What happened to crypto payments and what your merchants need to know

• Crypto’s role in payments has become much more practical, moving away from the idea of replacing cards at checkout and toward targeted payment infrastructure use cases.

• Merchants can accept crypto without taking on direct crypto exposure, with gateways converting payments into fiat before funds reach the merchant.

• Stablecoins have removed some of the volatility that limited early crypto payment models, making them more useful for settlement and moving money across borders.

• The strongest use cases tend to appear where existing payment rails create friction, particularly around cross-border settlement, treasury movement and slower banking infrastructure.

• Adding crypto still creates operational questions for PSPs, from custody and conversion to refunds, compliance and how transactions feed into existing reconciliation processes.

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Back in 2021, a merchant asking about crypto meant one thing: could customers tap a QR code at checkout and pay in Bitcoin? Payment teams built entire roadmaps around that question. Conference stages were full of predictions that crypto would sit alongside cards within a couple of years.

That version of crypto payments never really arrived. What came instead looked quite different - and crypto has been doing real work in payments ever since. We’ve asked before whether crypto is actually becoming mainstream; this piece narrows the focus specifically for PSPs, paytechs and acquirers, walking through what changed, how crypto payments and crypto payment gateways actually function today, and what to ask before adding crypto to a merchant’s checkout.

The original pitch was simple: hold crypto, spend crypto, pay at checkout, and let merchants accept it directly. No banks in the middle, lower fees, and a checkout experience that worked the same in any country.

The reality for merchants was the same three problems, again and again:

1. Volatility made pricing unpredictable between the moment a customer paid and the moment the merchant tried to deposit it.
2. Customer demand was thinner than the headlines suggested (in fact, our own research into US and UK consumer attitudes still finds a real gap between how many people own crypto and how many actually understand or want to spend it.)
3. Accounting for crypto on a balance sheet raised tax and reporting questions most finance teams weren’t set up to answer.

The bigger idea behind crypto payments was still useful, but the problem was that accepting crypto at the checkout was only one way to use the technology. Blockchain-based infrastructure also offered a way to move value between parties without relying on traditional payment rails, and that was the idea that stuck.

At a basic level, a crypto payment still starts the way it always did: a customer chooses to pay with a digital currency instead of a card or bank transfer, and that payment moves across a blockchain network rather than through card rails or a bank’s ledger. That’s the simple version of how crypto payments work.

So when a checkout says “pay with crypto”, the merchant may never actually receive cryptocurrency. The customer pays in crypto, the provider handles the conversion, and the merchant receives the settlement in a currency they already use. 

A crypto payment gateway sits between the customer’s wallet, the blockchain, and the merchant’s usual settlement process. It’s the layer that makes the payment possible without merchants needing to become blockchain experts.

Depending on the setup, a crypto payment gateway typically handles:

• Generating the payment request or address.
• Confirming the transaction has actually settled on-chain.
• Locking or converting the exchange rate.
• Converting crypto into fiat.
• Pushing settlement into the merchant’s existing bank account.
• Producing something usable for reconciliation and reporting.

That’s how a crypto payment gateway works in outline, but PSPs shouldn’t stop there. Keeping the complexity away from merchants is useful, but it isn’t a reason to lose sight of who is responsible when something goes wrong. 

We’ve gone deeper on the encryption, consensus mechanisms and biometric layers that keep these transactions secure, but the short version for PSPs is: understand how the gateway works before you put your name behind it. 

The conversation has moved away from “Bitcoin at the checkout” and toward something less flashy but more useful: crypto payment rails running behind the scenes, doing a specific job rather than replacing everything else.

Crypto payment rails have found their place in a few specific areas:

1. Stablecoin settlement, where a token pegged to a fiat currency removes the volatility problem that sank a lot of early crypto payment ideas.
2. Cross-border payments, where correspondent banking has stayed slow and expensive for decades and blockchain settlement can clear in a fraction of the time.
3. B2B flows and treasury movement, where businesses are increasingly using stablecoins to settle with suppliers and manage liquidity across borders without waiting days for a wire to land.
4. Markets with weaker access to traditional banking or card infrastructure: crypto can provide another way to move value where existing payment infrastructure is less accessible.

The right way to think about crypto payment rails is alongside cards, A2A, and wallets, not against them. Crypto becomes one more rail a PSP can route to when it fits the transaction, not a technology looking for a reason to exist.

Once crypto is part of the stack, there are a few practical things the merchant needs to consider:

• Settlement: what currency does the merchant actually receive, and how fast does it land?
• Fees: blockchain network fees, gateway fees and conversion costs don’t map neatly onto card pricing, so comparing the two isn’t always straightforward.
• Disputes: blockchain transactions are generally irreversible, so the familiar card chargeback process doesn’t work in quite the same way.
• Volatility: if conversion happens immediately, the merchant may barely notice it. If it doesn’t, the merchant is exposed to changes in the crypto’s value.

Disputes and refunds are another area where the blockchain and merchant payment processes don’t always work in the same way. A blockchain transaction may be irreversible, but that doesn’t stop a merchant from refunding a customer through the usual commercial process. The refund still needs to be supported by the payment setup - regardless of how the original payment was settled.

Before adding crypto to a merchant’s payment mix, a few questions are worth working through with any provider:

• What does the merchant actually receive at settlement: crypto, a stablecoin, or fiat?
• Who’s responsible for conversion and any FX exposure that creates?
• Which currencies, chains and markets does the provider actually support?
• Who actually holds the crypto during the payment, and who’s accountable for compliance and transaction monitoring?
• How do refunds and disputes get handled in practice?
• Will crypto settlement show up cleanly inside the merchant’s existing reconciliation and reporting, or create a separate process to manage?
• And what happens to pricing and timing when network conditions or fees change?

The point is to understand what you’re actually adding before you add it. A new payment option only earns its place if it fits into the rest of the merchant’s setup without creating extra work.

Crypto isn’t a compelling checkout feature just because it’s crypto anymore. For PSPs, acquirers and paytechs, the better question is what specific problem a crypto rail is solving for a specific merchant. 

For one business, that might be cross-border settlement that used to take days, for another, there may be no real use case at all. Payment optionality should follow what merchants actually need, not what’s trending at a conference. 

Supporting crypto is a genuine differentiator where there’s real demand and the infrastructure fits cleanly, but adding it because a competitor has a crypto logo on their checkout page just creates one more integration somebody has to maintain.

That’s the real distance between 2021 and now. Back then, the pitch was “accept crypto because everyone will.” Today, the pitch that holds up is narrower and a lot more useful: accept it where it solves a specific settlement problem, skip it where it doesn’t, and let the merchant’s own payment mix decide - not the hype cycle.

If you’re weighing where crypto rails might genuinely fit into a merchant’s setup, or where they’d just add weight, get in touch with Aevi.