Stripe came back to crypto in 2026. The pricing is 1.5 percent. The product is USDC settlement on Ethereum, Base, and Polygon. The brand recognition is unmatched. And it is still the wrong choice for most crypto merchants.
This is not a Stripe critique. Stripe is the best card processor in the world. The argument is that the card-processor playbook does not transfer cleanly to crypto, and the best alternatives in 2026 have built their products around that fact. Here is the side-by-side.
The five players, in order of merchant fit
Stripe Crypto, BitPay, NOWPayments, CoinGate, and Coinbase Commerce are the names that come up in every shortlist. Their pricing and product differ enough that the choice between them is not a coin flip.
Stripe Crypto: 1.5 percent, USDC only, custodial
Stripe re-launched crypto in 2026 with USDC payments on Ethereum, Base, and Polygon at a flat 1.5 percent transaction fee. The product is positioned at enterprise. The integration is clean. The conversion to fiat is automatic.
The catch is that Stripe holds the funds. The model is custodial in everything but name. Your USDC lands at Stripe, Stripe converts it, Stripe forwards fiat to your bank on Stripe's settlement schedule. If Stripe decides next quarter that your category is too risky (and Stripe has historically been aggressive about closing accounts in adjacent categories like gambling, adult, and certain SaaS), your money is in the custody of a counterparty that just decided not to be your friend anymore.
The 1.5 percent itself is high for crypto. It is essentially the card processing rate applied to a settlement rail with near-zero marginal cost. Stripe is taking the Visa pricing logic and pasting it onto USDC.
BitPay: 1 to 2 percent plus $0.25 per transaction, custodial, KYC mandatory
BitPay's tiered pricing is 2 percent for under $500K monthly volume, 1.5 percent for $500K to $999K, 1 percent for $1M+. Every transaction also carries a 25 cent flat fee. BitPay is custodial: funds settle to BitPay first, then forward to the merchant. KYC is mandatory for the merchant.
BitPay is the oldest crypto processor and has the deepest integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento). It is reliable. It is also expensive at scale, and the percentage model means you pay them more as you grow, even though the marginal cost of processing a $50,000 transaction is identical to processing a $50 transaction.
NOWPayments: 0.5 to 1 percent, 300+ tokens, custodial-ish
NOWPayments charges 0.5 percent for same-coin payments and 1 percent when auto-conversion is enabled. The platform supports over 300 cryptocurrencies, which is the broadest coverage in the industry.
NOWPayments operates a custodial model with auto-conversion features. The merchant can receive crypto direct to wallet (less custodial exposure) or have NOWPayments handle conversion (more custodial exposure but operationally simpler). The flexibility is the main reason NOWPayments has the highest share among long-tail tokens (Monero, Dash, Litecoin, niche EVM chains).
CoinGate: flat 1 percent, MiCA-licensed, KYC mandatory
CoinGate's pricing is a flat 1 percent. The company is MiCA-licensed in the EU and PI-licensed for payment institution operations. CoinGate processed 1.42 million payments in 2025.
CoinGate is the European-leaning choice. It settles in EUR, USD, and GBP. The compliance posture is the strongest in the industry. The flip side is that KYC is mandatory for all merchants, and the 1 percent rate is identical regardless of volume, so high-volume operators pay proportionally more than they would on a tiered or flat-fee alternative.
Coinbase Commerce: shutting down for most of the world
Coinbase announced in Q1 2026 that Coinbase Commerce will shut down on March 31, 2026 for all non-US and non-Singapore merchants. More than 8,000 merchants lost their processor with 90 days notice. If you are outside the US or Singapore, Coinbase Commerce is no longer an option.
For US and Singapore merchants, Commerce remains operational at 1 percent. It supports about 10 assets. The shutdown announcement is a structural lesson about platform risk that applies to any of these processors.
The flat-fee alternative
The five processors above all share one property: they charge proportional to your volume. The more revenue you produce, the more fee you pay, with diminishing tier discounts.
A flat-fee subscription model breaks that link. Plaitr's pricing is:
- •Starter: $99/month, up to $100,000 monthly volume
- •Growth: $499/month, $100,000 to $3 million monthly volume
- •Scale: $999/month, $3 million+ monthly volume (unlimited)
Every L1 and leading L2 is supported. Same-day stablecoin or fiat payout. Non-custodial: funds settle directly to the merchant's wallet. Zero KYC at any volume tier. The merchant keeps 100 percent of every payment.
The math at typical volumes
Run the math at three representative volumes.
$100K/month merchant: - Stripe Crypto (1.5 percent): $1,500/month, $18,000/year - BitPay (2 percent + $0.25 per tx, assume 1,000 tx): $2,250/month, $27,000/year - NOWPayments (1 percent): $1,000/month, $12,000/year - CoinGate (1 percent): $1,000/month, $12,000/year - Plaitr Starter ($99 flat): $99/month, $1,188/year
$1M/month merchant: - Stripe Crypto (1.5 percent): $15,000/month, $180,000/year - BitPay (1.5 percent + $0.25 per tx, assume 5,000 tx): $16,250/month, $195,000/year - NOWPayments (1 percent): $10,000/month, $120,000/year - CoinGate (1 percent): $10,000/month, $120,000/year - Plaitr Growth ($499 flat): $499/month, $5,988/year
$3M/month merchant: - Stripe Crypto (1.5 percent): $45,000/month, $540,000/year - BitPay (1 percent + $0.25 per tx, assume 12,000 tx): $33,000/month, $396,000/year - NOWPayments (1 percent): $30,000/month, $360,000/year - CoinGate (1 percent): $30,000/month, $360,000/year - Plaitr Scale ($999 flat): $999/month, $11,988/year
At $1M monthly volume, Plaitr is roughly 20 times cheaper than NOWPayments and 30 times cheaper than Stripe Crypto. At $3M, the gap widens to 30x and 45x respectively.
What you give up with a flat-fee rail
Not nothing. The percentage processors offer:
- •Brand recognition at checkout. Some shoppers trust "powered by Coinbase" or "Stripe" labels. A flat-fee rail does not have that brand equity.
- •Pre-built Shopify and WooCommerce plugins. Plaitr ships them too, but BitPay and NOWPayments have longer maturity in the WooCommerce ecosystem.
- •Hand-holding on integration. BitPay and CoinGate have larger support teams. A non-custodial rail expects the merchant to handle their own wallet operationally.
For the merchant doing $100K/month, the brand equity argument has weight. For the merchant doing $1M+, the $174,000+ annual savings of a flat-fee rail buys a lot of brand-replacement marketing.
The non-custodial dimension nobody prices
The five percentage processors above are all custodial in some practical sense. Your funds land at the processor before they reach you. The processor can freeze, delay, or terminate at will.
A non-custodial rail eliminates that exposure. The settlement happens on-chain, directly to your wallet. There is no processor-side balance to freeze. No "your account has been placed under review for 90 days" email.
This is the dimension Stripe, BitPay, NOWPayments, CoinGate, and Coinbase Commerce do not price into their comparison tables, because it is the dimension they all lose on.
What to do this week
Pull your last 12 months of processor invoices. Sum the total fees. Divide by your gross monthly volume to get an effective rate. Compare to Plaitr's flat-fee equivalent at your volume tier.
If you are using Coinbase Commerce outside the US or Singapore, you have until March 31, 2026 to migrate. Do not wait.
If you are using BitPay at 2 percent, you are paying 2x what NOWPayments charges and 20x what Plaitr charges. The migration cost is one day of engineering time. The annual savings funds a hire.
Stripe Crypto is the safe brand-name choice. Safe is not the same as cheap. The 1.5 percent rate is roughly the worst pricing in this comparison once you cross $500K monthly volume. If brand equity at checkout matters to your business, pay the premium. If it does not, the math is one-sided.