Coinbase Commerce is many merchants’ first crypto gateway — the brand is familiar and setup is quick. It’s also where many merchants first hit a wall: since its move to the Onchain Payment Protocol, Commerce has centered on USDC settlement over a narrow set of EVM networks, native Bitcoin acceptance was cut back for self-custody merchants, and the product is tied to holding a Coinbase account. If any of that is why you’re here, this is a practical map of the alternatives.
One honest note up front: Plaidly is our product, and it appears last on the list with the same scrutiny as everyone else. Vendor claims below reflect public information as of mid-2026 — always confirm fees and coverage against each provider’s current docs.
What you’re actually choosing between
Crypto gateways differ on five axes, and most disappointment comes from not naming which axis you care about:
- Custody — does the provider hold funds and settle to you, or do payments land in wallets you control?
- Coins and chains — one stablecoin on a few networks, or the long tail?
- Settlement — keep crypto, auto-convert to fiat, or settle to a bank account?
- Compliance surface — no-KYC tools push obligations onto you; full-KYB processors absorb more of it.
- Integration depth — a hosted button you paste in, or an API you build a product on.
BitPay — the fiat-settlement veteran
The oldest name in the space, and still the default answer when the requirement is “customers pay crypto, my finance team sees dollars in the bank.” BitPay handles BTC, ETH, major stablecoins and a set of popular coins, settles to fiat in many markets, and carries a processor-grade compliance posture — with the corresponding KYB onboarding and a ~1–2% fee. Choose it when bank-account settlement and an established counterparty matter more than chain breadth or API flexibility.
NOWPayments — the long-tail coin list
If your customers genuinely pay in many different assets, NOWPayments supports hundreds of coins with auto-conversion between them, light onboarding, and plugins for the usual e-commerce platforms, at fees starting around 0.5%. The trade-off is the inverse of BitPay: a lighter-weight counterparty and a product oriented at coin coverage rather than settlement guarantees or enterprise process.
BTCPay Server — self-hosted, self-custody, free
The purist option. BTCPay is open-source software you run yourself: no fees, no KYC, no intermediary — payments land directly in your wallets. It is Bitcoin-first (altcoins and stablecoins via plugins), and the honest cost is operational: you host it, upgrade it, back it up and monitor it. Ideal for crypto-native teams that want no third party in the money path and are willing to run infrastructure for that.
Stripe crypto pay-ins — crypto in, fiat out
Stripe’s “pay with crypto” takes USDC on a handful of networks and settles it as fiat into your normal Stripe balance for a ~1.5% fee. If you already run on Stripe and just want a crypto option in an otherwise fiat business, it’s the lowest-friction path — but it is deliberately not crypto-native: availability is geographically limited, coin and chain coverage is thin, and you never touch stablecoins yourself. We compare it in depth in Stripe crypto payments: what it supports and where it stops.
Coinbase Commerce itself — when to stay
Fairness demands the reverse case: if your customers hold USDC on Base, you’re comfortable inside the Coinbase ecosystem, and 1% for a familiar hosted checkout is fine, Commerce remains a reasonable default. The alternatives exist for when you outgrow one of those three conditions.
Plaidly — stablecoin-native, built for APIs and agents
Plaidly is a stablecoin payment API: one payment session fans out to per-chain addresses, we watch the networks, apply per-chain finality rules, and deliver a signed webhook when funds are final — with payouts, gas-abstracted checkout and one ledger behind the same API. Two things make it different from everything above. First, it treats multi-chain stablecoins as the product, not an add-on to BTC or to fiat. Second, it’s built for programmatic buyers as well as human ones — the same sessions serve a hosted checkout, a Telegram Mini App, or an AI agent paying over x402.
Equal scrutiny applied: Plaidly is the youngest option here. Ethereum and Solana rails are live in sandbox today with more networks staged behind them — you can integrate and run the full flow end-to-end on test rails now, and you should weigh that maturity honestly against the incumbents above. Start at docs.plaidly.io or see the supported chains.
The short version
| Provider | Custody | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase Commerce | Coinbase account | USDC-on-Base merchants in the Coinbase ecosystem | Narrow coins/chains, account dependency |
| BitPay | Processor, fiat settlement | ”Crypto in, dollars in the bank” | KYB onboarding, less API flexibility |
| NOWPayments | Provider wallets, auto-convert | Long-tail coin coverage | Lighter counterparty guarantees |
| BTCPay Server | Fully yours | Crypto-native, no-third-party teams | You run and secure everything |
| Stripe crypto | Stripe, fiat settlement | Existing Stripe businesses adding a crypto option | Not crypto-native; limited geography and coins |
| Plaidly | Gateway, stablecoin ledger | Stablecoin-first APIs, checkout and agent payments | Youngest platform; mainnet rollout staged |
Pick by the axis that hurts: settlement posture, custody, coin coverage, compliance, or API depth. Every provider on this list is the best answer to exactly one of those questions.
Whichever direction you go, the integration pattern is converging: create a payment, let the customer pay on-chain, act on a webhook. Our step-by-step guide to accepting stablecoin payments walks that pattern end to end, gateway-agnostic.