93 Crypto Payment Gateways Compared: Fees, Custody, KYC (October 2026)

Deniz Yanbollu · October 7, 2026

This is the October 2026 edition of our monthly crypto payment gateway comparison. The living dataset now covers 93 crypto payment gateways, up from 87 in September. Every existing row was checked again: each site and pricing page was loaded, and status changes were confirmed against news and provider announcements. Same methodology, a fresh table, six regenerated charts, and the month’s changes listed in one place.

Earlier editions stay live and unchanged: the original August 2026 study of 50 gateways and the September 2026 edition with 87. If you want curated shortlists instead of the whole market, see 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 September

The headline barely moved: 60 of 93 gateways (65%) are custodial, against 66% in September and 64% in the August study. Non-custodial gateways are 23 of 93 (25%). Three editions in, custody is clearly the market’s default and not a phase. The full argument is in the custody gap report.

PayPal’s crypto fee went up. PayPal’s Pay with Crypto, which lets US merchants take 100+ coins converted to USD or PYUSD at checkout, launched at a promotional 0.99%. PayPal’s own merchant fee page shows the promo ended July 31, 2026 and the rate is 1.5% from August 1. It enters the table this month at 1.5%.

A non-custodial processor went dark. Swiss Bitcoin Pay, the Lightning point-of-sale provider behind much of Lugano’s bitcoin acceptance, took its servers offline on September 14 after a suspected breach of its internal systems. Emails, bitcoin addresses, IBANs and transaction histories may have been exposed. The company says merchant funds are safe and owed balances will be returned, but the small balances it holds briefly while batching Lightning payments on-chain are frozen until it reopens, and no date has been given. That is a useful reminder that “non-custodial” is a spectrum: even a design that settles to your wallet can hold something for a day.

One acquisition, two more dark sites. Loop Crypto, the crypto autopay provider in the August study, was acquired by Lead Bank in December 2025, and its domain no longer resolves. Whalestack has been unreachable for a second month in a row. XAIGATE’s site refused connections at our October check, and Salamantex’s site is serving an invalid TLS certificate. We keep all four rows with their last-known figures and a status note, just as we kept Sellix and HoodPay, both still offline behind FBI seizure notices.

Six new gateways:

• PayPal Pay with Crypto: 1.5%, custodial, KYC required, fiat settlement in USD or PYUSD.
• CCPayment: FinCEN-registered MSB with 900+ tokens on 100+ chains. Fees start at 0.2% for $10M+ monthly volume, plus 0.6% for auto-swap and 0.5% for auto-withdrawal. Lower tiers are unpublished, so it carries an asterisk.
• Heleket: launched in 2025, from 0.4%, custodial, email-only signup with no corporate documents.
• Paydify: Bitget Wallet’s merchant partner. Non-custodial, settling USDC or USDT directly to the merchant wallet. No transaction fees “for a limited time”.
• Swiss Bitcoin Pay: 1% kept in bitcoin, 1.5% converted to CHF or EUR, no KYC, Lightning-first. Currently offline, see above.
• LNbits: free, open-source, self-hosted Lightning accounts with point-of-sale, checkout and paywall extensions.

Watching, not yet listed. Polygon launched Crypto Checkout on October 1: any wallet, chain or token goes in, and the merchant’s chosen stablecoin comes out. Its page quotes network costs (under $0.002) but no merchant fee or custody model, so it stays out of the table until those are published. Incumbents also kept moving deeper into stablecoins: Coinbase and Citi announced US merchant stablecoin acceptance settled in dollars, and Mastercard closed its BVNK acquisition. These are enterprise rails rather than gateways a small merchant can sign up for, so they do not change the table.

Methodology

Same seven facts as the earlier editions, now recorded for 93 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.

28 of the 93 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 at a glance

• Are crypto payment gateways custodial? 65% are this month (60 of 93), against 66% in September and 64% in August.
• How many are non-custodial? 23 of 93 (25%).
• The median gateway fee is still 1% per transaction.
• How many are free? 20 of 93 charge a $0 platform fee (22%).
• Do they require KYC? 59% do (55 of 93 require it outright, 10 more make it optional).
• How many settle to fiat? 67% (62 of 93).
• How many publish their fees? 70% (65 of 93).

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. 51 of the 93 gateways (55%) launched in 2020 or later. Three of this month’s six additions (PayPal Pay with Crypto, Heleket and Paydify) launched in 2025.

What it actually costs

The median advertised fee across all 93 gateways is still 1%. Twenty of the 93 advertise 0%, and the zeros are still not all equal:

• Genuinely fee-free rails: self-hosted software (Bitcart, BTCPay Server, DV.net, LNbits, 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 for now: Paydify’s 0% is explicitly “for a limited time”. PayPal’s history this year shows how that usually ends: 0.99% at launch, 1.5% a year later.
• 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. CCPayment’s headline 0.2% sits next to 0.6% for auto-swap and 0.5% for auto-withdrawal. If the fee is not on the payment, look for it on the exit.

KYC: 55 of 93 require verification up front

55 of the 93 (59%) require business verification before the first payment. Ten make it optional, usually for fiat settlement or above a volume threshold. 28 of the 93 (30%) require no KYC at all.

Of the 28 no-KYC gateways, 20 are non-custodial or self-hosted, the same correlation as in every edition so far. More in accepting crypto payments without KYC.

Fees vs coverage: still no correlation

This month’s widest new entrant, CCPayment at 900+ tokens, sits near the bottom of the fee axis, next to NOWPayments (350+ at 1%) and DePay (any liquid token at 1.5%). The mechanics of converting at payment time are in how cross-chain swap routing works, and the trade-offs in pay any coin, one settlement.

The full list: all 93 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, so treat those as indicative). “Fiat” means the merchant can settle or withdraw to fiat currency.

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. MyCryptoCheckout, Request Finance and Shieldz (our own product, disclosed above) combine both, and Paydify joins them for as long as its limited-time 0% lasts. MyCryptoCheckout is WordPress-only but covers 100 coins. Request Finance adds invoicing and payroll on top and makes KYC optional rather than none. Paydify settles stablecoins only. 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.

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

Bitcoin and Lightning. OpenNode and Strike Business are the Lightning-first processors, Speed and EukaPay add stablecoins on top, and LNbits does it self-hosted. Eighteen of the 93 support Lightning. Swiss Bitcoin Pay would belong here, but it is offline until further notice. Start with how to accept Bitcoin payments.

Regulated enterprise. BitPay has the longest track record, TripleA covers Asia-Pacific under an MAS licence, and Confirmo and xMoney cover MiCA-era Europe. B2BinPay and Kraken Pay handle exchange-scale volume. PayPal Pay with Crypto is the obvious option for US merchants already on PayPal, at 1.5%. Expect full KYB everywhere in this bracket.

Maximum coin coverage. CCPayment now claims 900+ tokens and DePay converts any token on the fly. NOWPayments still advertises 350+, and B2BinPay, Gate Pay and Kraken Pay all clear 300. You do not have to pay more for coverage.

No-KYC onboarding. 28 of the 93 require no KYC at all. The 20 of them that are non-custodial or self-hosted also have no custodied balance to freeze: ATLOS, Bitcart, Blockonomics, BlockBee, BTCPay Server, DePay, DV.net, GoUrl, LNbits, MaxelPay, MyCryptoCheckout, PayGate.to, Paymento, PayRam, PYMSTR, Shieldz, Solana Pay, Swiss Bitcoin Pay (offline), XAIGATE (unreachable this month) and Zaprite. The other eight are custodial, including newcomer Heleket, so a KYC-free signup there 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”, the provider controls everything else, not you.
2. What is the all-in cost? Add the processing fee, payout or withdrawal fee, conversion spread and any monthly plan, and compare that total rather than the headline rate. Check whether a 0% is a promotion.
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? You might start with just a wallet address, or face a week of KYB. Pick the onboarding that fits your situation.
5. Can you leave, and what if they go down? This month had a breach, an acquisition and two dark sites. Self-hosted and non-custodial setups have no balance to migrate. Custodial accounts do.

FAQ

What is the cheapest crypto payment gateway in October 2026? Twenty of the 93 advertise 0%: self-hosted software like BTCPay Server and LNbits, protocols like Solana Pay, and non-custodial gateways like Shieldz. Check where the other zeros charge on payout or conversion, and whether the 0% is a limited-time promotion. The median across all 93 is 1%.

How much does PayPal charge for crypto payments? 1.5% per transaction since August 1, 2026, according to PayPal’s merchant fee page. The 0.99% launch promotion ended on July 31, 2026.

Do all crypto payment gateways require KYC? No. 55 of the 93 require business verification, 10 make it optional, and 28 require none. Most of the no-KYC providers are 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.

Are the fees in this comparison guaranteed? No. They are the published standard rates as of October 7, 2026. The 28 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 87 to 93 gateways and the shape held for a third month: custody is the default and 1% is the going rate, though neither is necessary. The month’s real news was about durability rather than price. A payment processor can raise its fee once a promotion ends, go offline after a breach, or be acquired and disappear. Which of the 93 fits depends on what you are optimizing for. For custody control, look at the non-custodial and self-hosted names above. For coin coverage, look at CCPayment, DePay or NOWPayments. For regulated enterprise volume, look at BitPay, TripleA, PayPal or the MiCA-licensed group. For no-KYC signup, look at 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.

Download the full open dataset (CC BY 4.0, v1.4.0): JSON, CSV, or the GitHub repository, updated monthly with the full table as markdown.

Independence statement

We collect and process this dataset independently. Every classification comes from the provider’s own pricing page or documentation, every row links to its source, and the order comes 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, and the answer is no at any price. Shieldz competes with many of the gateways listed here, which is exactly why the methodology, the raw data and the sources are public. Check our work, and if a row is wrong, open a pull request and we will fix it in the next monthly release.