What are the best NOWPayments alternatives in 2026?

Why merchants look for NOWPayments alternatives in 2026

NOWPayments is one of the most widely integrated crypto gateways. Its homepage lists 350+ crypto coins and 75+ fiat currencies and mass payouts of up to 1,000 transactions at a time. Its signed IPN callbacks are wired into a long list of carts and custom backends. Merchants rarely search for NOWPayments alternatives because something broke. They search because one of these four things changed.

1. The custody default changed. On 28 May 2026, NOWPayments announced custody-first onboarding: new accounts get Custody "activated and an API key generated automatically after email confirmation, without any need to add a payout wallet." Its custody guide, updated the next day, says Custody "is now enabled by default for all new accounts" and that incoming payments are "settled to your NOW Payments balances." You can switch back by adding a payout wallet and disabling custodial processing. But a merchant who signed up recently and never opened those settings is holding a balance at the gateway, often without knowing it.

2. There's always a deposit address in the middle. In forwarding mode, NOWPayments' help center is clear about the path: "When your customers pay, the address they see is not yet the one you've set — it's a deposit NOWPayments address." NOWPayments uses it to track the payment and convert it if needed, then sends the funds on to your payout wallet. That's a fair design, but the customer is not paying you directly.

3. Your business changed. You opened a shop with a counter, you now pay contractors in USDC, or your finance team wants euros in a bank account. Any of these can push you toward a different model.

4. Your customers settled on stablecoins. Chainalysis' 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, published on 23 September 2026, found that "stablecoins moving across borders rose 77.5% over the period, from $124.2 billion to $220.3 billion" (July 2025 to June 2026). Stablecoin balances held between $98 billion and $109 billion through a nine-month market drawdown. When most buyers pay in USDC or USDT, a 350-coin list matters less than how and where those dollars settle.

Payzum is a non-custodial, stablecoin-first crypto payment processor: payments settle directly to wallets the merchant controls. It's one of the six alternatives below, and we'll say plainly where it doesn't fit.

What a badly planned switch costs you

Changing payment gateways is one of the few changes that can lose money quietly. These are the failures we see most often.

Orders that never get marked paid. If your handler fulfils on confirmed or sending, and the new gateway never sends those statuses, the customer pays on-chain and the order sits unpaid. Nobody notices until the support ticket arrives.

Orders fulfilled twice. Webhooks are retried. A handler that doesn't deduplicate on an event or payment ID ships the same order twice the first time a delivery times out.

A secret pasted in the wrong place. A new gateway means a new signing secret. If the old one stays in your config, every webhook fails verification with a 401, gets retried, and is eventually dropped.

Payments still arriving at the old gateway. Open invoices, payment links in old emails, saved checkout buttons and subscription renewals keep pointing at NOWPayments. Switch them all off in one evening and some customers pay into a flow you no longer watch.

A balance left behind. If your account ran in Custody, there's money in your NOWPayments balance until you withdraw it.

Concentration risk while you wait. TRM Labs' H1 2026 hacks report (1 July 2026) counted 207 hacks and $972 million stolen in six months. Infrastructure and operational compromises, attacks on "the systems, credentials, and signing infrastructure that control assets", caused about 76% of the losses while making up about 15% of incidents. Any balance a third party holds for you sits behind that kind of infrastructure, together with everyone else's money. A wallet you control has its own risks (we cover them in how a business that gets paid into its own wallet should hold crypto), but only your money is in it, and you decide how it's secured.

Four ways a crypto gateway can handle your money

Every NOWPayments alternative answers one question differently: who controls the address the customer pays, and where does the money sit afterwards?

• Custodial balance. The customer pays an address the provider controls, and the provider credits your account. You withdraw or get paid out later, in crypto or fiat. NOWPayments Custody, CoinPayments' hosted wallet, BitPay, CoinGate and Stripe's stablecoin payments work this way. The upside: no keys to manage, and fiat to a bank where the provider supports it.
• Forwarding through a deposit address. The customer pays the provider's deposit address, and the provider sends the funds on to your wallet, converting if needed. That's NOWPayments without Custody. The money is in transit through the provider, not stored there.
• Non-custodial, hosted. The provider runs invoices, checkout, network monitoring and webhooks, and the payment settles to a wallet you control. That's Payzum. Nothing to freeze, nothing to self-host. You are responsible for your keys.
• Self-hosted. You run the software yourself, and payments go to your wallet. That's BTCPay Server. No provider at all, but you own uptime, upgrades and backups.

Fees vary by volume and change every year. The custody model decides what happens on your worst day, so it's the first filter. For a deeper look at the model, see what a non-custodial crypto payment processor is.

The 6 best NOWPayments alternatives, one by one

We checked each provider's public documentation on 14 October 2026. The list is grouped by model, not ranked. We left fees out on purpose: they depend on volume and change often, so confirm them with each provider.

Before you switch: you may only need a different mode

If your only problem is the balance, NOWPayments lets you turn Custody off. Its custody guide gives two steps: add a payout wallet in the payout wallet settings, then disable custodial processing in the payment settings. After that, "incoming funds will be sent directly to your connected wallet," through the deposit address described above. If you rely on its coin list, that's the lowest-effort fix.

1. Payzum: best for stablecoins in your own wallet, online and in person

Payzum never holds, pools or controls merchant funds. The customer pays from their wallet and the payment settles in yours. It runs on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Chain and Avalanche, with typical confirmations of about 0.4 seconds on Solana and about 2 seconds on Base or Polygon. If you also accept volatile coins, optional auto-convert to USDC or USDT is available on most supported networks, and the result still lands in your wallet (how auto-convert works).

Online, you get no-code payment links and buttons, a hosted checkout (redirect, modal or inline), invoices with an expiry time and overpayment detection, recurring subscriptions and donations. At a counter, the POS shows a new QR code for every sale, cashiers sign in with a PIN, any phone works as a terminal, and there are no chargebacks. Mass payouts by CSV (BTC, LTC, DOGE) and stablecoin payouts on EVM networks live in the same dashboard.

For a team leaving NOWPayments, the migration path is the main draw. Payment webhooks use the NOWPayments-compatible IPN format: the same x-nowpayments-sig header and HMAC-SHA-512 over key-sorted JSON. Payzum's published OpenAPI contract describes the payments API as NOWPayments-compatible: snake_case fields such as price_amount, pay_currency, order_id and payment_status, authenticated with x-api-key. There are official SDKs for Node.js, PHP, Python and Rust, and 29 official open-source integrations, from WooCommerce and Magento 2 to WHMCS and GiveWP.

Limits to know: Payzum is crypto-only and never pays fiat into a bank. It doesn't support TRON, and its list is focused on major coins and stablecoins, not 350+ assets. You're responsible for the wallets you connect. Best for: merchants whose customers pay in stablecoins and who want the money in their own wallet in seconds, with no balance anyone can freeze.

2. BTCPay Server: best free option if you can run a server

BTCPay Server is open source under the MIT license and self-hosted. Its FAQ says there are "no subscriptions, no transaction fees", and that "your private keys are never required to receive payments." It's built around Bitcoin on-chain and the Lightning Network, and features such as fiat conversion come through plugins.

Best for: Bitcoin-first merchants with someone who can operate a server. If you mainly need USDC and USDT across several chains without hosting anything, it's the heavier route.

3. CoinPayments: best for a hosted multi-coin wallet

CoinPayments' homepage lists 40+ cryptocurrencies accepted for payments, and its footer states that "custodial wallet services and other virtual asset services" are provided by PaidInSatoshi Inc., Centauri Pay LLC or their partners. Its FAQ describes custodial storage solutions with security controls. If you ever move on from it, Payzum also sends a CoinPayments-compatible IPN signed with HMAC-SHA-512.

Best for: merchants who want one hosted wallet that holds several coins, and who are fine leaving funds with the provider between withdrawals.

4. BitPay: best for fiat in the bank without touching crypto

BitPay says you can "settle in fiat direct to your bank account, crypto, or a mix of both." Its business page lists 100+ coins on 6 networks, including USDC and USDT, turnkey integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, and a QR-based checkout for physical stores.

Best for: merchants whose customers pay in crypto but whose books need fiat. Conversion, settlement and country coverage are on BitPay's terms, as with any custodial provider.

5. CoinGate: best for EU businesses that want a MiCA-authorised provider

CoinGate states that its operator, UAB Decentralized, is authorised as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA by the Bank of Lithuania. Merchants can settle into EUR, USD or stablecoins. It accepts BTC, USDC and 10+ other crypto assets, and lists plugins for WooCommerce, WHMCS, OpenCart, PrestaShop and Wix.

Best for: European companies that want euros in a bank from a provider holding a MiCA authorisation.

6. Stripe stablecoin payments: best if you already run on Stripe

Stripe's documentation lists USDC on Tempo, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Base, plus USDP (Ethereum and Solana) and USDG (Ethereum) for US businesses only. Completed payments "settle in your Stripe balance in your local currency." Businesses in the US can enable it, with a private preview in the EU, Hong Kong, Mexico and Switzerland. There are no disputes, refunds go back as stablecoins to the customer's wallet, and each customer transaction is capped at $10,000.

Best for: businesses already on Stripe that want a stablecoin option and dollars in the same balance as their card sales. You receive fiat, not stablecoins, and USDT isn't on the list.

NOWPayments alternatives compared side by side

"Not compared here" means we didn't verify that capability in the provider's public documentation on 14 October 2026, so we left it out rather than guess. For a wider market view, see our guide to the best crypto payment processors in 2026.

How does Payzum compare with NOWPayments?

Both run hosted invoices and signed IPNs, and both can convert what the customer sends. The difference is where the money sits and how much of your code stays the same if you switch. Here's the head-to-head, checked on 14 October 2026.

The short version: if you want the broadest coin list, NOWPayments wins. If you want stablecoins to settle in your own wallet, plus a counter and payouts in the same account, Payzum fits, and your webhook code mostly carries over.

How to switch from NOWPayments to Payzum, step by step

If you use a cart plugin, the switch is mostly installing the Payzum plugin for your platform from the official open-source integrations and pasting your keys. If you built on the NOWPayments API, here's the order that avoids the failures above.

1. Take inventory. List every endpoint your code calls, every status it reacts to, and every place a NOWPayments link lives: emails, invoices, buttons, subscriptions. Export your last 90 days of payments and count them by coin and network, so you know what your customers actually use.
2. Set up Payzum. Create the account, complete KYC and turn on 2FA. Connect wallets you control, choose your coins and networks, and decide whether to auto-convert. API secrets are stored encrypted, and every action goes into the audit log.
3. Swap the client config, not the code. Point your base URL at Payzum, use the new API key in the same x-api-key header, and replace the IPN secret. Field names stay the same. If you called POST /v1/invoice for a hosted page, create the payment with POST /v1/payment, set pay_currency to "all" so the buyer picks the coin, and redirect to the returned invoice_url.
4. Keep your IPN verifier, tighten it. The header is still x-nowpayments-sig, signed with HMAC-SHA-512 over key-sorted JSON, so your existing check verifies with the new secret. Then reject events whose event_at is more than 10 minutes old, and deduplicate on event_id. Our guide to signed webhooks covers the details.
5. Map the statuses. Payzum sends five statuses (table below). Fulfil on finished, after checking the amount, and nowhere else.
6. Make retries safe. Send an Idempotency-Key header when you create a payment, and keep your own uniqueness check on order_id, because the contract doesn't enforce it server-side.
7. Cut over per new order. Test one small payment on the sandbox (staging.payzum.com), then switch new checkouts to Payzum. Keep the NOWPayments IPN endpoint alive until the last open invoice expires, replace old links, and withdraw any Custody balance.

Here's everything that changes in a typical config:

# Before
API_BASE=https://api.nowpayments.io
API_KEY=<NOWPayments API key>         # sent as x-api-key
IPN_SECRET=<NOWPayments IPN secret>   # checked against x-nowpayments-sig

# After
API_BASE=https://merchant.payzum.com  # sandbox: https://staging.payzum.com
API_KEY=<Payzum API key>              # still sent as x-api-key
IPN_SECRET=<Payzum IPN secret>        # still checked against x-nowpayments-sig

And here's how the statuses map:

If you'd rather not touch raw HTTP, the official SDKs verify the NOWPayments-compatible IPN for you and reject unknown statuses instead of reading them as paid.

NOWPayments alternatives in practice: six merchants, six answers

The right alternative depends on the business. Here's how the options map to real situations, including one where the honest answer is to stay.

• A WooCommerce store that signed up in June. The owner thought payments went to their wallet. They were piling up in a NOWPayments Custody balance. They install Payzum's open-source WooCommerce plugin, connect a wallet, and new orders settle to it, with order status set by the signed IPN rather than the customer's return to the site. They withdraw the old balance once the last invoice expires.
• A SaaS company with its own API integration. Its billing service calls /v1/payment and reacts to finished. Moving to Payzum means a new base URL, key and secret, a check that it never fulfilled on confirmed, and an Idempotency-Key on each invoice. The webhook verifier doesn't change.
• A café with a webshop. It used NOWPayments online and had nothing at the counter. With Payzum, the same account runs the webshop checkout and the POS: a new QR code per sale on any phone, PIN logins for each cashier, and USDC that lands in the café's wallet in seconds.
• An affiliate network paying partners monthly. It kept a Custody balance to fund mass payouts. With Payzum, it collects in its own wallet and sends mass payouts in USDC on Base or Polygon, where network costs are cents.
• A European agency whose accountant wants euros. Payzum doesn't pay out fiat. A MiCA-authorised custodian such as CoinGate, or BitPay, fits better.
• A merchant who should stay. A store whose customers pay in dozens of smaller coins, or mostly in USDT on TRON, would lose sales on a stablecoin-first, TRON-free gateway. Its best move is to stay on NOWPayments and switch Custody off if it prefers not to hold a balance there.

Common objections to switching

"We'll lose the coins our customers pay with."

Check before you decide. The 90-day export from step 1 tells you what share of revenue arrives in USDC, USDT, BTC and ETH on the networks Payzum supports. If it's most of it, you lose little. If a large share comes in coins or networks Payzum doesn't cover, TRON included, keep NOWPayments for those customers or stay entirely.

"Holding our own wallet is riskier than leaving it with the gateway."

It's a different risk, not automatically a bigger one. With a custodial balance, you depend on the provider's security, its compliance decisions and its solvency. With your own wallet, you depend on your key management: a hardware wallet or a multi-signature setup, a written recovery procedure, and more than one person who knows it. TRM's figures show where the large losses concentrate: in the infrastructure that controls pooled assets.

"Isn't NOWPayments non-custodial already?"

It depends on your settings. An older help center article (last modified April 2021) describes NOWPayments as non-custodial, forwarding each payment to your payout wallet. Since 28 May 2026, new accounts start with Custody on. Open your payment settings and check which mode you're in before you compare anything.

"The migration will take our developers weeks."

For a plugin, it's an install and a settings page. For a custom integration, it's mostly configuration: base URL, key, secret, the status map and a replay check. Plan for a careful test pass on the sandbox, not a rewrite.