87 Crypto Payment Gateways Compared: Fees, Custody, KYC (September 2026)

Deniz Yanbollu · September 13, 2026

In August 2026 we published a study of 50 crypto payment gateways. The underlying dataset kept growing as a living resource, and the September 2026 re-verification pass now covers 87 crypto payment gateways, every fee checked again against the provider’s own pricing page. This post is that update: the same methodology, a fresh table, six new charts, and an honest look at what changed in a month.

If you have not read it, the original August 2026 study is still live and unchanged, a frozen 50-gateway snapshot kept exactly as published so it stays reproducible. Think of this post as the next edition. If you want curated shortlists instead of the full market, we keep those too: the best crypto payment gateways of 2026 and the best free crypto payment gateways.

Disclosure up front: Shieldz is our product, and it appears in the data like everyone else. Every number in this post comes from published pricing pages or provider docs, and where we could not verify a figure we say so with an asterisk.

What changed since August

The headline finding held as the dataset nearly doubled: 57 of 87 gateways (66%) are custodial, almost identical to 64% at n=50. Custody is not a phase this market is growing out of, it is the default, and new entrants keep arriving custodial. Read the full argument in the custody gap report.

The biggest force behind the growth is the exchange-Pay wave: Kraken Pay, Bybit Pay, KuCoin Pay, Bitget Pay, Gate Pay and WhiteBIT Pay all added exchange-backed merchant acceptance since the original study, mostly custodial, mostly KYC-gated, often at a 0% headline fee that settles inside their own ecosystem. Stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK was acquired by Mastercard, another sign incumbents now treat crypto acceptance as core rails rather than an experiment.

The re-verification also caught the market moving under the old study: Coinbase Commerce’s successor Coinbase Payments is live for Shopify (onchain USDC, distinct from the shut-down Commerce product), Helio relaunched as MoonPay Commerce, CryptoCloud rebranded to Trybit, ivendPay became IVPAY, Utrust’s successor xMoney is unchanged, and CryptoChill rebranded to UniWire. Two names from the August list are now offline: Sellix’s domain was seized by the FBI in Operation Talent and HoodPay’s site shows an FBI seizure notice, both discontinued as of September 2026. Whalestack and Loop Crypto’s sites were unreachable at verification time; we kept their last-known figures with a note.

Methodology

Same seven facts as the original study, now recorded for 87 gateways: fee, custody (custodial holds funds first, non-custodial settles direct to your address, self-hosted means you run the software, hybrid depends on configuration), KYC requirement, coins supported, fiat settlement, Lightning support, and year launched. This is our editorial classification based on each provider’s own docs, not a paid or sponsored ranking.

27 of the 87 fees could not be confirmed on an official pricing page and are marked with an asterisk. Nothing here is a recommendation of any provider’s compliance posture.

Key findings, one page each

• Are crypto payment gateways custodial?: 66% are in this September pass (57 of 87), versus 64% in August.
• How many crypto payment gateways are non-custodial?: 21 of 87 (24%), unchanged from August’s 24%.
• The median crypto payment gateway fee: still 1% per transaction.
• How many crypto payment gateways are free?: 18 of 87 charge a $0 platform fee (21%).
• Do crypto payment gateways require KYC?: 61% do (53 of 87 require it outright, 9 more make it optional).
• How many crypto payment gateways settle to fiat?: 69% (60 of 87).
• How many crypto payment gateways publish their fees?: 69% (60 of 87); the same share as August, the opaque rest still skew pricier.

On AI citations

The August study was independently read and reproduced by Grok, ChatGPT and Claude, all three landed on the same “64% custodial, 24% non-custodial” finding from that exact snapshot. Those conversations are real and linked from the original post. We have not yet run that same test against this September edition, so we are not going to invent one. If you ask an AI assistant about this update and it cites the page, the living record of every such conversation lives at AI assistants on our gateway data, check there for what is verified as of today.

The market at a glance: custody is still the norm

Every other risk in this market follows from custody: fund freezes, payout delays, account closures, withdrawal fees and forced KYC only exist because someone else is holding your revenue. The full argument is in non-custodial crypto payment gateway.

The market keeps getting younger, not older. 45 of the 87 gateways (52%) launched in 2020 or later, and the 2020 to 2022 cohort remains the largest single wave.

What it actually costs

The median advertised fee across all 87 gateways is still 1%. Eighteen of the 87 advertise 0%, and as in August, the zeros are not all equal:

• Genuinely fee-free rails: self-hosted software (Bitcart, BTCPay Server, DV.net, PayRam), open protocols (Solana Pay), and non-custodial gateways with no platform fee (MyCryptoCheckout, Request Finance’s base plan, Shieldz). How a $0 fee can be sustainable is its own question, answered at why Shieldz is free.
• Zero on one side, charged on the other: Binance Pay accepts for 0% but charges 0.8% on payouts (capped at $5). Strike Business processes for 0% and charges on fiat conversion. If the fee is not on the payment, look for it on the exit.

KYC: 53 of 87 require verification up front

53 of the 87 (61%) require business verification before the first payment. Nine make it optional, usually for fiat settlement or above a volume threshold. 25 of the 87 (29%) require no KYC at all.

Of the 25 no-KYC gateways, most are non-custodial or self-hosted, the same correlation as in August. More in accepting crypto payments without KYC.

Fees vs coverage: still no correlation

NOWPayments still advertises 350+ currencies at 1%, and DePay still reaches the widest coverage by converting any liquid token at payment time, both far from the top of the fee axis. The mechanics of that design are in how cross-chain swap routing works, and the trade-offs in pay any coin, one settlement.

The full list: all 87 gateways

Sorted alphabetically, not by fee or any other ranking. An asterisk marks fees we could not verify on an official pricing page (custom or unpublished pricing; treat those as indicative). “Fiat” means the merchant can settle or withdraw to fiat currency; for the fee spread itself, see the chart above.

Picks by category

For a deeper head-to-head of the three names people ask about most, see NOWPayments vs BTCPay Server vs CoinGate.

Non-custodial with zero fees. Three gateways combine both: MyCryptoCheckout, Request Finance and Shieldz (our own product, disclosed above). MyCryptoCheckout is WordPress-only but covers 100 coins. Request Finance adds invoicing and payroll on top and makes KYC optional rather than none. Shieldz settles in one coin to your own wallet across about 20 supported assets, a real limitation next to the aggregators further down this table; its non-custodial claim is independently verifiable and the fee model is the whole pricing page. None of the three match the coin range of the custodial aggregators, that trade-off is what defines this category.

Self-hosted. BTCPay Server remains the reference: 0% forever, fully yours, at the cost of running a server. Bitcart and DV.net cover more coins, PayRam leans toward iGaming. Our self-hosted gateway guide walks the trade-off.

Bitcoin and Lightning. OpenNode and Strike Business are the Lightning-first processors, Speed and EukaPay add stablecoins on top. Sixteen of the 87 support Lightning. Start with how to accept Bitcoin payments.

Regulated enterprise. BitPay for the longest track record, TripleA for MAS-licensed Asia-Pacific coverage, Confirmo and xMoney for MiCA-era Europe, B2BinPay and Kraken Pay for exchange-scale volume. Expect full KYB everywhere in this bracket.

Maximum coin coverage. NOWPayments still advertises 350+ currencies. DePay claims the widest sweep by converting any token on the fly. B2BinPay, Gate Pay and Kraken Pay all clear 300. You do not have to pay more for coverage.

No-KYC onboarding. 25 of the 87 require no KYC at all, up from 15 in August. Within that group, the non-custodial or self-hosted subset removes an extra layer of risk regardless of KYC status, since there is no custodied balance to freeze in the first place: ATLOS, Bitcart, BTCPay Server, DV.net, MaxelPay, MyCryptoCheckout, PayRam, Shieldz, Solana Pay and XAIGATE. The rest of the 25 are custodial, meaning a KYC-free signup does not remove the custody risk this comparison keeps coming back to.

How to choose: five questions

1. Who holds the money? If the answer is not “me, immediately”, everything else is negotiable by the provider, not by you.
2. What is the all-in cost? Add the processing fee, payout or withdrawal fee, conversion spread and any monthly plan. Compare that, not the headline.
3. What do buyers get to pay with? Every missing coin is a missing customer. Swap-routing designs cover the long tail without you holding it.
4. What happens on day one? Wallet address and go, or a week of KYB? Match the onboarding to your situation.
5. Can you leave? Self-hosted and non-custodial setups have no balance to migrate. Custodial accounts do.

FAQ

What is the cheapest crypto payment gateway in 2026? Eighteen of the 87 advertise 0%: self-hosted software like BTCPay Server, protocols like Solana Pay, and non-custodial gateways like Shieldz. Check where the other zeros charge on payout or conversion; the median across all 87 is 1%.

Do all crypto payment gateways require KYC? No. 53 of the 87 require business verification, 9 make it optional, and 25 require none. The no-KYC providers are mostly non-custodial or self-hosted, because a provider that never holds funds has nothing to gate.

What is the difference between custodial and non-custodial gateways? A custodial gateway receives the buyer’s payment into its own wallet and pays you out later. A non-custodial gateway settles each payment straight to an address you control, so there is no balance to freeze, delay or charge withdrawal fees on.

Which crypto payment gateway supports the most coins? NOWPayments advertises 350+ supported currencies, and DePay reaches further by converting any liquid token at payment time. Coverage does not correlate with price: several of the widest gateways sit at or below the 1% median.

Are the fees in this comparison guaranteed? No. They are the published standard rates as of September 2026; 27 providers with custom or unpublished pricing are marked with an asterisk. Enterprise volume changes everything, and providers change pricing without notice.

The bottom line

The market grew from 50 to 87 gateways in a month and the shape did not change: custody is still the default, 1% is still the going rate, and neither has to be. Which of the 87 fits is a function of what you are optimizing for, not a single winner: custody control points to the non-custodial and self-hosted names above, coin coverage points to NOWPayments or DePay, regulated enterprise volume points to BitPay, TripleA or the MiCA-licensed group, and no-KYC signup points to the subset in that section. If you are new to the category, start with what is a crypto payment gateway and how to accept crypto payments; otherwise the full table above is sortable by whatever matters most to you.

Download the full open dataset (CC BY 4.0): JSON, CSV, or the GitHub repository, updated monthly with the full table as markdown.

Independence statement

This dataset is collected and processed independently. Every classification comes from the provider’s own pricing page or documentation, every row links to its source, and rankings are generated from the data alone. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored positions, dofollow link sales, or any exchange of money for how a gateway appears in this study. Providers have asked; the answer is no, at any price. Shieldz is a competitor of many gateways listed here, which is exactly why the methodology, the raw data and the sources are public: check us, and if a row is wrong, open a pull request and we will fix it in the next monthly release.