Modern Merchants, Modular Money
Crypto’s Financial OS for Global Commerce
Rebuilding Today’s Payment Infrastructure
Today, the global payments market underpins trillions of dollars in annual economic activity, yet the infrastructure rails are often slow, costly, and fragmented. One area where this is particularly pronounced is global commerce, where merchants handle massive volumes of transactions (receiving payments via diverse methods like cards, bank transfers (A2A), digital wallets, etc.) and pay billions annually in fees.
As global commerce becomes increasingly digitized, businesses face mounting pressure to reduce fees, transactional friction, and settlement times. What’s more, there’s an entire crypto user base today looking to make purchases using their digital assets. As a result, we’ve increasingly seen crypto-native companies providing the solutions for these merchants and other commerce-based businesses to both pay with and accept digital currencies within their existing operations.
The demand for these payment options is surging. Through 2024, the estimated global crypto ownership rate increased to about 8%, with an estimated 660 million crypto users worldwide. A significant portion of people who take part in global commerce are crypto-holders who are increasingly looking for ways to spend and transact in digital currencies. Merchants, in turn, are cognitive of this and looking for efficient ways to accept these forms of payment.
From a broad perspective, crypto payments bring two key benefits to commerce:
Faster, cheaper payments: Crypto-enabled transactions settle instantly across borders with minimal fees, removing dependencies on slower traditional banking rails.
New revenue drivers: Businesses accepting crypto can seamlessly tap into vast global markets and new customer segments, as well as offer new innovative services by nature of programmability. This significantly expands their TAM and broadens their revenue opportunities.
At a high level, these crypto payment providers vary significantly in terms of custody models (who touches the funds), settlement processes (how transactions are finalized), compliance approaches, onboarding practices, and monetization strategies. This ultimately places different structural demands on both their infrastructure and product design.
This piece examines the evolving landscape of crypto commerce solutions. The observations are largely drawn from the many conversations I’ve had with the teams building these products and solutions. These players and others are quickly innovating their tech stacks and demonstrating how crypto-native payments are being built, adopted, and monetized.
Some of the key guding questions include:
What are the trade-offs between custodial and non-custodial payment architectures?
How do different models approach settlement, compliance, and merchant onboarding?
Where are monetization opportunities emerging beyond typical transactional fees?
How do infrastructure decisions shape long-term product scalability and positioning?
The Merchant Acquiring Model
To understand the disruption at play, let’s first look at the traditional merchant acquiring model (using credit card checkout as an example). The acquiring model refers to the system that coordinates the flow of funds and data between a customer and a merchant. It’s a complex network involving multiple intermediaries.
Credit Card Payment Processing (source: Altexsoft Engineering)
For a credit card payment made by a customer, the merchant acquiring model generally looks like this:
Cardholder: The cardholder initiates a payment by entering their credit card details on the merchant's checkout page.
Merchant: Upon receiving transactional data, the merchant employs a secure payment gateway to begin processing. At this stage, the merchant only sees transaction details and amounts, not sensitive payment data.
Payment Gateway: The gateway encrypts the payment data, securely forwarding it to the payment processor while charging a fee for this data transfer.
Payment Processor: The processor manages the transaction validation and authorization by performing several critical functions:
Retrieves encrypted data from the gateway (fee is charged).
Queries the issuing bank (the cardholder’s bank) to verify sufficient funds (fee is charged and paid to the issuing bank).
Passes transaction details to the relevant credit card network (e.g. Visa or Mastercard) for validation (incurs a network fee).
Initiates the actual fund transfer from the issuing bank to the merchant’s bank (acquiring bank), with additional fees charged for this service.
Credit Card Network: The network validates card authenticity and compliance. They charge assessment fees for their service, which vary based on factors like card type and transaction location.
Issuing Bank: Upon validation, the issuing bank finalizes the transaction by debiting the cardholder’s account, notifying the cardholder, and transferring funds to the acquiring bank.
From the merchant’s perspective, there are a few primary fees involved in this payment process. The first is the interchange fee, which is set by the card networks and is paid by the acquiring bank to the issuing bank as a percentage of the transaction value. This is essentially the compensation to the issuer for the risk and credit provided to the cardholder. There is also an assessment (network) fee paid to the card network by both the issuer and the acquirer for using the network’s infrastructure. There’s also the potential for a markup, which can be thought of as any additional fees included in the transaction (these are inconsistent and invoked when there are additional processing fees to cover). From the merchant’s perspective, their “all-in” cost for a transaction is termed the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) and includes the interchange fee, the assessment fee, and the acquirer’s markup.
When it comes to the revenue flow in this process, the typical breakdown looks like this:
Issuing bank: Earns revenue from the interchange fee.
Acquiring bank: Earns revenue from the MDR, which includes its markup.
Card network: Earns revenue from assessment (network) fees from both the issuer and the acquirer.
Merchant: Receives the transaction amount minus the MDR (and any additional processing fees).
Disrupting the Traditional Model
While traditional payment platforms/plugins excel at abstracting away complexity for merchants, under this status quo model they remain deeply intertwined with legacy banking rails and card networks. In contrast, crypto payments remove layers of banks, processors, and networks, facilitating more direct transactions between merchants and their end customers. Transactions are generally executed in real-time, publicly verifiable on the blockchain, and don’t require complex reconciliation practices typical in traditional models.
Specifically, this disruption appears by:
Replacing the role of payment gateways/processors with direct wallet-to-wallet transfers, thereby removing costly data encryption and transmission fees.
Eliminating card networks and associated network fees through blockchain-based settlement mechanisms.
Enabling instantaneous and direct transfers without relying on issuing/acquiring banks, reducing settlement times and the associated costs.
And as crypto payment options become increasingly mainstream for checkout, merchants are not only achieving these cost efficiencies but also tapping into previously inaccessible global customer bases looking to pay with crypto. Stripe’s recent transaction data found that adding stablecoin payment options attracts net new customers, as customers who pay with stablecoins are 2x more likely to be net new than customers paying with other methods. The data suggests there are a lot of potential customers out there for businesses to reach, but they can’t reach them until they offer stablecoin acceptance. By doing so, they structurally increase their TAM.
Custody Models
One of the most fundamental design choices that payment infrastructure providers have is in the custody model for user funds. Whether a platform opts for custodial, non-custodial, or somewhat of a hybrid architecture has far-reaching implications across regulatory exposure, UX, and monetization strategy. It’s worth overviewing these to understand their implications.
Non-Custodial Model
In a true non-custodial model, the platform never takes control of user or merchant funds. Payments are processed directly onchain and routed to wallets controlled by the merchant. At a high level, this brings a few standout advantages:
Lower regulatory exposure at the product level.
Transparent, auditable settlement directly on public blockchains.
Flexibility for crypto-native businesses managing their own treasury infrastructure.
However, this model also offloads significant operational responsibility onto the merchant, including wallet management, off-ramping, and private key security. For businesses without strong Web3 capabilities, this can create a high barrier to adoption.
Custodial Model
Custodial models involve platforms touching or holding merchant funds during the payment lifecycle, which naturally brings more regulatory overhead and licensing considerations.
Some companies take a unique approach when it comes to the custodial offering. As opposed to operating entirely onchain, a platform like Binance Pay actually internalizes payment flows within its centralized platform. meaning both users and merchants transact within an internal ledger and settlement may only touch the blockchain when funds are withdrawn (more on this below). In practice, this means Binance controls the funds/keys of ecosystem wallets themselves and can make credits or debits to accounts internally for payments in real-time. No gas costs, no delays.
The custodial model tends to provide a more Web2-like experience, removing the need for merchants to manage their own private keys and allowing them to receive instant settlements right in their custodied accounts. However users must still opt in to the Binance ecosystem by utilizing the Binance app for this service.
Custody brings its own set of considerations. From the platform perspective, holding user funds in one’s internal ledger demands higher regulatory burdens, especially when operating across multiple jurisdictions. For both the payor and payee, an internal system means less transparency since transactions are not publicly visible unless withdrawals occur onchain. Binance’s model specifically also requires the use of a Binance wallet and the Binance app, removing the flexibility of choosing other third-party options and instead requiring full participation in their ecosystem.
Hybrid Model
A hybrid custody model can exist in various forms as well. Payments themselves may happen onchain (usually initiated by the customer), but the processor temporarily takes custody of the crypto to convert it into either fiat or stablecoins and settle it to the merchants preferred destination.
This approach is attractive to traditional businesses that want to accept crypto without dealing with any complexity or subjecting themselves to any volatility. The primary advantages of this model include:
No need for merchants to ever touch crypto.
Volatility risk mitigation through instant conversion at the point-of-sale (PoS).
Familiar payout options in fiat via ACH, wire, or bank transfer.
Hybrid models still inherit regulatory obligations and introduce counterparty risk through their custodial functions. They must also manage the technical complexity of liquidity, FX, and settlement services.
Settlement Architecture
While custody determines who controls the funds, settlement architecture defines where and how the funds move. Various models have emerged as providers seek to offer the most effective services for their target merchant profiles.
The onchain settlement model is an increasingly popular option, particularly for crypto-native commerce businesses. In this context, platforms route payments directly through public blockchains, each transaction representing a “push” payment initiated by the payer and usually resulting in funds being settled into a self-custodial wallet owned by the merchant.
A standardized process might look like this:
Charge Created —> Transaction Signed by Wallet Owner —> Funds Pending —> Funds detected Onchain —> Funds Received by Merchant —> Transaction Finalized on Network
There are also innovative design choices with this model. For example, Coinbase Commerce recently introduced DEX-based atomic swaps for settlement, adding both functionality and protection for users. Customers can pay in a wide range of ERC-20 tokens, which are automatically routed through decentralized exchanges (e.g. Uniswap) and automatically converted into USDC before settlement. The protocol routes swaps based on pricing and available liquidity, and also bakes in a 50 bps buffer for slippage (refunded if unused). This smart routing and price impact check guarantees price execution or the transaction reverts, resulting in a nearly 99.99% swap success rate. This means very high predictability for both payor and payee.
Conversely, an offchain settlement model can be used to better resemble the traditional Web2-like merchant experience. Again, the Binance Pay model illustrates this well with its internal ledger adjustment scheme. The payment flow is internalized within the Binance platform, wherein both merchants and their customers transact via the internal ledger and the settlement of funds might only touch the blockchain when funds are withdrawn. In practice, this means funds are “moved” by debiting them from one Binance wallet/account and crediting (updating) them in the receiving wallet/account. This is somewhat similar to PayPal’s internal transfer model, and it provides a more Web2-like experience because settlement is effectively instant, fee-less, and gas-less.
Like custody, hybrid cases emerge here as well, combing both onchain transactions and traditional fiat settlement. Notably, these are popular design choices among Web2 merchants seeking the efficiencies of blockchain transactions but the familiarity of fiat settlement into their bank accounts. In these cases, payments are initiated by a merchant’s customers onchain but the platform collects the crypto, converts it to fiat (or stablecoins if desired), and settles via traditional methods like ACH or wire.
Monetization Strategies: Some Takeaways
One thing that has become increasingly clear is that a platform’s technical architecture (including custody and settlement models) heavily shapes its ability to monetize. In general, the more surface area a platform controls (custody, conversion, settlement, treasury services), the more levers it has to generate revenue. But unsurprisingly that control also comes with regulatory cost and operational complexity.
Roughly speaking, there are a variety of interesting monetization paths emerging.
Transaction-Focused Monetization
Some companies focus their revenue capture on transaction fees alone, typically operating with smaller margins over high payment volume. These players generally charge a flat fee per transaction (1% is fairly standard) and simply monetize access to their tooling. More often than not they don’t custody user funds or manage the final FX conversion of crypto to fiat, meaning they may forgo potentially lucrative revenue from holding balances or capturing spread on fiat conversion. While some providers may start from this lean model, there is a general trend towards building from this to better capture revenue opportunities downstream of it.
A platform like Coinbase Commerce is increasingly expanding from this transaction-focused model, layering in other revenue-generating services like yield-bearing treasury options (via their USDC partnership with Circle). By offering native yield to merchants on USDC balances in the Coinbase ecosystem, the platform can earn additional revenue through its revenue-sharing agreement with Circle, capturing the spread on this underlying yield.
Overall, many platforms may monetize purely on a transaction basis but are increasingly building the foundation to offer higher-margin financial services downstream of these as well.
Cross-Product Revenue Drivers
Some players seek to generate revenue not only from direct transaction fees but also from the additional revenue drivers they create as a result of embedding merchants into their ecosystems. By internalizing more of the payment stack, these models enable broader monetization across their services (via custody, trading, spend management, etc.).
As an example, Binance Pay relies heavily on its ecosystem lock-in strategy. Both the payer and merchant must operate Binance accounts, and while the platform charges standard merchant fees on transactions (1%), a larger part of its monetization engine is cross-product. For example:
Trading fees: Once funds are within Binance, merchants or users may utilize its native exchange for swapping/trading, generating trading fees.
Staking and yield: Idle balances can be enrolled in programs like Binance Earn, allowing Binance to create additional spread or lending revenue.
Binance Card: With their funds in the ecosystem, merchants and consumers can spend via Binance’s crypto card, theoretically returning more revenue-sharing fees to the platform.
In essence, this design choice positions Binance Pay as a customer acquisition funnel for the entire Binance product suite. Every payment becomes an opportunity to increase customer lifetime value through trading, borrowing, staking, or spending.
Conversion Arbitrage
Some platforms may seek additional monetization levers through a form of conversion arbitrage, capturing value from both transaction fees and spread differentials in crypto-to-fiat conversion. When merchants accept crypto, these providers act as an intermediary — collecting the crypto, converting it (often through OTC partners or liquidity providers), and settling in fiat. This gives them multiple monetization vectors as a result:
Transaction fees
Possible spread capture on FX conversions between volatile assets and fiat
Optionality to mark up wholesale OTC rates, especially when settling into currencies like USD, EUR, or GBP.
Most of these providers don’t operate a CEX themselves and must therefore source liquidity externally — but this also gives them the flexibility to optimize for margin, potentially capturing basis points on any conversion spread.
Distribution Via Partnership
As these payment platforms scale, another interesting trend is emerging: many players are adopting channel partnership models (a strategy borrowed from traditional merchant acquirers) to drive distribution, localize compliance, and accelerate merchant onboarding. Rather than acquiring every merchant directly, platforms form alliances with intermediaries who can bundle their payment service into localized or vertical-specific offerings.
One of the issues with directly onboarding customers/merchants is that this strategy doesn’t scale particularly well, especially in fragmented markets or across uniquely-regulated jurisdictions. It also lacks leverage, as each merchant must be acquired individually as a paying customer. To better scale and drive business growth, many companies are leveraging partnerships with other players who help bring more merchants to the table (channel partners) or help these merchants actually integrate their services into their workflows (technical partners).
Scaling Via Channel Partners
Channel partners constitute a variety of entities, including licensed financial institutions, payment processors, and merchant aggregators. These partners help introduce and onboard merchants on behalf of the payment platform and often provide compliance infrastructure, customer support, and local-market expertise. Not only does leveraging these channel partners expand a platform’s reach, it also allows these merchants to get their businesses up and running more quickly via seamless onboarding.
In return for their aggregation and onboarding services, channel partners are naturally compensated in some form by the payment platform. Generally speaking, the monetization model for these partners includes a few possible vectors:
Revenue-sharing: The channel partner earns a percentage of the transaction fees (e.g. 30–40 bps) for every merchant they onboard.
Wholesale margin: The payment platform might give the partner a discounted fee structure, while the partner marks up the service when reselling to their merchants. As an example, a platform might charge their partner 0.6% for providing the payment service, the partner resells the service to the merchant at 1% and retains the difference.
Performance incentives: These might resemble performance-based bonuses for scaling into new markets or hitting onboarding milestones. For high-volume partners, the payment platform might offer bonuses for onboarding X number of merchants, reaching Y volume processed, or expanding into new regions. Importantly, this model encourages aggressive acquisition and regional scaling.
The Value of Technical Partners
Technical partners are generally software platforms, PoS providers, or development agencies that build and maintain integrations into the crypto payment stack, such as e-commerce plugins, SDKs, or PoS terminals (e.g. Binance TSPs). They may or may not be directly involved in the merchant onboarding itself, but they ultimately reduce the implementation friction for merchants. Some also double as channel partners if they bundle onboarding services into their offering.
Technical partners are incentivized to help technically integrate merchants into the service stack. Compensation may come in the form of flat implementation fees, integration grants, referral revenue, or ongoing revenue kickbacks. Importantly, these partners extend a platform’s technical footprint into specific merchant systems, turning crypto payments into a more native option across a variety of diverse sales environments (e.g. online stores, point-of-sale systems, mobile apps).
Overall, this channel/technical partner model turns crypto payments into a distribution game. Logically, the fastest way to reach 10,000 merchants is not one-by-one, but through five partners, each with 2,000 users. It also provides a regulatory shield and faster go-to-market in regions with complex licensing. For example, Binance Pay’s strategic channel partnership with xMoney earlier this year gave it access to a MiCA-compliant provider in Europe and expanded its network to over 32,000 merchants (up from 12,000 just three months prior).
The model works because it allows platforms to:
Scale geographically without building local operations.
Accelerate adoption by embedding into existing merchant tooling.
Monetize indirectly through partners while focusing core resources on improving products and infrastructure.
Innovations in Product Design
What’s perhaps most interesting about all of this is the innovation happening throughout the entirety of the payment stack. As crypto payment acceptance evolves from a basic utility into a competitive B2B offering, leading platforms are beginning to treat product design as a strategic lever rather than just a technical necessity.
This shift reflects a deeper understanding: crypto-native rails are not just cheaper or faster — they’re programmable, composable, and open-ended. And this opens the door to a new class of product innovations tailored specifically for modern merchant needs.
The Stablecoin-Centric Model
Stablecoins have become the de facto medium of settlement for both B2B and B2C crypto payments. Not only do they provide inherent stability, they unlock new primitives as well.
For example, onchain invoicing in USDC ensures deterministic settlement and removes most reconciliation errors. Atomic swaps at checkout let customers pay in a wide variety of tokens while merchants receive stablecoins — with automated DEX routing and margin buffers to guarantee price stability/execution. And recurring billing via smart contracts replaces inefficient ACH pull payments with programmable, irreversible “push” payments.
These innovations bring predictability to crypto payments, which is a critical requirement for widespread merchant adoption.
Intelligent Treasury Management
Leading platforms are beginning to embed treasury yield solutions directly into merchant wallets/accounts. This follows the thesis that earning yield on idle balances is increasingly becoming table stakes, particularly for digital assets. For example, merchants holding USDC balances on platforms like Coinbase Commerce can earn 4.5% APY, turning their idle balances into income-generating assets. More importantly, these platforms can take a share of this yield as revenue, removing business model dependency solely on transaction fees alone.
Beyond yield, things like automated diversification and smart routing allow merchants to:
Receive payments in volatile assets but convert instantly into preferred holdings.
Split incoming payments across currencies or chains based on cost and liquidity conditions.
Optimize FX routing across onchain rails (e.g. settle in EUR without touching a traditional bank).
These innovations ultimately reposition today’s payment platforms as lightweight providers of treasury solutions, offering features like cash management, FX optimization, and yield access right out of the box.
Gas Abstraction and Layer-2 Optimization
Network fees remain one of the most persistent friction points in crypto payments, especially for smaller merchants or use cases involving high-frequency transactions. To address this, companies are innovating at both the network level and the UX layer.
At the network level, many platforms are integrating with L2 networks (e.g. Base, Polygon). Many L2s offer dramatically lower fees and faster confirmation times while maintaining their L1 compatibility (e.g. Ethereum). By defaulting payments to L2 rails, platforms can reduce the cost-to-serve by an order of magnitude, making crypto competitive with legacy payment networks (especially for small transactions).
At the UX layer, platforms are implementing gas abstraction mechanisms that fully hide blockchain complexity from merchants and end users. This includes:
Gasless transactions using paymaster smart contracts: the platform sponsors the transaction fees and settles them in bulk.
Chain-agnostic smart routing: the system dynamically selects the most cost-efficient network for settlement based on real-time gas metrics and liquidity.
These approaches to gas abstraction are critical for onboarding traditional businesses that expect fixed, predictable pricing and seamless UX. The net effect of these dual-layer design choices is that merchants can offer crypto payments at even lower experienced cost than traditional methods, and with significantly greater programmability/accessibility.
Flexible Merchant Tooling and Integration
Successful providers recognize that merchants vary widely in technical sophistication, business model, and operational needs, and are designing solutions that accommodates this diversity. To support this, we’ve seen a push towards flexibility, as many platforms offer various tiers of integration with their products.
No-code payment links, QR codes, and simple checkout pages are usually ideal for freelancers, small businesses, or crypto-native service providers. These tools allow merchants to generate invoice-style payment requests in crypto simply and without touching code. Or payment links can be embedded in emails, websites, or sent directly to clients, streamlining both one-off or recurring invoicing workflows.
For merchants operating storefronts on major e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, etc., quick integrations through supported plugins are another successful solution. These tools abstract the complexity of wallet connectivity, asset routing, and settlement and allow merchants to accept crypto easily from familiar platforms. Many companies support physical point-of-sale (PoS) integrations now through technical or channel partners, enabling crypto acceptance in-store.
Beyond simple integrations and payment tooling, larger or more technical merchants often demand maximum flexibility—to route funds to custom wallets, trigger payments programmatically, or embed crypto acceptance within the broader operations of their business. For these users, robust APIs, webhooks, and thorough developer documentation are much more critical. Advanced integrations may support features like split payments, smart routing, or treasury management depending on the merchant’s needs.
By offering this modular and scalable toolkit, platforms can onboard a wide range of customers, from a single merchant seeking basic checkout/payment services to a multinational enterprise requiring full flexibility—all while minimizing engineering overhead. This also supports a progressive adoption arc: a merchant can start with something like simple payment links and graduate into API-based workflows as their crypto volumes grow or operational needs evolve.
Ultimately, flexible merchant tooling isn’t just a UX feature. It’s a retention and expansion mechanism that allows platforms to grow with their customers and deepen integration over time.
The Financialization of the Payment Stack
If there’s one key takeaway from all of this, it’s this: what began as narrow utility—enabling merchants to accept crypto payments—is evolving into a full-stack financial platform. The commerce payment stack is no longer just about facilitating money movement from point A to point B. It’s increasingly about owning the flow of funds and layering financial services around it. If payments are the wedge, then financialization is the expansion strategy.
Owning payment flows creates high value access to a merchant’s financial data (implied revenue, transaction frequency, cash cycles, etc.) and with that, the opportunity to offer adjacent financial products. Over time, I think we’ll continue to see the rollout of features like:
Stablecoin-based treasury yield.
Advance payouts based on flow data.
Embedded FX services for cross-border settlements.
Lending products collateralized by receivables or crypto balances.
B2B payroll solutions with automated payouts.
These services increase platform stickiness, raise switching costs, and potentially provide high-margin monetization layers well beyond just transaction fees.
As this convergence between payments, banking, and treasury solutions takes place, the distinction between payment tooling and and a financial operating system (OS) is increasingly blurred. Payment platforms that embrace this transition are effectively building modular fintech for Web3, creating infrastructure that can be plugged into a variety of commerce/enterprise platforms spanning both Web2 and Web3.
If traditional finance has taught us anything, it’s that whoever effectively owns the merchant’s cash flow data earns the right to offer the rest of the stack. Just as traditional fintechs used payment volume to underwrite credit or sell treasury products, crypto platforms are starting to build vertically, stacking other financial services on top of payments. As a result, I think the winners in this space will be those who recognize that payments aren’t just a product. They’re a gateway into everything else.
Conclusion and Outlook
The structural differences that we just explored—from custody and settlement to partner strategy and product design—ultimately converge on a single insight: control of the payment layer is a gateway to broader financial services.
Platforms that begin with lightweight, flexible payment offerings are well-positioned to evolve into merchant-facing entities with embedded financial services. The decision to start custodial vs. non-custodial or to pursue direct vs. channel acquisition, isn’t just tactical—it defines what kind of financial business is ultimately being built.
Going forward, it seems logical to me that the space for crypto payments in commerce will probably mature in a few key directions:
Embedded finance (e.g. treasury management, lending, etc.) will be a default feature, not merely an add-on.
Composable infrastructure will integrate across many verticals, from retail to SaaS to protocol treasuries, and cover a wide range of customer segments, each with differing preferences.
Regulatory-compliant rails that bridge traditional finance and onchain ecosystems will become table stakes.
In this context, the models that will likely prevail long-term are those that strike the right balance between UX, scalability, and financial utility. It seems likely that platforms with the following attributes are best positioned to find success:
Hybrid custody architecture that offers both non-custodial options for crypto-native merchants as well as managed solutions for traditional businesses seeking compliance/ease of use.
Layered monetization strategies beyond transaction fees that deepen revenue potential (e.g. spread on FX conversion, treasury yield generation, working capital lending revenue).
Integrated compliance tooling and KYC/KYB processes that enable seamless onboarding across jurisdictions.
Developer-first platforms with flexible APIs, SDKs, and integration layers to embed payment functionality into any given environment in any given industry.
These features merely scratch the surface of what might be possible and strategic down the line. It will be interesting to watch how these product offerings transform in this ever-evolving landscape.
For builders, the path forward is not merely about lowering transaction costs or achieving faster settlement speeds for merchants. These are baseline expectations. Success will come from building infrastructure that embeds deeply into a merchant’s day-to-day financial operations. This means offering robust APIs, prebuilt integrations with common platforms, and end-to-end tooling for value-add services like invoicing, reconciliation, and treasury management. Builders should focus on solving pain points like cross-border settlement complexity and fiat conversion (still a headache), while enabling merchants to get up and running quickly with minimal crypto knowledge.
For enterprises and ecosystem partners, the strategic priority should be to align with platforms that offer both compliance readiness and extensibility. As the regulatory landscape continues to mature, partners that demonstrate adaptability and jurisdictional expertise will be essential. Beyond compliance, value will come from infrastructure that can serve diverse merchant profiles (crypto-native startups, traditional retailers, SaaS platforms, etc.) and successfully find access to these different customers through various channels.
For investors, the winning bets will likely be on companies that do more than just process payments. Those that own the merchant relationship (and can offer adjacent financial services around it) will have higher switching costs, stronger margins, and more predictable revenue expansion.
Ultimately, long-term winners will be those who recognize that these crypto payment solutions are not just about settling digital currencies, but about strategic control over the entirety of the stack. Payments are the entry point, but platform stickiness and long-term success will likely manifest from becoming the merchant's true financial operating system.