Cryptocurrency Payment Gateways

A cryptocurrency payment gateway is used to accept Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies on a website, online shop, mobile app or any other kind of digital application. It adds a crypto payment method into the payment process as an option for customers to pay with cryptocurrencies in addition to other payment methods like credit cards, for example.

Both terms overlap to a certain degree whereas you can think of the online payment gateway as the customer facing frontend - like a virtual equivalent of a point of sale (POS) terminal - and the payment processor as the backend responsible for transmitting the financial transactions between the customer, the merchant and the merchant's bank. The difference is that a payment processor facilitates the transaction and a payment gateway is a tool that communicates the approval or decline of transactions between merchant and customer.

As described in the section above they are manifold: Target new customer segments, reduce financial risks for your business, show that you are innovative and on top of trends, reduce technical cost and ensure that your accounting receives the correct payment data.

Merchants oftentimes hesitate when it comes to cryptocurrencies. It's a new topic and most lack experience with blockchain and digital currencies. The following concerns are common, but nothing to worry about because cryptocurrency payment gateways are the solution for that:

• I don’t understand blockchain, therefore I don't want to touch it.
• It's not safe and I will lose money.
• We don't have technical resources and the team has no experience with cryptocurrencies either.
• Accounting is a problem. How to add a Bitcoin payment to the balance sheet?
• Volatility risk is too high, I might end up with less than the sales price and the sale might turn into a loss.

Using a Bitcoin payment gateway is the easiest way to accept Bitcoin on your website. Most cryptocurrency service providers offer ways to easily integrate such a payment solution into existing shopping carts or content management systems like WordPress, Shopware, Prestashop, Opencart, Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. These plugins directly add a Bitcoin payment method into the shopping cart checkout process and can be customized in the admin area of the shopping cart system. For direct and more customized integration white-label payment APIs are generally used.

In any digital payment process that you offer to your clients. Accept BTC on your website, online shop, mobile app, point of sale (POS), customized business process solution and much more.

A custodian payment gateway collects all payments for all currencies on their own cryptocurrency wallets and lets you withdraw your funds from there through the user interface or API.

A non-custodian payment gateway requires you to enter your own crypto wallet id for each payment currency you want to accept. That means you have to enter your Bitcoin wallet address, Ethereum wallet address, Litecoin wallet address, etc. one by one into the merchant account of the service provider.

A custodian payment gateway is generally considered the more practicable and easy to use solution.

Offer those currencies with the highest market cap because this are the cryptocurrencies that buyers hold. It doesn't make sense to offer more than the top 10 of cryptocurrencies on your checkout pages because it confuses people that hold only Bitcoin for example. Consider how much your customers know about the different cryptocurrencies, think about shopping cart abandonment rates - too many choices spoil conversion rates. There is no point offering 10 ERC-20 tokens as payment options because who owns them? It's just guess work.