There are an increasing number of providers enabling merchants to accept stablecoin payments directly at payout. Although the market is still nascent, there are already a large number of solutions for merchants to choose between. Here, we take a closer look at some of the options currently available.
As stablecoin infrastructure and solutions continue to develop, these types of digital currencies are seeing increasing levels of adoption – both amongst corporate clients and consumers. As a result, many merchants are beginning to consider accepting stablecoins at their checkouts, especially given they promise faster settlement and lower transaction costs in some cases.
A large number of providers are offering solutions that enable merchants across all verticals to begin accepting stablecoin payments through APIs, hosted checkout pages or ecommerce plugins – including Triple-A, BitPay, BitPace, Stripe, CoinsPaid and FOMO Pay.
Across these, there are a number of differences for merchants to consider, such as how they want to implement the solution at their checkout. While some providers such as Stripe enable businesses to choose from a variety of user interfaces, from embedded white-label payment forms to redirects to hosted pages, others have varying levels of customisation available.
Options for how merchants are able to receive funds once a stablecoin payment has been completed also vary between providers and platforms. Triple-A and Stripe advertise the option to settle in local fiat currencies for businesses that do not want to handle stablecoins at all. Other providers, including Bitpay and CoinGate, can offer options to receive funds in fiat, crypto or stablecoins.
Stablecoin payment acceptance generally enables merchants to accept payments from people anywhere in the world, although optionality is also limited by where the merchant is based. While the acceptance solutions from the likes of Stripe and Bitpay are currently only available to businesses in North America, FOMO Pay offers its solutions in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on businesses in Singapore. Other direct-to-merchant provider availability also varies country-by-country worldwide.
Other providers, such as BVNK and Coinbase, target their respective solutions at payment service providers, marketplaces and large enterprises. For example, Coinbase Payment Acceptance enables these to offer stablecoin checkout to their respective customers. Earlier this month, Fireblocks launched its own stablecoin acceptance infrastructure for PSPs and fintechs. This specific offering provides the underlying infrastructure required to accept stablecoin payments, although this does not involve the flow of funds and global coverage depends solely on the licences of each PSP that uses it.
