CoinPayments vs NOWPayments

Why the 0.5% headline does not survive contact with stablecoins#

CoinPayments prices coins at 0.5% and tokens at 1%. Since stablecoins are tokens, a merchant whose volume is mostly Tether or USD Coin pays 1%, which is exactly what NOWPayments charges across everything.

The split pricing is only an advantage for a business taking payment predominantly in Bitcoin, Litecoin or similar. Given that stablecoins carry most merchant volume in this category, the headline advantage applies to a minority of the merchants who will read it.

Where the real difference sits#

CoinPayments has batch withdrawals, which materially reduce network cost for anyone paying out frequently. That is a payout-side advantage and it does not show up in any processing rate comparison.

NOWPayments publishes the longer asset list and a rate that does not depend on what your customers chose to pay in. Neither provider publishes conversion or payout percentages, so both headline figures are floors, and the pricing page at CoinPayments did not resolve when checked, which is its own kind of answer.

How do you decide between two unpublished cost structures?#

Neither provider publishes conversion or payout percentages, so neither headline rate is a total. Ask both for the same three numbers in writing on the same day: conversion spread, payout cost, and what triggers a rate change.

Then weigh the payout question separately, because it is where they genuinely differ. If you pay people out regularly, CoinPayments batch withdrawals are worth more than any plausible difference in processing rate. If you only take money in, they are worth nothing at all.

Who is each one wrong for?#

CoinPayments is wrong for a stablecoin-heavy merchant attracted by the 0.5% headline, since tokens price at 1% and the advantage disappears entirely at the exact point most merchants sit.

NOWPayments is wrong for a business paying out to many recipients regularly, where batch withdrawal economics matter more than the processing rate and CoinPayments has the better-documented answer.

Both publish a floor and neither publishes a total#

CoinPayments at 58% disclosure and NOWPayments at 68% sit either side of the index average, and the fields each withholds are the same two: conversion and payout. That symmetry makes this comparison unusually hard to settle from public information.

The practical consequence is that the split pricing at CoinPayments is the only structural difference you can act on without asking. Everything else needs a written quote from both.

Direction of money as the deciding question#

If money only comes in, the flat rate wins on simplicity and the asset list wins on coverage. If money also goes out regularly, batch withdrawals change the arithmetic in a way no processing comparison captures.

Work out roughly how many outbound transactions you make in a month before reading either rate. That number decides this page.

What to send both of them#

Ask both for the conversion spread and the payout cost, since both withhold exactly those two fields and the gaps are therefore directly comparable. Ask CoinPayments specifically which of your assets fall into which pricing tier.

Then count your outbound transactions per month. If the number is meaningful, ask CoinPayments how batching works in practice: minimum batch size, what a malformed address does to the rest, and how failures are reported.

That last question is where the real difference between these two lives, and no rate comparison will surface it.

Reading this pair by business type#

A stablecoin-heavy store pays the same at both, so the comparison moves entirely to coverage and payouts. NOWPayments wins the first outright; CoinPayments wins the second if you pay people out.

A Bitcoin-heavy business takes CoinPayments and the 0.5% coin tier is real money. That describes fewer merchants than the headline implies, and it describes some precisely.

An affiliate network or marketplace paying many recipients should weight batching above everything else here, because it is the only structural difference that scales with your actual operations rather than with revenue.

What would change this comparison#

The CoinPayments pricing page resolving. Its figures currently rest on secondary reporting, and confirming them at source would make this comparison checkable rather than approximate.

Beyond that, either provider publishing a conversion figure would break the symmetry that makes this pair difficult to separate.

If you only do one thing#

Split your last month of payments into coins and tokens. That ratio tells you your real CoinPayments rate, and in most cases it turns out to be the same 1% the alternative charges flat.

What this comparison leaves open#

What neither card settles is support quality, and both score modestly on it for the same reason: nothing is published. That criterion carries the smallest weight in this index precisely because it is the hardest to verify, and it is worth asking about anyway if you have ever had a payment stuck.

Because the CoinPayments figures rest on secondary reporting, this comparison is less firm than most in the index. Confirm at source before acting on it.

A split rate against a flat one#

CoinPayments prices coins and tokens differently, so a stablecoin-heavy merchant pays roughly double the headline. NOWPayments applies one rate to everything.

Since stablecoins carry most merchant volume in practice, the flat card is often cheaper in reality while looking dearer on the page. Split your own volume by asset class before believing either headline.