Head to head · checked 2026-09-06
Paymento vs NOWPayments
Two non-custodial gateways that never hold your funds. NOWPayments publishes 1% and 350+ assets and says nothing about verification. Paymento publishes 0.5%, a starting credit and no verification at all, and does not count its assets. The choice is breadth against a lower published rate, with custody settled on both sides.
How do Paymento and NOWPayments differ?
Weights| Gateway | Score | From | Assets | Verification | Settles fiat | Discloses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paymento | 6.9 | 0.5% | None stated | No | 63% | |
| NOWPayments | 8.0 | 1% | 350 | Not disclosed | 68% |
Scoring Paymento against NOWPayments
| Criterion | Weight | Paymento | NOWPayments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assets, networks and geography How many assets and chains are live for merchants, and in which markets settlement actually works. | 25 | 5 | 9 |
| All-in cost Processing percentage, conversion spread and payout cost taken together, not the headline number alone. | 25 | 8 | 8 |
| Onboarding and verification What a merchant must submit before going live, how long it takes, and which verticals are refused outright. | 20 | 9 | 8 |
| Integrations and API Maintained plugins, API surface, webhook reliability and whether a developer can reach a test transaction from public docs alone. | 18 | 7 | 8 |
| Support and operations Reachable channels, published response commitments, and documented handling of underpayment and wrong-network sends. | 12 | 5 | 6 |
| Weighted total | 6.9 | 8.0 |
Where the two diverge
Scored 0–10 · checked 2026-09-06
Paymento NOWPayments
On this page
Custody is the same, and that narrows the question#
Both providers settle to a wallet the merchant controls rather than to a provider balance, which removes the class of failure most worth avoiding in this category. That is usually the first fork in a comparison and here it is closed, so the comparison is about everything downstream of it.
What is downstream is rate, asset breadth, verification and integrations. On each of those the two providers have made different choices, and the differences are visible on the cards rather than hidden.
One percent against half, with a credit#
NOWPayments charges a flat 1% stated on its pricing page with no tiers. Paymento charges 0.5% billed against a prepaid credit, and new accounts start with $15 of credit that the pricing page equates to roughly $3,000 of payments. The embedded-wallet option adds $0.20 per transaction; bring-your-own-wallet adds nothing.
For a small merchant the Paymento schedule is cheaper and front-loads the saving. For a large one the difference is half a point on a rate neither provider negotiates publicly, which is material but not decisive.
Three hundred assets against an uncounted list#
NOWPayments publishes the longest asset list in this index. Paymento names stablecoins, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin as examples and links to a list without summarising it, so the card records the count as not disclosed. On named networks the two overlap on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, BNB Chain and Polygon.
A merchant whose volume sits in five assets loses nothing on the Paymento side. A marketplace with a long tail should count its tail first, because that is the one row where NOWPayments is clearly ahead.
Verification: none against undisclosed#
Paymento states that no merchant verification is required, and the card records that as a stated policy. NOWPayments publishes nothing about verification, which is recorded as not disclosed and is a different thing: a merchant cannot plan around a process that is not described.
For a business that needs to explain its providers to a bank, neither is a strong answer, and the verification guide explains why a no-KYC provider moves compliance work to the merchant rather than removing it.
Integrations#
Paymento lists WooCommerce, Shopify, OpenCart and WHMCS plus payment links. NOWPayments does not summarise its platform integrations on the pages this index reads, and the card records them as not disclosed, though it publishes an API and invoicing.
For a Shopify shop that is a concrete difference in the Paymento column. For an API integration the two are comparable.
Payouts, recurring and the rest#
NOWPayments documents mass payouts, recurring billing, point of sale and invoicing. Paymento documents invoicing and payment links and does not describe the others, which are recorded as not disclosed. A platform paying people out finds its answer on the NOWPayments card.
Neither offers fiat settlement in the way a custodial provider does; both leave conversion to the merchant, which is the price of the custody model both chose.
Where this pair lands#
Paymento for a small merchant who wants the lower published rate, a starting credit and a stated no-verification policy. NOWPayments for a merchant who needs asset breadth or the outbound direction and accepts an undocumented onboarding.
Both are worth running side by side for a cycle if custody is the reason you are looking at either, because the wallet you receive into is yours in both cases and switching later costs little.
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Questions merchants ask
Do either of these hold my money?
No. Both are non-custodial: payments settle to addresses you control. The difference is that Paymento bills its fee against a credit you prepay, while NOWPayments deducts its 1% from the payment flow.
Which supports more coins?
NOWPayments, by a wide margin on paper: 350 or more published assets against a list Paymento links to without counting. Whether that matters depends on whether your customers pay in assets outside the main chains.
Is Paymento or NOWPayments cheaper?
Paymento publishes the lower processing rate, 0.5% against 1%. Payout and conversion sit outside that figure. Neither publishes a conversion spread, so the headline gap is a starting point rather than an answer.
Can you run Paymento and NOWPayments at once?
Yes. Nothing stops a merchant holding both, and running them together is how you learn which one handles your awkward payments rather than your typical ones. Expect uneven effort in this pair: one side publishes no platform integrations, so running both means building one of them against the API.