NOWPayments Review
6.0/10The coin-count leader of the crypto-gateway set: 350+ cryptocurrencies, published 0.5%/1% pricing with 0% payout fees, a sandbox you can test without KYB, and not a single license anywhere, operating from a St. Vincent and the Grenadines LLC whose terms exclude EU, UK, and US residents outright.
Our read
The breadth leader of the segment: 350+ coins, about 17 listed stablecoins, 21 fiat currencies through third-party ramps, and custom token listing no rival matches. No cards or cash leg of its own.
Zero licenses anywhere, an SVG entity in a jurisdiction with no crypto supervision, EU, UK, and US residents excluded by ToS §15.1, and a custody clause that hands held funds to an unnamed custodian. The 2.8 exists only because the exclusions are at least written down.
Public Postman docs, a full sandbox mirror with no KYB gate, widget, plugins, white label, and a casino integration guide with per-player addresses. Docked for direct-API-only reach, with no casino-platform connectors listed.
Per-transaction settlement in minutes, single-call mass payouts at a 0% service fee, and a fixed-rate option that kills volatility. Every payout product beyond pass-through requires a custody balance under the third-party clause.
Seven years in market, set against undisclosed ownership, an entity migration across two offshore registries, and reference casinos that no operator names back.
A real public rate card (0.5% mono, 1% converted, 0% payout service fee, no setup or monthly fees) puts it near the top of the segment. Deductions for the unilateral fee-change clause and unpublished third-party ramp fees.
Methodology. Our own score, a weighted average of six dimensions, tilted toward licensing and trust. Under the crypto-gateway weights, licensing and compliance alone carry 0.26 and trust another 0.18, so the 2.8 and 5.0 on those dimensions drag a coverage-and-pricing standout (8.4 and 7.8) down to a 6.0 that reads exactly as intended: excellent plumbing, unbacked counterparty. Read the full methodology
- Unmatched coverage: 350+ cryptocurrencies (Jul 2026), a dozen-plus chains, and custom token listing proven by BAZEDBET's own BAZED integration.
- Fully public pricing: 0.5% without conversion, 1% with, 0% service fee on payouts, and no setup fees, monthly fees, or turnover minimums anywhere in the terms (Jul 2026).
- Lowest trial friction in the segment: public Postman API docs, a full sandbox mirror usable before KYB, and a casino toolkit with permanent per-player deposit addresses, mass payouts, and fixed-rate volatility protection.
- Seven years of operation, and a default pass-through flow that settles each payment straight to the operator's own wallet, leaving no balance inside the system.
- The non-custodial label only covers the default flow. Custody, mass payouts, and the fiat off-ramp all park funds with an unnamed third-party custodian for which FD Transfers LLC 'does not remain responsible' (ToS §8.3), with hot-versus-cold storage at that third party's discretion.
- Zero licenses anywhere, none even claimed, and the ToS re-dated April 13, 2026 formally excludes EU, UK, and US residents (§15.1), so any EEA-facing operator using it after the July 1, 2026 MiCA cutoff is transacting with an unauthorized provider by definition.
- The corporate footprint is offshore and thin: the Seychelles entity gave way to FD Transfers LLC in SVG (re-papered Dec 2025), real operations sit in Tallinn, and no owner or executive is named anywhere.
- Balance products concentrate counterparty risk: any funds beyond pass-through sit with an unnamed custodian under SVG law, with no external supervisor and no published SLA on compliance reviews.
- Fee edges stay open: fiat ramp fees belong to unnamed third-party providers, volume discounts sit off the page with a BD manager, and ToS §11.5 lets the company change any fee unilaterally.
Curacao-grade and unlicensed crypto casinos that want maximum coin breadth (including their own token), $0 fixed costs, and a launch they can test in the sandbox this week, plus Telegram and TON-native products following the TON Poker path.
Any EEA, UK, or US-licensed operator (the ToS excludes those jurisdictions and no MiCA route exists), anyone who needs a regulated counterparty, and operators planning to run custody balances or mass payouts at scale without pricing in the custody terms.
Markets & licensing
Nothing is claimed and nothing is held. NOWPayments' site names no regulator, lists no license, and publishes no MiCA statement, and neither FD Transfers LLC nor the prior NOWPayments Ltd holds an authorization anywhere. What the paperwork does say is ToS §15.1 (re-dated April 13, 2026): services are not rendered to residents or citizens of the EU, the UK, or the US, and anyone from those places who uses them anyway does so at their own risk. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the current home, does not license or supervise crypto providers at all.
No MSB registration, no state money-transmitter licenses, and a ToS that formally refuses US residents and citizens (§15.1, April 2026). There is no compliant route for a US-facing operator here, and the at-their-own-risk carve-out means any US flow that happens anyway is contractually the user's problem.
The UK sits in the same §15.1 exclusion as the EU and US, and no FCA registration of any kind exists. A UK-licensed operator would be routing player money through a counterparty that has disclaimed the UK in writing, which is a conversation no compliance officer wants to have with the Gambling Commission.
- No licenses heldNone
- No EMI/PI, VASP/CASP, MSB, MTL, or gambling-supplier authorization anywhere, and none is claimed · SVG has no crypto licensing regime · the internal AML policy (Dec 2025) names no supervisor
Licensing tier: Post-MiCA, this is the sharpest line in the segment. CoinGate and Confirmo crossed the July 1, 2026 cutoff as authorized CASPs, while NOWPayments answered the same deadline by re-papering its terms to exclude the EU entirely, and it keeps marketing in English to everyone regardless. The AML/KYC policy is an internal rules document referencing the SVG FIU and FATF lists, with no external supervisor or audit behind it.
Not disclosed.
No regulated market can be listed because no authorization exists in any. Live usage concentrates in offshore, Curacao-grade operations, which is consistent with every casino it showcases itself.
The exclusion is contractual rather than technical: the site stays accessible and English-first everywhere, and §15.1 shifts the risk of access from excluded places onto the user. Gambling itself is absent from the prohibited-business list in ToS §14.1.5.
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.
Integration is direct REST API with x-api-key authentication and HMAC-signed IPN callbacks, documented publicly on Postman with step-by-step flows for standard e-commerce and invoice payments. A casino typically wires permanent per-player deposit addresses for pay-ins, chooses between pass-through settlement to its own wallet and a custody balance (required for mass payouts and the fiat off-ramp), and configures autoconversion or fixed-rate quotes per flow. The full sandbox at sandbox.nowpayments.io mirrors production and requires no KYB, so the build can be finished before onboarding starts. Lighter surfaces (invoices, widget, payment links, WooCommerce plugin, white label, POS) cover non-casino use cases.
Not published as a number. The no-KYB sandbox plus public docs make the practical constraint onboarding rather than engineering.
Products & tools
One gateway with two personalities: a pass-through deposit flow that settles straight to the operator's wallet, and a balance layer (custody, mass payouts, fiat off-ramp) that quietly moves your funds to an unnamed third-party custodian, wrapped in an iGaming toolkit with a no-KYB sandbox.
Crypto Payment Gateway
The deposit engine: players pay to dynamically generated addresses across 350+ cryptocurrencies and a dozen-plus chains, NOWPayments converts if asked (autoconversion runs on sister exchange ChangeNOW), and the default flow pays out to the merchant's own wallet with no balance held.
- 350+ cryptocurrencies (Jul 2026)
- Chains include ERC20, BSC, TRC20, Polygon, Solana, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and zkSync Era, plus custom token listing (BAZEDBET integrated its own BAZED token)
- Autoconversion to a settlement coin powered by ChangeNOW, with a fixed-rate option that locks the quote and moves volatility risk to the gateway
- 0.5% fee without conversion, 1% with autoconversion or fixed rate, plus network fees (Jul 2026)
- Per-currency-pair minimum payment amounts exposed through a dedicated API endpoint
- Contract-level handling for wrong-asset deposits, repeated deposits, and stuck payments (the Push feature)
Custody, Mass Payouts & Fiat Off-Ramp
The opt-in balance layer: a custody account that avoids double network fees, single-API-call mass payouts to player wallets at a 0% service fee, off-chain conversions at 0.5%, and a crypto-to-fiat off-ramp, all of which require leaving funds inside the system.
- Mass payouts to many wallets in one API call, marketed for casino player withdrawals
- 0% service fee on withdrawals and mass payouts, network fee only (Jul 2026)
- $0-fee payouts to ChangeNOW PRO accounts via API and dashboard (Jul 2026)
- Off-chain conversions between own balances at 0.5%
- Fiat off-ramp through third-party providers with their own variable, unpublished fees
- ToS §8.5 keeps legal ownership of custodied assets with the merchant
iGaming Toolkit & Integration Surface
A genuinely built-out casino vertical: permanent per-player deposit addresses, a casino integration guide, fiat on-ramp for player deposits, fixed-rate volatility protection, and the lowest-friction trial in the segment, with public Postman docs and a full sandbox that needs no KYB.
- Casino framing of the rate card: 0.5% for deposits, 0% for payouts (Jul 2026)
- Permanent per-player deposit addresses instead of one-off invoices
- Public API reference on Postman covering payments, mass payouts, conversions, recurring payments, and fiat payouts
- Full sandbox mirror at sandbox.nowpayments.io, testable before any KYB
- Fiat on-ramp for player deposits across about 21 currencies via third-party providers
- Dashboard with role-based access, withdrawal whitelisting, and 2FA, plus a personal manager 24/7 for casino merchants
The history
Sales decks get rewritten for every deal. A dated record doesn't.
NOWPayments launched in 2019 as a spin-off of the ChangeNOW crypto exchange, and the team has stayed in the same Estonia orbit ever since, with a Tallinn postal address. The paper trail moved more than the people: the ToS named NOWPayments Ltd in Seychelles (224532) as late as February 2024, an SVG vehicle called FD Transfers LLC had been formed in 2022 (1745 LLC 2022), and on December 15, 2025 the privacy and AML documents were re-papered to that SVG entity, followed by a ToS re-dated April 13, 2026 that added the EU, UK, and US exclusion. Ownership has never been disclosed, there have been no funding rounds at all, and estimates put the team between 15 and 22 people against 30M+ transactions a month.
Brands & clients on the platform
Corporate
Milestones
- 2019
Launched by the team behind the ChangeNOW exchange, with the brand kept inside the NOW product family (ChangeNOW, NOWNodes, NOW Wallet).
- 2022
FD Transfers LLC is formed in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (company number 1745 LLC 2022), three years before any public NOWPayments document points at it.
- 2024
The ToS in force (February 13) still names NOWPayments Ltd, Seychelles, registry code 224532, as the operating entity.
- 2025
Privacy and AML/KYC documents are re-papered to FD Transfers LLC in SVG on December 15, completing the Seychelles-to-SVG migration.
- 2026
The ToS is re-dated April 13 with §15.1 excluding EU, UK, and US residents.
Where they're pushing next
- Telegram and TON-native gambling, the TON Poker route
- Long-tail offshore casino brands, per its own showcase
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.
NOWPayments 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 | NOWPayments | CoinGate | CoinsPaid | Confirmo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2019 | 2014 | 2014 | 2014 |
| Team | 22+ | 50+ | 200+ | — |
| US market | Restricted | Restricted | Restricted | Restricted |
| Pricing | Public | Public | Public | Not published |
| Currencies | 21+ | 3+ | 40+ | — |
| Coins | 350+ | 20+ | 20+ | 10+ |
| EMI / PI licenses | — | Lithuania | — | Ireland |
| Settlement | Per transaction, in minutes (Jul 2026) | Weekly on Standard, weekly or on-request on Enterprise | Near-instant crypto-to-fiat at a rate locked when the payment is made (Jul 2026) | Bank-account settlements that can be fully automated and recurring, with near-instant crypto settlement (Dec 2025) |
| Instant payouts | Yes | — | Yes | — |
The take: CoinGate publishes its pricing too and holds a MiCA CASP authorization, making it the licensed counterweight at a fraction of the coin count. CoinsPaid brings the deepest gambling roster in the segment while sitting without EEA authorization, and Confirmo pairs a dual Irish license with roughly ten tokens and zero named casinos. NOWPayments beats all three on breadth, price transparency, and trial speed, and loses to all three the moment a regulator, an auditor, or a held balance enters the picture.
Settlement & commercials
NOWPayments publishes pricing. Those figures are below, and final terms still land in the contract.
Flat per-transaction percentage on deposits (0.5% mono, 1% with conversion) plus network fees, 0.5% off-chain conversions, 0% payout service fee, and per-currency-pair minimum payment amounts served through the API. Volume discounts exist but are unpublished, framed as smaller fees and customizable network fees once monthly BTC-denominated turnover hits undisclosed tiers.
Best-in-set price disclosure for crypto flows: the 0.5%/1% deposit tiers, 0% payout service fee, and 0.5% conversion fee are all printed openly, and the casino side sells the same card as a fixed commission independent of turnover. The gaps are structural. Fiat on-ramp and off-ramp fees belong to unnamed third-party providers, volume discounts route through a BD manager, and the unilateral-change clause in ToS §11.5 makes every published number provisional.
The deal
Money movement
Onboarding path
- 1Sign up self-serve and scope the build from the public Postman API reference, which needs no sales contact
- 2Run the full deposit and payout flow in the sandbox at sandbox.nowpayments.io before any KYB
- 3Pass simplified KYB with FD Transfers LLC (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), noting that ToS §15.1 excludes EU, UK, and US counterparties and §18.5 lets the company impose extra KYC at any time
- 4Make the custody decision explicitly: pass-through settlement to your own wallet, or a custody balance (needed for mass payouts and the fiat off-ramp) held by an unnamed third-party custodian under ToS §8
- 5Wire the casino specifics: permanent per-player deposit addresses, IPN callbacks, autoconversion or fixed-rate settings, and withdrawal whitelisting in the dashboard
- 6Go live keeping balances lean, reconciling effective network fees against the 0% payout headline, and sweeping custody balances on a tight cadence
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.
Who actually operates NOWPayments?+
Since late 2025, FD Transfers LLC, a St. Vincent and the Grenadines company numbered 1745 LLC 2022. Before that the contracting entity was NOWPayments Ltd in Seychelles (224532). The real team sits in Tallinn, Estonia, in the same orbit as the ChangeNOW exchange that launched the brand in 2019, and ChangeNOW's CHN Group LLC shares a Kingstown address with the FD Transfers ToS. No owners or executives are named anywhere.
Is NOWPayments licensed or MiCA-authorized?+
No, on every count. There is no EMI or PI authorization, no VASP or CASP registration, no MSB or money-transmitter license, and no gambling-supplier license in any jurisdiction (July 2026), and none is claimed. There is no MiCA application, pending or otherwise. Instead, the ToS updated April 13, 2026 answers the question by exclusion: §15.1 says the services are not rendered to residents or citizens of the EU, the UK, or the US, and anyone from those places who uses them does so at their own risk. St. Vincent and the Grenadines itself does not license or supervise crypto providers.
Is NOWPayments really non-custodial?+
Only in the default flow, where each payment passes through and settles to your own wallet with no balance held. Every product beyond that (the custody account that avoids double network fees, mass payouts for player withdrawals, the crypto-to-fiat off-ramp) requires funds sitting inside the system, and the ToS says that layer is run by an unnamed third party: §8.3 has FD Transfers LLC declining responsibility for those providers' conduct, and §8.4 leaves hot-versus-cold storage to their discretion. You keep legal ownership on paper (§8.5), but a casino running withdrawals through mass payouts is custodial in practice.
What does NOWPayments cost for a casino?+
The published rates (July 2026): 0.5% per payment without conversion, 1% with autoconversion or a fixed-rate quote, always plus network fees, and a 0% service fee on withdrawals and mass payouts. Off-chain conversions cost 0.5%, there are no setup fees, monthly fees, or turnover minimums, and volume discounts exist but sit with a BD manager, off the page. Two caveats: fiat on-ramp and off-ramp fees belong to unnamed third-party providers, and ToS §11.5 lets the company change any fee unilaterally.
How should a casino manage balances at NOWPayments?+
Keep them lean. The default pass-through flow settles each payment to your own wallet and holds nothing inside the system. Custody, mass payouts, and the fiat off-ramp all require a balance run by an unnamed third-party custodian under ToS §8, with FD Transfers LLC declining responsibility for that provider's conduct and no published SLA on compliance reviews. Contractually you are dealing with an SVG LLC and an unnamed custodian, so the practical posture is to run pass-through wherever possible and sweep any custody balance on a tight cadence.
Which casinos use NOWPayments?+
The named ones are Betfinal, BAZEDBET, and TON Poker, plus Chipstars from a blog roundup, and every one of them is a small offshore, Curacao-grade brand. NOWPayments counts 150+ iGaming partners and 30M+ monthly transactions overall, both the platform's own figures. There are no tier-1 operators and no platform-side integrations anywhere public, so the showcase roster the vendor curates is the whole visible client base.