with no default answer

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Two buyers reach the same single object within seconds through two surfaces. Both orders are accepted, both are paid, and one object exists. This failure is a property of unique inventory, and the rate at which it occurs depends on how quickly a sale propagates.

Where no rule is written, the outcome is decided during the incident. The rule takes three sentences: which order stands, who cancels the other and within what time, and what the canceled buyer is offered.

• Choose a rule that applies without a judgment call — earliest accepted timestamp is the common one — and write it down.
• Write the cancellation message before it is needed.
• Record whether the canceled buyer is compensated, from which budget, and up to what limit.
• Log every occurrence, since the frequency is an observation about the removal interval.

05

Four moments, not one

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Authorization, capture, settlement, and finality name four moments with different reversibility. An authorization reserves funds. A capture requests them. Settlement moves them. Finality is the point at which they stop being reversible, and it is ordinarily the latest of the four.

The operational consequence concerns when goods leave the seller’s possession. Shipping at authorization rather than at finality places the reversal risk with the seller, and for a one-of-one object that risk is the full value, since no replacement can be shipped. Either timing is available; the sheet records which one is in use.

06

Recording it per path

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

The output is one page per path. Most of the time it takes is reading the documents behind each answer.

1. List every path an order can currently arrive through, including ones that were not selected deliberately.
2. For each, answer the five questions and cite the document behind each answer.
3. Mark unanswered rows explicitly rather than leaving them blank.
4. Give the page a review date, since the documents behind it are updated without notice.

Two unanswered rows on a five-row sheet are the output of the exercise rather than a gap in it. They name the path where a four-figure irreplaceable object has an unallocated loss, and they are recorded where everyone can see them.

The sheet supports a decision about sequencing rather than a verdict. Which paths carry which stock, and which questions are answered before an irreplaceable object goes down one of them, are choices the seller makes with the rows in front of them.

07

What the commercial documents state

Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid

Google’s protocol documentation names the party holding the merchant-of-record role on each checkout path it defines, with the embedded route documented as open to approved merchants.¹ OpenAI’s merchant terms define the commercial relationship for its feed,² and its commerce policies set out participation, product, and conduct requirements.³

None of them states the answer for a path other than its own, and none is versioned in a way that fixes its text. What the sheet records is which document answered which row, and on what date.