Affiliate disclosure: CoinCodeCap may earn a commission if you sign up for NOWPayments through links on this page. That never changes what we publish. The custody finding below is unflattering to the product, and we published it anyway.
How we reviewed NOWPayments
We checked NOWPayments’ own fee documentation, help centre and product release notes rather than its marketing pages, then compared those against what merchants report publicly. Where the company’s own sources disagree with each other, we say so and cite both. Fees, custody behaviour and support patterns were verified in August 2026.
NOWPayments review: the short version
- Fees: 0.5% on payments without exchange, 1% on multi-currency, fixed-rate and “fee paid by user” payments, plus blockchain network fees on top.
- The catch nobody has updated: since 28 May 2026, new accounts get custody switched on automatically at signup. NOWPayments holds your money until you connect a payout wallet and turn it off.
- Reputation: 4.4 to 4.5 on Trustpilot across 850+ reviews. The recurring serious complaint is sudden account blocks, and they tend to hit higher-volume merchants.
- Security: no known breach of NOWPayments itself in six years of operation.
- Best for: merchants who want wide altcoin coverage at a low headline rate and will connect an external wallet on day one.
- Skip it if: you need a named, licensed legal counterparty holding your float.
NOWPayments’ help centre says this, today: “NOWPayments is a non-custodial service: with our crypto payment processing, we don’t store your funds and never have private keys to any of your wallets.”
Its own product release notes from 28 May 2026 say something different: “Custody activated and an API key generated automatically after email confirmation, without any need to add a payout wallet.”
Both statements come from the same company. Only one of them describes what happens when you sign up today, and the NOWPayments reviews currently ranking on Google all repeat the older one.
What NOWPayments actually is
NOWPayments is a crypto payment gateway built in 2019 by the team behind ChangeNOW, the instant swap service. A merchant plugs it into a checkout, a customer pays in crypto, and the merchant receives crypto, optionally auto-converted into something more stable.
Coverage is the strongest part of the pitch. The company advertises 350+ coins and 30+ stablecoins, which is far past what most competitors carry. Its own help centre still says “75+ cryptocurrencies,” a leftover from an earlier era that nobody has cleaned up. Treat the documentation as approximate.
There’s no mandatory identity check to start. Most merchants can register and take a payment the same afternoon, which is why the service shows up so often in discussions about no-KYC crypto services. That convenience has a cost, and it appears later in this review under account freezes.
The company describes itself as “decentralized (like crypto is), with offices in the Netherlands and Estonia.” It names no legal entity and no licence anywhere in its public documentation. For a processor that may now be holding your money, that’s a real gap in your due diligence, not a stylistic quirk.
The custody change, and why it matters
For most of its life NOWPayments earned the “non-custodial” label honestly. Payments flowed through processing and landed in a wallet you controlled. Custody was an optional extra you switched on yourself. A company blog post from May 2025 spells that out: “Our partial custody solution is optional.”
That changed in 2026. New accounts now activate custody at email confirmation, before you’ve added a wallet anywhere. Payments settle into a NOWPayments balance and stay there until you withdraw them.
You can see why they did it. Skipping the wallet-connection step gets more merchants to their first transaction, and pooling payouts means one network fee at withdrawal instead of one per payment. On a busy checkout taking small amounts, that saving is real money.
The cost is that a balance sitting on NOWPayments is a balance you don’t control. If the account gets blocked, the money is inside the thing that blocked you. Read the freeze complaints further down with that in mind.
⚠️ Do this in your first five minutes. Open Payment settings, connect an external payout wallet, and switch custodial mode off. You keep the 0.5% rate and the coin coverage, and your float stops living on someone else’s balance sheet. If you deliberately want custody for the network-fee saving, set a withdrawal threshold and sweep on a schedule instead of letting a balance build.
NOWPayments fees: what you actually pay
The headline number is 0.5%, and it’s genuine, but it only covers one payment type. The company’s fee documentation lists two rates:
- 0.5% for payments without exchange, meaning the customer pays the same coin you’re settling in.
- 1% for multi-currency payments, fixed-rate payments, and “fee paid by user” payments.
Those three 1% categories cover most real checkouts. If you let customers pay in any coin they like, or you lock a price at checkout so the amount doesn’t drift while the transaction confirms, you’re on 1%. Merchants quoting NOWPayments as a flat 0.5% shop are usually describing a setup they don’t run.
Network fees sit on top and go to the blockchain, not to NOWPayments. The non-custodial flow costs two of them, one to process and one to pay out. The custody flow costs one, with a second when you withdraw. On Bitcoin or Ethereum during congestion this matters more than the percentage does, which is why coin choice affects your economics as much as the rate card. Cheap chains and stablecoins change the maths considerably.
How the rate compares
| Gateway | Advertised rate | What to check before you commit |
|---|---|---|
| NOWPayments | 0.5%, or 1% for multi-currency and fixed-rate | Custody is on by default for new accounts |
| Plisio | 0.5% | Broad plugin coverage for standard e-commerce carts |
| CoinPayments | 0.5% | Long-standing option for tail altcoins |
| Cryptomus | From 0.4% | Range runs to 2% depending on method |
| BitPay | 1% to 2% | Higher rate buys a full compliance stack and fiat settlement |
| Coinbase Commerce | Discontinued | Closed to non-US and non-Singapore merchants on 31 March 2026 |
These are advertised rates, and advertised rates are the least reliable number in this industry. Withdrawal costs, conversion spreads and settlement methods move the real total more than the headline percentage does. Compare them properly against the rest of the field in our crypto payment gateway guide.
The Coinbase row is the reason this market moved in 2026. Coinbase Commerce closed to merchants outside the US and Singapore on 31 March 2026, and its replacement is custodial and gated behind full business verification. Thousands of merchants went shopping at once, and NOWPayments was one of the obvious landing spots. If you arrived that way, the custody default deserves a second look, because leaving Coinbase Commerce for custody reasons and landing on a custodial-by-default account would undo the point of the move.
Is NOWPayments legit, or a scam?
It isn’t a scam. NOWPayments has a six-year operating record and no known breach. The useful answer is more complicated than yes or no.
What holds up. Trustpilot sits at 4.4 to 4.5 across more than 850 reviews, which is a solid score for a payments product where people mostly write in when something breaks. Positive reviews consistently cite fast payouts, straightforward integration and 24/7 support that knows crypto. In July 2026 the company published a 25-control security and compliance checklist with the security firm BlockSec, which is more than most gateways in this bracket bother to do. We found no evidence of NOWPayments itself being hacked.
What doesn’t. There’s a repeating complaint pattern, and it’s specific: accounts blocked suddenly, with compliance and support going quiet afterwards. One merchant reported in April 2026 that after more than a year of normal operation and close to $1,000,000 processed, the account was blocked without a clear reason and login access was cut off.
That pattern is the predictable shape of a service that lets you start without identity checks but still has to satisfy anti-money-laundering obligations. The verification that didn’t happen at signup happens later, usually when volume grows, and it arrives as an interruption rather than a request. A gateway that asked for documents on day one would be more annoying and less dangerous.
Stack that against custody-by-default and you get the scenario worth planning around: a frozen account holding a balance you can’t reach. Neither fact is alarming by itself, which is probably why nobody flags the combination.
One caveat on all of this. We couldn’t establish how common the freezes actually are. Trustpilot attracts people with a grievance, NOWPayments publishes no numbers, and a handful of loud cases against 850+ reviews could mean almost anything. Treat it as a risk worth structuring around, not a measured failure rate.
Who should use it, and who shouldn’t
NOWPayments fits merchants who want unusually wide coin coverage without a monthly fee, and who are comfortable managing their own wallet. Digital goods sellers, SaaS operators taking international payments, donation-funded projects and anyone whose customers hold assets no mainstream processor will touch all get real value here. It also works well as plumbing behind crypto payroll and contractor payouts, particularly now that scheduled and recurring payouts run from the dashboard.
It’s the wrong tool if you need a named, licensed counterparty. Regulated businesses, anyone with a compliance department that will ask who the legal entity is, and merchants who need guaranteed fiat settlement into a bank account should look at processors that publish their licensing. Our roundup of MiCA-licensed crypto firms is a better starting point for that requirement. Copperx is worth a look if fiat rails matter, and OpenNode if you only care about Bitcoin and Lightning.
Pros and cons
| ✅ Pros | ❌ Cons |
|---|---|
| 0.5% base rate is among the lowest available | Custody now switched on by default for new accounts |
| 350+ coins and 30+ stablecoins, well beyond the field | Real rate is 1% for multi-currency and fixed-rate checkouts |
| No mandatory KYC to start accepting payments | Recurring reports of sudden account blocks on higher-volume merchants |
| No setup or monthly subscription fee | No named legal entity or licence in public documentation |
| Scheduled and recurring payouts added April 2026 | Own documentation contradicts itself on custody and coin count |
| No known security breach since 2019 | Network fees can dwarf the percentage on congested chains |
7 frequently asked questions about NOWPayments
Is NOWPayments non-custodial?
Not by default anymore. Since 28 May 2026 new accounts activate custody automatically at email confirmation, so payments settle into a NOWPayments balance rather than your own wallet. The company’s help centre still describes the service as non-custodial, which was accurate before this change. You can restore the non-custodial flow by connecting an external payout wallet and disabling custodial mode in Payment settings.
Is NOWPayments legit or a scam?
It’s legitimate. NOWPayments has operated since 2019, was built by the ChangeNOW team, holds a 4.4 to 4.5 Trustpilot score across 850+ reviews, and has no known security breach. The recurring complaint is not fraud but sudden account blocks, usually affecting merchants as their volume grows, with support going quiet afterwards.
What fees does NOWPayments charge?
0.5% for payments without exchange, and 1% for multi-currency payments, fixed-rate payments and fee-paid-by-user payments. Blockchain network fees apply on top and go to the network rather than to NOWPayments. There is no setup fee and no monthly subscription.
Does NOWPayments require KYC?
No identity verification is required to open an account and start accepting payments. The service still runs anti-money-laundering monitoring in the background, and that is where the account-block complaints originate: checks that were skipped at signup tend to surface later, often once volume increases.
How many cryptocurrencies does NOWPayments support?
The company advertises more than 350 coins and over 30 stablecoins, which is wider coverage than most competing gateways offer. Its own help centre still states 75+, an outdated figure it has not corrected, so treat the documentation as approximate.
Is NOWPayments a good Coinbase Commerce replacement?
For many merchants, yes. Coinbase Commerce closed to non-US and non-Singapore merchants on 31 March 2026, and its replacement is custodial and limited to those two markets. NOWPayments accepts merchants globally at a lower rate. If you are leaving Coinbase specifically to avoid custody, connect a payout wallet immediately, because a new NOWPayments account is custodial until you change it.
How does the NOWPayments affiliate program work?
Partners earn 25% of the profit NOWPayments makes from the fees their referrals generate, with rewards running for five years and no cap on the number of referrals. Older reviews describing a flat $25 bonus in NOW tokens plus 0.2% per transaction are quoting terms the company no longer offers.
Bottom line
NOWPayments remains one of the cheapest and widest crypto payment gateways you can plug into a checkout, and the 0.5% base rate is real. The product has quietly stopped being what its own marketing calls it, though, and that’s the thing to act on rather than the fee.
Sign up, connect an external payout wallet before you take a single payment, and switch custodial mode off. Do that and you get the coverage and the price without handing your float to a company that won’t name its legal entity. Skip it and you’re running a custodial account you didn’t choose, at a service with a visible history of freezing accounts as they grow.
Reviewed by the CoinCodeCap editorial team in August 2026. Fees, custody behaviour and program terms were checked against NOWPayments’ own fee documentation, help centre and product release notes. Crypto payment processing carries counterparty risk; nothing here is financial or legal advice.
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