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Every gateway advertises one number and charges several. The only way to compare honestly is to price a real basket through the whole stack — processing fee, fixed fees, conversion spreads, payout charges — and add the costs that never appear on pricing pages: onboarding delay, freeze risk, and chargeback exposure on the rails you came from. Let's do the arithmetic properly.
The five layers of the stack#
- Processing fee — the advertised percentage: 0.5% (NOWPayments), 1% (CoinGate, Coinbase Commerce, CryptoPayIn), 1–2% (BitPay tiers).
- Fixed per-invoice fees — BitPay's $0.25 is the famous one. Regressive by design: the smaller your basket, the bigger the bite.
- Conversion fees & spreads — auto-convert to stablecoin or fiat and you pay again: typically +0.5% plus an exchange spread of 0.5–1% hidden in the rate. This is where “cheap” gateways earn their real margin.
- Payout fees — some platforms charge withdrawal fees or add margin on network costs. The fair model: you pay the blockchain, nothing more.
- FX pricing spread — if you price in EUR and the gateway's EUR→USD rate is 1% worse than mid-market, that is a fee wearing a costume. Demand rate-locking at a verified market rate.
Three real baskets, computed#
Published rates as of July 2026, merchant keeps settlement in crypto (no fiat off-ramp), typical configurations:
| Scenario | BitPay (1% tier + $0.25) | NOWPayments (0.5% + 0.5% conv.) | CoinGate (1%) | CryptoPayIn (1% flat) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $12 digital good | $0.37 — 3.08% | $0.12–0.18 — 1.0–1.5%* | $0.12 — 1% | $0.12 — 1% |
| $90 subscription | $1.15 — 1.28% | $0.90–1.35 — 1.0–1.5%* | $0.90 — 1% | $0.90 — 1% |
| $1,400 B2B invoice | $14.25–28.25 — 1.02–2.02% | $14–21 — 1.0–1.5%* | $14 — 1% | $14 — 1% |
*The NOWPayments range depends on whether auto-conversion is on; spreads on the conversion rate are extra and opaque by nature. All rates: verify current pricing with each provider.
Three lessons fall out of the table. Fixed fees murder small baskets (BitPay's $0.25 triples the cost of a $12 sale). Conversion stacks erase headline discounts (0.5% + 0.5% + spread ≥ 1% flat, every time). And at identical 1% rates, the differences move to the non-fee columns: KYC, freeze mechanics, spreads and coin coverage — which is exactly the comparison our fees page and CoinGate/NOWPayments pages make.
The fees that don't look like fees#
- Onboarding delay. Two weeks of KYB review before your first sale is two weeks of revenue at 100% fee. A no-KYC account prices this layer at zero seconds.
- Freeze risk. A frozen balance is a 100% fee with an uncertain refund date. Any custodian with a compliance department carries this tail risk; architecture without freeze mechanics doesn't.
- Chargebacks (your old rail). If crypto replaces card volume, every avoided dispute saves the $15–$100 fee plus the merchandise. For fraud-heavy verticals this single line outweighs every processing fee in this article.
- Integration hours. One endpoint and one webhook is an afternoon. Anything needing an SDK safari and three sandbox tiers is payroll.
How to read any pricing page (a checklist)#
- Is there a fixed per-invoice component? (Kills small baskets.)
- Is “conversion” priced separately from “processing”? What spread rides on the rate?
- Do payouts cost more than the network fee?
- What triggers KYC, and can payouts pause while you comply?
- Is the FX rate at invoice time verifiable and locked?
- Can you compute your all-in cost in your head? If not, that is itself the answer.
Our answer to the checklist is deliberately boring: 1% flat, nothing else, network fees at cost, rates locked and independently verified, no KYC at any volume. Boring is what a fee schedule should be.
