Bitnovo Pay vs PayCek

A published floor against a published zero#

Bitnovo Pay prices from 0.95%, framed against the two to three percent it quotes for card acceptance. PayCek states that the merchant pays nothing at all.

Both numbers are floors of a kind. One has the word from in front of it and does not say what a small merchant actually pays; the other has an unpublished conversion spread sitting behind it.

Neither card can be priced from public pages, which is unusual for two providers that otherwise disclose so much. The difference is which half of the bill each chose to show.

Five assets named against fifty-nine counted#

One card names Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, Litecoin and XRP followed by a reference to other popular cryptocurrencies, and publishes no count. The other publishes an exact fifty-nine.

An exact number is worth more than a longer vague one. A merchant can plan around fifty-nine and cannot plan around five plus an unquantified remainder.

For a shop taking occasional crypto payments over a counter, five well-chosen assets is genuinely enough. For a web store serving customers across Europe, the difference shows up as checkouts that quietly do not complete.

Plugins against a point of sale#

WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopify, OpenCart and Magento on one side, against a documented API and a free web point of sale on the other.

That is a clean split by channel rather than by quality. An online store deploys in an afternoon on one card; a physical counter starts taking payments with no integration at all on the other.

PrestaShop in particular is a Spanish and French staple that larger processors routinely skip, and its presence says who that card was built for.

Regulators named against a regulation cited#

One card publishes three registrations with numbers attached: the Bank of Spain under D687, France under PSAN E2023-102, and the Dutch central bank under R193399.

The other names its operator, Electrocoin, established in 2014, and cites authorisation under the European crypto-asset regulation without a registration number on the pages we read.

Publishing numbers rather than the word regulated is the stronger position, because a number can be checked. Both are far above the median for this index, where most cards name nobody.

Euros arrive by different mechanics#

Both convert on receipt and pay out in euros, which removes volatility exposure entirely on either side and is the reason both suit a shop rather than a treasury.

The payout control differs. One publishes an automatic IBAN withdrawal triggered once the balance passes a threshold the merchant sets between thirty and a thousand euros; the other publishes no payout mechanism or cost at all.

A configurable threshold is a genuinely useful setting for a small business, and the thousand-euro cap means frequent transfers rather than large ones at higher volume.

Neither states what verification takes#

Both record merchant verification as undisclosed after checking. Two European operators under named or cited regulation, and neither publishes what a merchant must submit or how long it takes.

That is the strongest argument for asking before building on either. A regulated operator has obligations, and obligations become paperwork somewhere in the onboarding flow.

Ask in the first email rather than the third, along with which verticals are refused outright. Those two answers are what actually decide whether a card is available to you.

How the scores separate#

Integrations carry one card and coverage carries the other, and the totals end up within a tenth of each other. That is a genuine near-tie rather than a rounding artefact.

Cost scores higher for the stated zero than for the stated floor, which is the method rewarding a published figure over a published range, not a judgement that zero is achievable.

Reweight coverage upward and the fifty-nine assets win. Reweight integrations upward and the five plugins do. This pair is unusually sensitive to which of those two a merchant cares about.

What to ask each of them#

To the Spanish card: the enumerated asset list, the conversion spread, and what a merchant below the volume threshold actually pays. All three are missing and the last one is the whole pricing question.

To the Croatian card: the spread taken at conversion, obtained as a live quote rather than as a policy statement. It is the only number on that card and it is not on the site.

To both: whether the euro payout arrives from an entity in the same country as the contract, since that determines which supervisor is relevant when something goes wrong.

Where this pair actually lands#

A Spanish or French online store on PrestaShop, Shopify or WooCommerce takes the card with plugins, installs it, and gets euros in a bank account the same week.

A Croatian or regional business with a physical counter takes the card with the free point of sale, pays no visible fee, and gets a much broader asset list into the bargain.

A merchant who is neither should decide on the asset list first. Fifty-nine counted assets against five named ones is the largest verified gap on this page, and it is the one least likely to change.