The Plaidly blog
Plain-English guides and engineering notes on stablecoin payments — settlement, gas abstraction, network choice, and payouts across twenty chains.
Coinbase Commerce alternatives: 6 ways to accept crypto in 2026
A merchant's comparison of Coinbase Commerce alternatives — BitPay, NOWPayments, BTCPay Server, Stripe's crypto pay-ins and Plaidly — by custody, coins, chains, fees and integration effort.
GuideHow to accept stablecoin payments: a step-by-step guide
How to accept stablecoin payments as a business — choosing coins and chains, custody, hosted checkout vs API, webhooks and reconciliation — plus what your customers see when they pay in stablecoins.
ComparisonsStripe crypto payments: what it supports, and where it stops
What Stripe's crypto payments actually cover — USDC pay-ins settled to fiat, stablecoin payouts, Bridge — the fees and limits, and when a stablecoin-native payment API is the better fit.
AgenticPay-per-use APIs for AI agents: billing per request
How to build a pay per use API for AI agents — machine-to-machine stablecoin billing that charges and settles per request, without cards or invoices.
AgenticAI agent payments in practice: six agents bought VPSes
An engineering case study in AI agent payments: six autonomous agents rented VPSes and settled real USDC on Solana devnet through the Plaidly API.
AgenticMCP payments: how to monetize an MCP server, per tool call
MCP has no payment primitive. A practical guide to MCP payments — three ways to charge for MCP tool calls, with x402 and payment sessions on testnet rails.
FundamentalsWhat are agentic payments? A plain-English guide
What are agentic payments? How AI agents pay for things with virtual cards, crypto wallets and x402 — what's real today, what's hype, and who's liable.
Agenticx402 protocol explained: how HTTP 402 pays AI agents
How the x402 protocol works, request by request: the 402 challenge, signed payment payloads, the facilitator's verify/settle role, and where it fits vs AP2.
ProductStablecoin payouts for marketplaces, creators and AI agents
What a stablecoin payout is and how it works: paying out sellers, creators and AI agents in USDC or USDT — fast, global, programmatic, and cheap enough to skip batching.
GuideMulti-chain payments: choosing the right network for your customers
Twenty chains sound great until you have to pick. This guide breaks down how to think about speed, fees, liquidity and customer habits so you offer the right networks at checkout.
EngineeringHow gas-abstracted crypto checkout works
Asking customers to hold a separate gas token is the biggest reason crypto checkouts fail. Gas abstraction removes that friction. Here's what it is and how it works under the hood.
GuideAccepting USDC vs USDT vs PYUSD: a merchant's guide
USDC, USDT and PYUSD are all dollar stablecoins, but they differ in issuer, chain coverage, liquidity and how you settle them. Here's how to choose what to accept and what to settle in.
FundamentalsWhat are stablecoin payments, and why do they settle in seconds?
A plain-English guide to how stablecoin payments clear on-chain, why merchants skip chargebacks, and what it takes to accept them across twenty chains with a single API.