The lineup
The crypto payment processor space sorted itself into roughly six serious options over the past few years. Below is a quick description of each, followed by a comparison table and a per-use-case recommendation.
1 · BitPay
The incumbent. Around since 2011. Fully custodial. Mandatory KYC since 2021 — they require business documents and beneficial-ownership disclosure before you can accept payments. Charges 1% per transaction with a $1 minimum (effectively 100% on small payments). Supports BTC, LTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, XRP, BCH, DOGE, MATIC, BUSD, GUSD, DAI. Settlement: same-day in fiat or crypto. Refunds: built in but slow.
2 · Coinbase Commerce
Backed by Coinbase. Fully custodial in their hosted offering ("Coinbase Commerce Charges"). Mandatory KYC. Charges 1% per transaction. Settlement to Coinbase account: instant; bank: 1–3 business days. Has a self-custody mode (you provide the wallet) which is 0% commission but limited to a few chains and missing features. Refunds: manual through the dashboard.
3 · NOWPayments
Custodial but optionally no-KYC at signup. Charges 0.5% per transaction. Settlement to merchant wallet: typically within hours, sometimes longer during "review." Supports 300+ cryptocurrencies (impressive). The catch: they reserve the right to demand KYC at any point, particularly above the $10,000 lifetime threshold. Withdrawal limits apply to unverified accounts.
4 · Plisio
Custodial. No-KYC at signup. Charges 0.5%. Supports 18+ cryptocurrencies. Lithuania-based. Similar profile to NOWPayments — works well at low volume, may demand KYC as you scale. Settlement: within hours to merchant wallet.
5 · BTCPay Server
Self-hosted, open-source, non-custodial. You run the server. 0% fees (you pay only the infrastructure cost: a $5/month VPS is plenty). Mandatory if you want full sovereignty over your payment infrastructure. Supports BTC + Lightning Network natively, plus altcoins via plugins. Real work to set up — installing, configuring, securing, monitoring, backing up. Recommended for: merchants with technical staff or strong opinions about self-hosting.
6 · Sovrn
Hosted, non-custodial. 0.5% flat per transaction. No KYC, ever. Currently supports Optimism (ETH/USDC/USDT), Bitcoin, and Solana (SOL/USDC/USDT). The architectural difference from NOWPayments/Plisio: Sovrn never accepts custody of merchant funds. EVM payments hit a per-merchant on-chain splitter contract that atomically forwards to the merchant + Sovrn's fee wallet. Bitcoin and Solana payments are detected by Sovrn's watcher and swept to the merchant within ~30 seconds, but the master key for those wallets controls only the brief receive window — never an accumulated balance.
Side-by-side comparison table
| Feature | BitPay | Coinbase | NOWPayments | Plisio | BTCPay | Sovrn |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fee per tx | 1% | 1% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0% | 0.5% |
| Custody model | Custodial | Custodial | Custodial | Custodial | Self-hosted non-custodial | Hosted non-custodial |
| KYC required | Yes | Yes | Conditional | Conditional | No (you control) | No, ever |
| Setup time | 1–3 days | 1 day | ~30 min | ~30 min | 2–4 hours | 60 seconds |
| Coins supported | ~12 | ~10 | 300+ | 18+ | BTC + LN + plugins | 250+ (via swap) |
| Can freeze your account? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Settlement model | Batch, same-day | Batch, same-day | Realtime to wallet | Realtime to wallet | On-chain | On-chain atomic |
| Self-host | No | No | No | No | Yes | Coming Q3 2026 |
| Refund flow | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in | Manual | Manual (one-click) |
| Plugin: WooCommerce | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (official) | Coming |
| Plugin: Shopify | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Coming |
Which one should you actually pick
If you have business documents and don't mind KYC
Coinbase Commerce is the path of least resistance. Their integration is mature, their dashboards are polished, and their fiat off-ramps are battle-tested. 1% is high relative to alternatives, but if you don't care about that, the operational simplicity is real.
If you want low-volume, want to test the waters with crypto, and aren't going to scale past $10k/month
NOWPayments or Plisio. The "conditional KYC" is real but unlikely to bite at low volume. The 300-coin support on NOWPayments is genuinely useful if your customers want to pay in obscure altcoins. Don't build your business on this; treat it as a testing ground.
If you have technical staff and want full sovereignty
BTCPay Server. Run it on a $5/month VPS or your own hardware. Costs you nothing per transaction. Lightning Network support is genuinely excellent. The trade-off is operational: you're responsible for uptime, security, backups, software updates. If your team can handle that, you've eliminated processor risk entirely.
If you want non-custodial without operating infrastructure
Sovrn. This is the gap in the market. Until Sovrn shipped, your options were custodial-hosted or non-custodial-self-hosted. Sovrn is non-custodial-hosted: we generate the splitter contracts and run the watcher, but we never touch your funds. 0.5% is the price of not running your own server.
If you're an established e-commerce merchant who just wants to "add crypto as a payment option" and has a compliance department: Coinbase Commerce is the answer and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Sovrn shines when traditional rails are refusing to serve you, not when they're already serving you fine.
What about the older processors that aren't on this list
Many of the names that used to show up in crypto-payment-processor articles have either died, exited the market, or become subsidiaries of others. CoinGate still exists; it's roughly equivalent to NOWPayments in custody model and now offers a no-KYC tier with lower limits. OpenNode is Bitcoin/Lightning-focused, custodial. SpicePay and Mollie's crypto module are EU-focused.
The 2024–2026 consolidation in the space has been brutal. Many of the "alternatives" that ranked #1 on SEO articles from 2021 have since shut down or pivoted away from merchant processing. The list above reflects what's actually operational in mid-2026.
Common decision mistakes
- Optimizing for breadth of coin support when 95% of your customers will pay in BTC, ETH, USDC, or SOL. NOWPayments' 300-coin support sounds amazing in marketing copy. In practice, you'll process ~20 coins and 80% of volume will be in 4 of them.
- Picking the lowest fee without checking the custody model. A 0.5% processor that freezes your $50k withdrawal pending review is much more expensive than a 1% processor that pays out reliably. The fee matters less than the freeze risk.
- Trying to self-host BTCPay without the engineering bandwidth. BTCPay is wonderful when it works and a part-time job when it breaks. Hosted non-custodial (Sovrn) exists for a reason.
- Not testing the refund flow before going live. Every processor handles refunds differently. The first time a customer asks for a refund is not the time to learn how it works.
The 30-second version
- Coinbase Commerce if you have docs and don't mind 1%
- BTCPay Server if you have engineers and want 0%
- Sovrn if you want non-custodial without running servers, at 0.5%
- NOWPayments / Plisio if you're testing crypto at low volume and accept conditional KYC
- BitPay if you're already on it and migrating sounds like work
The hosted non-custodial gap is filled. 0.5% flat. No KYC, ever, by architecture. Live in 60 seconds.