About NOWPayments
NOWPayments is a noncustodial cryptocurrency payment gateway that empowers businesses and individuals to easily accept cryptocurrency payments. As a noncustodial service, NOWPayments does not hold or store your funds, ensuring that you have full control over your assets.
Founded in 2019 by the team behind the cryptocurrency exchange service ChangeNOW, NOWPayments is committed to making it easy for anyone to accept cryptocurrency payments. With support for a wide range of cryptocurrencies and a competitive fee structure, NOWPayments is a versatile and accessible payment gateway for businesses of all sizes.
To learn more about NOWPayments’ features, fees, integrations, and more, check out our comprehensive NOWPayments review below.
Overall judgement
NOWPayments Review scores
Transaction fees
Functionalities
Accepted cryptocurrencies
Ease of setup
Customer support
Positives
- Free and easy integration
- ~1% transaction fee (starts at 0.4%)
- Over 160 cryptocurrencies are accepted
- Large amount of smart functionalities
Negatives
- Minimum payment amounts
- User interfaces could be improved
Transaction fees
Transaction fees are an important consideration for businesses looking to choose a payment gateway. NOWpayments charges a fee of 0.5% for each transaction (0.4% for high volume merchants), plus an additional 0.5% conversion fee if the merchant’s withdrawal currency is different from the currency used by the client. As most payments are made in a variety of cryptocurrencies, the total fee is typically 1%. This fee is competitive with other payment gateways.
Functionalities
NOWPayments offers a range of useful functionalities to enhance the experience of accepting cryptocurrencies. These features include:
Online payment gateway: This allows you to accept cryptocurrencies directly on your website.
Offline payment gateway: You can generate a link that can be opened on your mobile phone’s web browser. The client can then scan a QR code and transfer the required amount of crypto.
Payment links: You can generate payment links for a specific amount and send them to your clients, for instance, via email.
Crypto subscriptions: You can set up recurring payments to be invoiced by email every 1, 7, 14, or 30 days. However, these payments are unfortunately not automated but have to be paid manually by the customer.
Donation widget: This includes a donation button that can be added to your website as shown below.
In addition to these functionalities, NOWPayments offers two smart additions that can further enhance the way you receive crypto:
Anti-volatility: NOWPayments will automatically convert any incoming crypto to another crypto of your choosing before sending it to your wallet. This is done to protect against market volatility, and it is recommended that you transfer all funds to a stablecoin like USDT, USDC, or BUSD.
Mass payout: This allows you to receive all payments in a single transaction, thus mitigating a lot of the network fees associated with sending crypto. Normally, NOWPayments sends you the crypto after each individual purchase, which can result in extra fees due to the network fee associated with each transaction.
It’s important to note that NOWPayments has a minimum payment amount for all cryptocurrencies, which is set to cover the networking fees. This can range from a few cents to over a hundred dollars and can be seen on their status page. However, this minimum payment requirement has resulted in some error messages when creating crypto invoices, which may make it less attractive for smaller payments.
Accepted cryptocurrencies
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Tether (USDT)
- BNB
- USD Coin (USDC)
- Binance USD (BUSD)
- Ripple (XRP)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Solana (SOL)
Ease of setup
NOWPayments is easy to integrate into your website since they have a pre-built integration for almost every common CMS. This includes:
- WooCommerce
- Magento 2
- Shopify
- Prestashop
- OpenCart
- Zen Cart
- Shopware
- WHMCS
- Ecwid
Alternatively, merchants have the option to integrate NOWPayments into their e-commerce store by using the API connection. The integration process is made easy and straightforward with the help of detailed documentation provided by NOWPayments.
Safety
NOWPayments offers two payment methods for customers. The first and standard method is a manual transfer, where the customer manually sends the requested amount to NOWPayments. This method is very safe and has no risks for either the merchant or the customer. The second method is the Wallet Connect Checkout, which allows customers to connect their crypto wallet to NOWPayments and pay more easily, but with less security. For more information about the safety of these methods, please refer to our safety blog.
