How To Accept Crypto Payments At Your Business With A Crypto Payment Gateway

Cryptocurrency tends to make headlines, both good and bad, for its value as an investment, but merchants looking for an alternative to traditional payment methods are increasingly accepting crypto payments.

While it’s still pretty early in the game for crypto payment processors, it’s now easier than ever to accept crypto at your point of sale or online using a crypto payment gateway. Below, we’ll break down what crypto payment gateways are all about and the pros and cons of using crypto as an alternative payment technology.

Should You Accept Crypto As A Payment Method?

The answer to whether or not you should accept crypto as a payment method depends greatly on the composition of your customer base and, to a lesser extent, your industry.

According to an October 2024 Pew Research report, 23% of upper-income households traded/used cryptocurrency, while 18% of middle-income Americans have used crypto, and only 14% of those with lower incomes have used crypto.

While many crypto holders like to take advantage of the market’s volatility to increase their wealth by trading, there is still a sizable community that’s interested in applying the technology to payments, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFT). These individuals see cryptocurrency not just as an asset but also as an investment in infrastructure that takes banks and credit card networks out of the equation.

Ultimately, the businesses that should consider accepting cryptocurrency are those with a tech-savvy (and generally younger) customer base.

Additionally, industries that are poorly served by traditional payment methods might consider accepting crypto payments. This can include high-risk businesses that traditional payment processors don’t want to touch — such as adult-oriented businesses and cannabis dispensaries.

Benefits Of Accepting Crypto

In addition to reaching a younger, wealthier customer base and being able to accept payments outside of the traditional banking system, some other benefits of accepting crypto payments include:

• Lower processing fees: Crypto transaction fees are usually less than half of credit card processing fees.
• No chargebacks: Crypto payments are irreversible, thus eliminating chargebacks and chargeback fraud.
• Global customer base: Businesses can accept cross-border payments with ease using crypto.

How To Accept Cryptocurrency At Your Business

The best way to accept crypto at your business is with a crypto payment gateway.

Similar to a traditional payment gateway, a crypto payment gateway lets you accept crypto at your point of sale, or provides shopping cart infrastructure for accepting cryptocurrency payments online. In addition to crypto payment processing, a gateway can also offer additional conveniences like protecting merchants from crypto price volatility, currency conversions, and invoicing.

You don’t technically need a crypto payment gateway to accept a crypto payment. Cryptocurrency can be transferred peer-to-peer between wallets with hashes (which can be copied, pasted, texted, or emailed) via crypto apps. Crypto can also be transferred with QR code payments.

However, cryptocurrency’s price volatility can make it tricky to work into your accounting practices. You also may not want to collect the coins yourself. A crypto payment gateway can let you control how much exposure you have to cryptocurrencies while easily rolling them into your checkout options.

What To Look For In A Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway

For cryptocurrency gateways to be worthwhile, they need to offer merchants something they can’t get by simply doing a wallet-to-wallet trade.

Here are some features you should look for in a cryptocurrency payment gateway:

6 Things To Be Wary Of Before You Accept Crypto Payments

Cryptocurrency payment processing is an exciting prospect with many potential use cases. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit of a Wild West market with a “move fast, break things” credo. The lack of a regulatory framework has also made the sector a hot spot for fraud.

Here are some issues to be wary of before you start accepting payments in crypto.

The 4 Best Crypto Payment Gateways For Businesses

The best crypto payment gateways provide convenient interfaces for accepting multiple types of cryptocurrencies, flexible settlement options, and low fees. Here are the best crypto payment gateway providers.

1. Coinbase Commerce: Best For Integrating Crypto Payments Into A Sales Platform

• Easy access to biggest US cryptocurrency exchange
• Fiat settlement available
• Integrates with popular sales platforms
• Coins supported: 12
• Transaction fee: 1%

Coinbase is the biggest centralized cryptocurrency exchange currently available to the US market. For many people entering the crypto market, Coinbase serves as an on-ramp and off-ramp where crypto can be bought or sold in your local fiat currency. As you might expect, Coinbase also offers a cryptocurrency gateway that merchants can use for sales. Coinbase Commerce integrates with WooCommerce and Shopify.

2. BitPay: Best For Avoiding Price Volatility

• Good integrations
• Protection from price volatility for all accounts
• Fiat settlement available
• Coins supported: 100+
• Transaction fee: 1-2%+$0.25

BitPay uses a straightforward QR code invoicing system for retail payments. BitPay attempts to shield businesses from volatility by locking in the exchange rate at the time of sale. BitPay will then bundle your sales together each business day and deposit your balance in either fiat or one of several cryptocurrencies to your bank account or crypto wallet, respectively. With this system, it’s possible to take a crypto payment but never actually have the crypto pass through your hands unless you want to be paid out in cryptocurrency.

3. NOWPayments: Best For Low Transaction Fees

• Potentially low fees
• Wide variety of coins supported
• POS software available
• Coins supported: 300+
• Transaction fee: 0.5% (1% for multicurrency)

While crypto gateways generally offer merchants lower fees, NOWPayments are some of the lowest available, provided you don’t mind settlement in the same currency you were paid in. The basic service is quite affordable, but you’ll have to pay more for fiat settlement, crypto conversions, and volatility shielding, which can quickly erode its pricing advantage.

NOWPayments is among the more simple and straightforward crypto gateways on our list, with no custodial features.

4. AlfaCoins: Best For Passing Along Fees

• Flexible payment options
• Lower fees for donations
• Good processor for nonprofits
• Coins supported: 7
• Transaction fee: 0.99% (0.5% for donations)

AlfaCoins gives you a lot of control over what happens during a transaction. That 0.99% fee? You can pay it or pass it along to your customer. You’ll get limited volatility shielding; your exchange rate is fixed for 15 minutes after an invoice has been generated. The CoinSplit feature allows you to designate a portion of an invoice to a particular crypto, allowing the rest to be paid in a different currency (including fiat). This can enable merchants to manage how much exposure they want to crypto in any given sale.

Using Shopify Or PayPal For Crypto Payments

Many of the payment gateways on our list integrate with Shopify, including Coinbase Commerce. Note that if you accept cryptocurrency payments via Shopify, you’ll still be charged a Shopify transaction fee unless you also activate Shopify Payments.

PayPal offers crypto merchant payments through its Checkout with Crypto feature. This feature is only available for qualifying purchases. PayPal doesn’t charge a fee when you use the Checkout with Crypto feature, though it does charge a spread for buying and selling cryptocurrency through its Cryptocurrency hub. PayPal supports crypto payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and its own PayPal USD stablecoin.

Note that PayPal’s crypto services are custodial, which means that you don’t hold the private keys for your crypto. Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend using PayPal to hold your crypto assets long-term.

Which Crypto Payment Gateway Is Right For My Business?

If you’re thinking about accepting crypto payments in exchange for goods or services, congratulations: you’re an early adopter in what could turn out to be a major revolution in payments technology.

While they’re still a bit rough around the edges, crypto payments can be a cheap alternative payment method at a time when the costs of credit card transactions are ballooning.

Just make sure you select a provider with a solid reputation and low costs that offers you the amount of exposure to crypto that you want.

Looking for a full merchant account to accept crypto along with traditional payment methods? Check out our list of the best high-risk merchant accounts — several of these providers offer crypto processing as well as credit card processing.