Best cryptocurrency payment gateways – ecommerce with Bitcoin, Litecoin and others – 2020

There are many ways of accepting payments in your eshop. From standard direct bank transfer or PayPal (which we set up for free), through well established external gateways for all major cards (VISA, MASTERCARD etc.) like Stripe.com or 2checkout.com. But, as you are probably aware, there’s a whole new player in the field of electronic payments – cryptocurrencies. Offering benefits like – accept payments from literally anyone from anywhere in the world, your customers don’t have to have an account with a major bank or credit card, they don’t have to share personal information when paying and fees are low as there is no big corporate entity between you and your customer. Let’s see what are the best cryptocurrency payment gateway options if you want to accept payments in your store using the top cryptocurrencies – bitcoin, litecoin and more. 

Initial requirements – what you need to get started

1. You will need your own wallet and address to receive the chosen cryptocurrencies. A good guide on that is here. To understand how cryptocurrencies and blockchain works, read here and here.
2. Depending whether you want 0 transaction fees and don’t mind a slightly less user friendly setup, or you want more user friendly setup and convenience (more withdrawal options, nicer design) for a small fee (smaller than what you’d pay most payment gateways for fiat currencies), you can either choose a crypto payment processor with a small fee of 1% at the time of writing, like CoinGate, Blockonomics a 0% fee one like GoUrl – which work well and have been around for longer, but might not have all the bells and whistles of previously mentioned processors. (Note – with 0% we mean that the processor doesn’t take any fee. But you still pay the standard network transaction fee).
3. Install their plugin on your website, set it up and you’re good to go. We’ll take care of this for you :)

TLDR – Which cryptocurrency payment gateways should you choose?

Which ones should you choose? Depends on your preferences. All the payment processors below are solid and a good choice, but they offer different features which you may or may not need. We recommend reading their full list of features on their websites so you get a feel for them, then make a decision.  Our favourite you ask? Coinpayments.net – time tested, good reviews, setup and speed, low cost and pay directly to your wallet. Or GoUrl if you want highest anonymity, otherwise similar to Coinpayments, with less straight forward setup. And Utrust.com if you like good features and fancy design :).

Overview of cryptocurrency payment processors/gateways

Let’s look at 5 major players in cryptocurrency payments for WordPress:

Coinpayments.net – good features, lower 0.5% fee than usual 1%

Founded in 2013, CoinPayments is a global cryptocurrency payment processor with a reach of over 1,000,000 vendors across 182 countries. Benefits

• (optional) safe log-in using Trezor
• 0.5% transaction fee
• accept payments in 1000+ altcoins, and also bitcoin, litecoin, and XRP – Ripple too
• option to give visitors automatic discount if paying with a cryptocurrency (say 5% off standard price as an incentive to pay with crypto)
• secure communication – their emails use FlowCrypt encryption – so only you can read their content
• great payout options: 
  • To Balance: Received payments are stored in your CoinPayments wallet for later withdrawal at your leisure.
  • ASAP: Received payments are sent to the address you specify as soon as they are received and confirmed.
  • Nightly: Received payments are grouped together and sent daily (at approx. midnight EST GMT-0500). The main benefit of this option is it will save you coin TX fees.
  • To Balance + Convert: Received payments are converted to the selected coin and stored in your CoinPayments wallet. In some cases such as if the amount received is too large to convert at current market volumes, you may receive the original currency instead.
  • ASAP + Convert: Received payments are converted to the selected coin and sent to the address specified. In some cases such as if the amount received is too large to convert at current market volumes, you may receive the original currency instead in your CoinPayments wallet.

Disadvantages

• slightly confusing user interface in your dashboard – might not be clear to novice users (yeah, couldn’t find anything else…)

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GoUrl – one of the longest-running services with many integrations

These guys have been around for years (3000+ installs and higher number of ratings than others + very good ratings) Benefits:

• 0% transaction fee – you get the full price of your sales
• good reviews
• accept many coins: bitcoin, bitcoin cash, bitcoin sv, litecoin, dash, dogecoin, speedcoin and others
• white label – add your logo to the payment screen/widget
• integrations with some other WordPress plugins – donations, easy digital downloads, bbpress, wp commerce, memberships and more
• various options of payment types – per view, per membership, per product, per download
• anonymous – no need to provide ID or other AML / KYC verification
• payments go directly to your wallet address, which is safer than being kept on some company’s servers (that can be hacked and you can’t control that).

Disadvantages:

• missing popular coins like monero, dash, ethereum
• user interface is less user-friendly

See their DEMO here or read more on their website.

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Coingate

Benefits

• accept payments in many altcoins on top of standard cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin
• Free SEPA transfers and Bitcoin payouts

Fee – 1% Disadvantages

• AML / KYC in place – need to upload ID documents to use this service
• payments to you are held in Coingate’s wallet until you withdraw them, which add a security risk in case they are hacked. It is better if the payments go directly to your wallet, where you solely are responsible for it’s security.

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Coinbase Commerce – big name, easy interface.

UPDATE 13. august 2019 – Coinbase Commerce has added a statement in their FAQ section about fees, which was our main downside in the original review – no mention of fees. Now they say, that they don’t charge any fees, aside from the standard blockchain transaction fees, that are inherent and every gateway charges them.  So far so good! Benefits

• With 2FA verification, this gateway is also pretty secure – they do take security pretty seriously
• 0% fees
• integration with all major e-commerce systems like Woocommerce, Shopify
• probably the most regulated cryptocurrency company there is

Disadvantages

• US-based, US regulated,
• AML / KYC in place
• probably the most regulated cryptocurrency company there is (yep, this is a pro and a con, depending on your point of view)

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Utrust.com – newest addition

(in beta mode at the time of writing)

Benefits:

• UTRUST is the first payment solution in the world that brings together, on one solid platform, the advantages of cryptocurrency payments with a strong buyer and merchant protection mechanism.
• looks great – awesome design
• 1% payment fee, despite offering more than just payment processing
• integrated payment box for many currencies (all in one)

Disadvantages

• not sure yet – still in BETA mode, we don’t see a user account interface with all its options or standard registration process

Read more about Utrust.com on their site.

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