If you sell anything online — or even in person — customers have started asking whether they can just pay in crypto. It's a fair question: card processors take a cut on every sale, chargebacks can claw back revenue weeks after a sale closes, and a growing number of buyers simply hold most of their money in BTC, LTC or USDT already. Accepting crypto directly skips a few of these problems entirely. This guide walks through what that actually looks like in practice — which coins to accept, how a payment gateway handles the technical part, what fees really look like, and how to get started without needing to become a blockchain expert first.
Why merchants are adding crypto as a payment option
Three reasons come up constantly in merchant conversations, and they're all practical rather than ideological:
- Lower processing costs. Card networks typically take 2–3.5% plus a fixed fee per transaction. A crypto payment gateway's commission is usually comparable or lower, and there's no interchange fee stacked on top.
- No chargebacks. Once a transaction confirms on-chain, it's final. That eliminates an entire category of fraud and revenue loss that card-accepting merchants budget for every year.
- Reach customers card rails can't. Crypto-native customers, international buyers without easy card access, and privacy-conscious shoppers are all easier to sell to when crypto is an option on checkout.
Which coins should you actually accept?
You don't need to support everything on day one. Most merchants start with two or three assets and expand later. Here's how the common options compare:
| Coin | Confirmations needed | Typical network fee | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | 1 | Low–moderate, varies with congestion | Widest recognition, highest customer trust |
| Litecoin (LTC) | 3 | Very low | Fast, cheap alternative to BTC |
| USDT (TRC20) | 19 | Sub-$1 | Price-stable — no volatility risk on settlement |
That confirmation count matters more than people expect: it's the difference between a payment your dashboard trusts immediately versus one it needs a few minutes to be sure about. USDT gets more confirmations specifically because it's a stablecoin — the network wants extra certainty before treating a payment as irreversible.
Stablecoins solve the one objection every finance team raises about crypto payments: "what if the price moves before we can convert it?" With USDT, it mostly doesn't.
How the checkout flow actually works
From a customer's side, a crypto checkout has two steps: pick a wallet, then pay. Behind that simplicity, a payment gateway is doing a few things automatically:
- An invoice is created with an amount, a currency, and an expiry window (commonly 60 minutes).
- The customer chooses which coin to pay with, and the gateway generates a unique deposit address for that invoice — plus a QR code so they can scan instead of copy-pasting.
- The exchange rate locks for the payment window, so neither side is chasing a moving price mid-transaction.
- The blockchain is watched in the background. The moment the required number of confirmations is reached, the invoice flips to paid — no manual checking required on your end.
- Funds settle directly to your wallet. A non-custodial gateway never takes possession of the money in between.
What the fees actually look like
Most gateways charge a deposit commission on incoming payments and a smaller withdrawal fee when you move funds out — CryptoXTS defaults to 5% and 2% respectively, both configurable per merchant. On top of that there's the network fee itself, which goes to miners/validators rather than the platform (this is why USDT on TRC20 is popular — that network fee is usually under a dollar, versus higher fixed costs on some other chains).
Underpayments, overpayments, and expired invoices
This is the part merchants worry about most, and it's simpler than it sounds. A small underpayment — the kind caused by network fees eating into what the customer sent — is tolerated automatically within a small margin (CryptoXTS allows about $2). Anything short of that stays "partially paid" until the customer tops up. Overpayments aren't auto-refunded, so checkout pages should always be explicit about sending the exact amount shown. We go deeper on this in a dedicated post on handling under- and overpayments.
Getting started: a short checklist
- Decide which coins to accept first — USDT (TRC20) is the easiest on-ramp if your team is new to crypto.
- Set your deposit and withdrawal commission rates.
- Get your merchant account approved — most reputable gateways, including CryptoXTS, are invite-only specifically to keep fraud rates low.
- Add and verify a trusted withdrawal wallet before you go live.
- Turn on 2FA for withdrawals. This is non-negotiable — it's the single highest-leverage security step available to you.
- Run a small test transaction end-to-end before linking checkout into your live store.
None of this requires you to personally understand blockchain internals. The gateway handles addresses, confirmations, and settlement; your job is picking the right coins, setting sane fees, and keeping withdrawal security tight. Once that's in place, crypto checkout runs about as hands-off as a card processor — with none of the chargeback risk.