CoinPayments Review
5.1/10The 2013-vintage crypto payment gateway, offshore in Grand Cayman with no MiCA CASP, running a horizontal 175-plus-coin gateway with published fees and a mature integration stack, out of the US market since 2019 and naming not one operator client.
Our read
175-plus coins for processing and 2,200-plus in the wallet, with real-time fiat settlement to USD, EUR, and more and auto-conversion, is among the widest coverage in the segment, held back only by no cards.
No MiCA CASP and no license anywhere, an offshore Cayman entity, and a self-imposed US exit from 2019 make this the weakest compliance file in the set.
A documented REST API, hosted checkout, a POS app, an XRPL path, and plugins for every major cart, all mature by age, but with no gambling-specific cashier or tooling.
Roughly 85% of transactions instant via GAP600, real-time fiat settlement, auto-sweep, and a cold-storage vault, discounted for a custodial model with no regulated safeguarding behind it.
Twelve years in market on an offshore, unlicensed custodial base, with no named operator client anywhere and the US market closed by the company's own exit.
A published fee card (0.5% on incoming payments, deposits free to a monthly threshold) is rare in the segment and the one place CoinPayments is more transparent than its rivals.
Methodology. Our own score, a weighted average of six dimensions, tilted toward licensing and trust. Compliance carries the segment's heaviest weight at .26 and trust .18, and CoinPayments scores near the bottom on both: deep coverage (8.0), a mature integration stack (7.0), and published fees (7.0) are real, but an offshore no-CASP license base scored 2.5 and a trust file with no named clients and no external supervision scored 2.5 pull the weighted result to 5.1, the floor of the set. Read the full methodology
- The deepest coin coverage and one of the oldest track records in the set: 175-plus coins for processing, 2,200-plus in the wallet, since 2013.
- Published fees, rare in the segment: 0.5% on incoming payments with deposits free to a monthly threshold, versus rivals who quote nothing.
- Real-time fiat settlement to USD, EUR, and more, with roughly 85% of transactions confirmed instantly via GAP600.
- A mature integration stack: a documented REST API, hosted checkout, a POS app, an XRPL path, and plugins for every major cart.
- A broad wallet and payout toolset, including a cold-storage vault option alongside the hot wallet.
- No MiCA CASP and no license anywhere: an offshore Cayman entity holding merchant funds with nothing regulated behind them.
- The US market is closed by the company's own withdrawal from 2019, fully by 2022, removing the largest regulated market.
- A fully custodial model on an offshore entity: funds sit with CoinPayments until swept, with no regulated safeguarding regime behind the balances.
- No gambling-specific tooling and no named casino client: a horizontal e-commerce gateway with a casino logo, not an iGaming-native rail.
Almost no regulated operator. The realistic user is a non-US, offshore merchant that values the coin breadth and published fees and is willing to carry the offshore-custody risk in full.
Any EU, UK, or US-regulated operator, anyone who cannot hold merchant or player funds with an offshore, unlicensed custodian, and any compliance team that needs a licensed counterparty behind custodial balances.
Markets & licensing
CoinPayments is the oldest gateway in this set and the least regulated. The operating entity, CoinPayments Inc., sits in Grand Cayman, and it holds no MiCA CASP and no EU VASP registration. The company withdrew from the US market from 2019 and had fully stopped serving US residents by 2022, so the largest regulated market is off the table by the company's own action. What remains is an offshore custodial gateway with published fees and deep coin coverage, holding merchant funds with no license behind them.
CoinPayments stopped onboarding US businesses from 2019 and had cut off US residents entirely by 2022, so there is no route for a US-facing operator regardless of state. The exit predates the current MiCA era and reflects the company choosing to leave instead of licensing up, which is the opposite of what a US-regulated book needs.
No CoinPayments entity holds an FCA authorization or cryptoasset registration, and the operating entity is offshore in the Cayman Islands. For a UK-facing operator there is no regulated leg to contract under UK rules, and the offshore custody model is the core risk to weigh.
- MiCA CASPNone
- No MiCA CASP authorization held · No EEA authorization of any kind exists
- EU VASP / EMINone
- No EU VASP registration or e-money license exists for CoinPayments Inc. · Offshore custodial gateway with no EU footing at all
- US money transmissionNone (exited)
- No US money-transmitter license. US service withdrawn 2019, fully by 2022 · The company left the US rather than license into it
- Operating entityCayman Islands
- CoinPayments Inc., Grand Cayman, the offshore holding and operating base · Founded 2013 in Vancouver. The entity and headquarters are now offshore
Licensing tier: There is no compliance tier to speak of. CoinPayments holds no license in any market, operates offshore from the Cayman Islands, exited the US by choice, and holds merchant funds in custody with nothing regulated standing behind them, which turns the licensing gap from a technicality into the central diligence problem.
Not disclosed.
No regulated-market footprint applies: the gateway holds no gambling-supplier or crypto-asset license, and its reach comes from serving merchants' own arrangements offshore rather than from any authorization of its own.
The US exit is self-imposed and complete. Beyond that, the offshore posture is the geography-adjacent risk a compliance team should treat as disqualifying for a regulated operator.
Methods & rails
What you can reach
Payout rails
Processing features
Integrations & engineering
One contract and one API instead of a separate deal per studio, feed, or PSP. Here's what connects, how fast, and on what stack.
Merchants integrate through hosted checkout, payment buttons, a POS app, a documented REST API, or a cart plugin, take 175-plus coins in, and settle into a custodial multicoin wallet with real-time conversion to USD, EUR, and other fiat. Auto-Sweep forwards or converts balances on a schedule, and roughly 85% of transactions confirm instantly through a GAP600 integration. Funds sit in CoinPayments' custody on an offshore Cayman entity, US merchants are not served, and the diligence question is the counterparty rather than the code.
Not published as a figure. Plugins and hosted pages make a basic setup fast, with the API for custom builds.
Products & tools
The original crypto gateway, built out over a decade: acceptance for 175-plus coins into a custodial multicoin wallet, real-time conversion and fiat settlement in USD, EUR, and more, auto-sweep and payout tooling, hosted checkout with plugins for every major cart, and a POS app, all on an offshore Cayman entity with no MiCA CASP and merchant funds held custodially with no license behind them.
Crypto Payment Gateway
The original product: accept 175-plus cryptocurrencies through hosted checkout, payment buttons, or the API, settle into a custodial multicoin wallet, and convert in real time to USD, EUR, and other fiat, with roughly 85% of transactions completing instantly via a GAP600 integration.
- 175-plus coins for processing, with 2,200-plus held in the multicoin wallet (Jul 2026)
- Real-time fiat settlement to USD, EUR, and more via Coinmotion and a Wyre integration
- Auto-Sweep to forward or convert a coin balance automatically each night
- Roughly 85% of transactions confirmed instantly through GAP600
- Published fees: 0.5% on incoming payments, deposits free to a monthly threshold then 0.5%
- Hosted checkout, payment buttons, and a point-of-sale app
Multicoin Wallet & Payouts
A custodial multicoin hot wallet with a cold-storage vault option, mass payouts and withdrawals to external addresses on an ASAP or nightly schedule, and auto-conversion between coins.
- Custodial multicoin hot wallet plus a cold-storage vault
- ASAP or nightly forwarding to external addresses
- Mass payouts for players, affiliates, or suppliers
- Auto-conversion between supported coins
- Consumer wallet app alongside the merchant tools
API, Plugins & POS
A REST API with documentation, hosted payment pages, and plugins for every major cart (WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, Drupal), plus a point-of-sale app and an XRPL-powered processing path.
- REST API with extensive documentation and hosted payment pages
- Plugins for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, and Drupal
- Point-of-sale app for in-store crypto acceptance
- XRPL-powered processing (2025)
- Payment buttons and email invoicing for lighter setups
The history
Sales decks get rewritten for every deal. A dated record doesn't.
CoinPayments launched in 2013 in Vancouver, Canada, one of the first crypto payment gateways, founded by Alex Alexandrov with Jason Butcher joining as an advisor in 2015 and chief operating officer in 2017 before becoming CEO in 2020. The operating entity, CoinPayments Inc., is now offshore in Grand Cayman, and Ali Rafi was named CEO in June 2025. The company grew into the segment's volume leader by merchant count, with well over 100,000 merchants, and began withdrawing from the US market in 2019, completing the exit by 2022.
Corporate
Leadership
Milestones
- 2013
CoinPayments launches in Vancouver as one of the first crypto payment gateways, founded by Alex Alexandrov.
- 2017
Jason Butcher becomes chief operating officer, on the path to the CEO seat in 2020.
- 2019
CoinPayments begins withdrawing service from US businesses, a process completed by 2022.
- 2025
Ali Rafi is named CEO, and an XRPL payment-processing case study is published.
Where they're pushing next
- Non-US, offshore merchants across e-commerce, iGaming, and forex on the existing gateway
- Coin breadth and published fees as the retained pitch, against the compliance gap
Longevity and ownership
Switching vendors is expensive, which makes the company's staying power part of the purchase. What the contract says about your data decides how expensive an exit gets.
CoinPayments vs alternatives
No two vendors describe themselves the same way, which makes their own claims hard to line up. Every name here answers the same fields, so you can see where this one sits against the closest alternatives.
| Attribute | CoinPayments | NOWPayments | CoinsPaid | Bitpace |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 | 2019 | 2014 | 2016 |
| Team | 71+ | 22+ | 200+ | — |
| US market | Restricted | Restricted | Restricted | Restricted |
| Pricing | Public | Public | Public | On request |
| Currencies | 9+ | 21+ | 40+ | 20+ |
| Coins | 175+ | 350+ | 20+ | 70+ |
| Settlement | Roughly 85% of transactions confirmed instantly via GAP600, with real-time fiat settlement to USD, EUR, and more (Jul 2026) | Per transaction, in minutes (Jul 2026) | Near-instant crypto-to-fiat at a rate locked when the payment is made (Jul 2026) | Seconds to minutes after blockchain confirmation, with auto-conversion to USD, EUR, or USDC |
| Instant payouts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The take: NOWPayments is the other breadth-first, low-license option, with a 350-plus coin catalog. CoinsPaid is gambling-native with audited billions but no EEA authorization. Bitpace is offshore-leaning with EU VASP registrations CoinPayments lacks. CoinPayments lands below all of them: the coin coverage and published fees are real, but an offshore no-CASP base, a US exit, and an empty client roster put it at the floor of the set. Use it only if you can carry that posture yourself.
Settlement & commercials
CoinPayments publishes pricing. Those figures are below, and final terms still land in the contract.
0.5% on incoming payments and deposits, with deposits free up to a monthly threshold (around $15,000 equivalent) then 0.5%, 1% on stablecoins and tokens, plus coin network fees and any partner conversion fees. Withdrawals carry the coin transaction fee.
Pricing is public and simple: 0.5% on incoming payments (1% on stablecoins and tokens), deposits free to a monthly threshold, plus network and conversion fees. There is no rolling reserve and no chargebacks on the crypto rail. The transparency is real, but it sits on an offshore custodial model whose custody terms are the commercial risk that matters most.
The deal
Money movement
Onboarding path
- 1Do the diligence before the demo: CoinPayments is offshore in the Cayman Islands with no MiCA CASP and holds funds in custody with nothing regulated behind them
- 2Confirm you are outside the US and any market where the offshore, unlicensed posture is disqualifying for your own license
- 3Decide whether the coin breadth and published fees are worth the offshore-custody exposure
- 4Scope the build from the REST API docs, a cart plugin, or hosted checkout
- 5Configure the wallet, auto-sweep, and fiat settlement, and treat the wallet as a settlement account, never a store of value
- 6Go live on published fees, keeping balances swept out and nothing parked in custody
Support & account management
You can't demo service before you sign, so what a vendor puts in writing is the only floor you can hold it to.
Frequently asked
The things operators actually ask before signing.
Is CoinPayments licensed or MiCA-authorized?+
No. CoinPayments Inc. operates offshore from Grand Cayman, and it holds no MiCA CASP and no EU VASP registration. It also holds no US money-transmitter license, which is consistent with its withdrawal from the US market from 2019. Merchant funds sit in CoinPayments' custody with no license behind them.
Can a US operator use CoinPayments?+
No. CoinPayments began withdrawing service from US businesses in 2019 and had stopped serving US residents entirely by 2022. The exit was the company's own decision, with no licensing action forcing it, and there is no US money-transmitter footprint to fall back on, so a US-facing operator has no route regardless of state.
Does CoinPayments work with online casinos?+
It runs an iGaming page and calls itself the industry's crypto payment partner since 2013, but it is a horizontal gateway: the same product serves e-commerce, forex, and iGaming, with no gambling-specific cashier, no responsible-gaming tooling, and no named casino client. An operator gets coin breadth and published fees, inherits the offshore-custody risk in full, and still lacks an iGaming-native rail.
What does CoinPayments cost, and how safe are funds?+
Pricing is published, which is rare here: 0.5% on incoming payments, with deposits free up to a monthly threshold and 0.5% above it, plus coin network fees and any partner conversion fees. Safety is the harder question. Funds are custodial on an offshore entity with no license behind them, so the safer posture is to keep balances swept out and treat the wallet as a settlement account rather than a store of value.