Guide
Crypto Payment Gateway Fees Explained
Crypto gateway cost has three parts: processing, conversion and payout. Published processing rates start near 0.4%, but conversion is usually the larger number and most providers in this index do not publish it at all. Only providers publishing all three can be compared honestly.
On this page
What are you actually paying?
Three separate numbers, and providers publish them at very different rates.
Processing. The percentage taken from each payment. This is the number every provider advertises and the only one most merchants compare.
Conversion. What it costs to turn the asset received into the asset you want to hold. Charged as a spread against the market rate rather than as a stated fee, which is precisely why it is easy to leave off a pricing page.
Payout. What it costs to move the settled balance to your bank or your wallet. Sometimes free, sometimes a fixed amount, sometimes a percentage, occasionally all three depending on the rail.
Why does the headline rate mislead?
Because the parts are not the same size. Consider two providers, both real shapes in this category. One charges 1% processing and settles in the asset received, with free crypto withdrawal. The other charges 0.5% processing, takes 2% converting to your settlement currency, and charges a percentage on payout.
The advertised rates say the second is half the price. The all-in figures say it is roughly two and a half times more expensive. Nothing about the second provider is dishonest, and a merchant comparing headline rates will still choose wrongly.
How do you compute an all-in figure?
Take your monthly volume. Apply the processing rate. Apply the conversion spread to whatever share of that volume you convert, which is all of it if you settle in fiat. Add the payout cost multiplied by how often you actually withdraw, remembering the gas fee on every one.
That last term is the one businesses get wrong, because payout cost scales with withdrawal frequency rather than with revenue. A business withdrawing daily pays it thirty times a month regardless of whether revenue went up.
What if a provider does not publish everything?
Then you cannot compute the figure, and that is a finding rather than an obstacle. Most providers in this index publish a processing rate and no conversion figure. Their published number is a floor, and comparing it against a fully published all-in rate from another provider compares two different things.
Each card in the catalogue records exactly which cost components the provider publishes and which it does not, checked against its own pricing page with the date attached. The lowest fee shortlist orders on the published rate and states that limitation on the page.
What should you ask?
Ask for the conversion spread as a number, not as a description. Ask what triggers a rate change and how much notice you get. Ask whether the quoted rate is your rate from the first transaction or a floor reached at volume, because several providers in this category advertise a floor that new merchants do not receive.
A worked example
Take a business processing a hundred thousand a month, converting everything to bank currency, withdrawing weekly.
Provider A publishes 1% processing, free conversion, free withdrawal. All-in: a thousand a month, and the figure is complete because everything is published.
Provider B publishes 0.5% processing and nothing else. The floor is five hundred. If conversion runs at 1.5% and withdrawal costs a fixed amount plus a percentage, the real figure is closer to two thousand five hundred. Both numbers are consistent with what Provider B published, which is the problem.
The lesson is not that cheap providers are expensive. It is that a published rate and an all-in rate are different quantities, and comparing one against the other produces confident wrong answers.
Where fixed components bite
Per-transaction amounts and per-withdrawal amounts scale with count rather than value. A business taking two hundred small orders pays a fixed component two hundred times; one taking two large orders pays it twice, on the same revenue.
Check whether the fee has a fixed part before assuming a percentage comparison is meaningful. At small average order values it can dominate the percentage entirely.
What to ask, in one list
The conversion spread as a number. The payout cost, split into provider fee and network fee. Whether the quoted rate applies from the first transaction or at volume. What triggers a rate change and with how much notice. Whether a reserve is held, at what percentage, for how long.
Five questions, and most providers in the catalogue publish answers to fewer than three of them.
Where to go next
The lowest fee shortlist orders providers by published rate and states plainly why that ordering is incomplete. The volatility guide covers the conversion spread in more depth, and the accounting guide covers getting the numbers out of a provider in a form your books can use.
What negotiation actually moves
The processing rate, usually, and by less than merchants expect. The conversion spread, sometimes, and by more. Payout terms, occasionally.
That ordering is worth knowing because most merchants spend their negotiating effort on the number that is easiest to name. Asking for the spread as an explicit figure, and asking for it to be shown in the settlement report alongside the market rate, changes both the price and your ability to verify it afterwards.
Volume commitments are the usual lever. Be careful committing to volume you have not yet done, since the penalty for missing it is sometimes a rate that is worse than the published one.
One more point worth stating: none of this is an argument that cheaper providers are worse. It is an argument that a published rate and a total cost are different quantities, and that comparing across that difference produces confident wrong answers.
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Questions merchants ask
What is a normal crypto processing fee?
Published rates in this index run from 0.4% to 2% plus a fixed amount, checked August 2026. Card processing in most markets sits between 1.5% and 3%, so the crypto headline number is usually lower and the all-in comparison is closer than it looks.
What is a conversion spread?
The difference between the rate a provider uses to convert your received asset and the market rate at that moment. It is charged as a spread rather than a fee, which is why it often does not appear on a pricing page at all.
Who pays the network fee?
Usually the payer on the way in and you on the way out. Payout network costs scale with how often you withdraw rather than with revenue, which makes them the cost most likely to surprise a business that pays out weekly.
Why do providers hide the conversion spread?
Because it is a spread rather than a fee, so nothing obliges them to state it, and stating it invites comparison on the number that actually matters. That is the incentive, and it explains most of the disclosure pattern in this category.
Is a lower rate ever simply better?
When both providers publish all three components and one is lower across them, yes. That situation is rarer than it should be, which is the whole reason this guide exists.
- Published with the index.