Flat fee vs percentage: what high-volume operators actually pay for crypto payments

Most crypto payment gateways price the same way: a percentage of every transaction. CoinsPaid lists around 0.8%, NOWPayments 0.3–0.5%, Cryptomus 0.4–2%, Alphapo 1% + $0.25. It reads as small. Run the volume and it isn’t.

The percentage math

A percentage fee scales linearly with your success. Process $250,000 in deposits a month at 0.8% and you pay $2,000. Grow to $1,000,000 and the same rate costs $8,000 — every month, forever, on top of network fees. You’re handing over a slice of every deposit for infrastructure whose cost to run does not grow the way your fees do.

The flat-fee alternative

A flat monthly fee decouples price from volume. Coinflux charges $71/month (Starter) or $242/month (Growth) with a 0% cut of transactions. At $1M/month, that’s $242 versus roughly $8,000 — a difference that pays for real infrastructure elsewhere. The bigger you get, the more a percentage model quietly taxes you, and the more a flat fee wins.

When percentage wins

To be fair: at very low volume, a percentage with no monthly minimum can be cheaper than any flat fee. If you process a few thousand dollars a month, a 0.8% model might cost less than $71. Flat pricing pays off precisely when you have scale — which is exactly where iGaming operators live.

Why non-custodial makes flat pricing possible

Percentage pricing partly exists because custodial providers take on custody and settlement risk and price for it. A non-custodial gateway never holds your funds, so there’s no float to monetize and no reason to skim each transaction. Coinflux charges for the software — the watcher, the idempotent ledger, the dashboard, the webhooks — at a flat rate, and leaves your deposits entirely yours.