BitPay vs NoHoldPay

A checkout with nothing in the way

Here is the whole NoHoldPay payer flow: your customer opens the hosted checkout, sees the amount and a QR code, sends from any wallet, and watches the status flip live as the chain confirms. First-time crypto buyers do not create anything, verify anything, or hand anyone a selfie. On eligible stablecoin routes they do not even need the network's gas token, because gasless checkout has the relay pay the fee. Behind that checkout, settlement runs on wallet material you supplied: fresh addresses from your xpub, forwarder contracts locked to your treasury, your own tagged accounts on the reference chains. Confirmation is the money arriving, not a ledger entry ahead of a settlement cycle.

The fee is 0.5% with no fixed component, which is the row small stores should stare at. A fixed 25 cents is invisible on a $500 order and brutal on a $10 one, where BitPay's documented entry tier works out to an effective 4.5 percent against our $0.05. Their percentage falls with monthly volume, and industry sources put the top tier near 1 percent plus the fixed fee, so the arithmetic converges for enterprises. It never converges for small tickets, because the fixed fee never leaves. New accounts here also start with $50 of credit, roughly $10,000 of volume before the fee applies at all.

The payer walkthrough, from their docs

We keep this section because it is the part most comparisons skip. BitPay's invoice, per their support pages read 5 August 2026: a 15-minute window opens with a locked rate. To submit payment the customer logs in or creates a BitPay account, and BitPay ID verification, a government document plus a selfie, is required before continuing when not previously completed. On Bitcoin invoices a payer-side Network Cost fee is added, which their docs explain covers BitPay's own costs of sweeping funds off invoice addresses. None of this is hidden, and for BitPay's compliance posture it is presumably necessary. But every step of it happens to the person trying to give you money, at the moment they are trying to give it to you. Count your checkout's steps the way you count its fees.

Switching from BitPay

Let your last settlement pay out, then the move is the standard one: email signup, wallets, and either the WooCommerce or OpenCart plugin, or one create-payment call and a webhook for custom carts. There is no merchant verification queue here, so timing is yours. A practical pattern for stores nervous about the jump: keep BitPay mounted for card-adjacent enterprise buyers who already hold BitPay accounts, add NoHoldPay for everyone else, and let your own checkout data pick the winner.

Where BitPay is the better fit

A US enterprise that wants dollars in the bank next business day, 1099-K paperwork, an account manager, and a brand the finance team already knows is BitPay's home turf, and they have held it since 2011. Their stablecoin volume is real, 40 percent of their 2025 payments by their own announcement, their EU operation is MiCA-licensed as of July 2026, and they ship Lightning, which we do not. High-volume merchants also eventually out-negotiate our flat rate through their tiers. For that profile, the payer friction is a cost their buyers already paid.

Common questions

What does BitPay offer that NoHoldPay does not?

Fiat settlement in nine currencies to banks in 37 countries, US tax paperwork, Bitcoin Lightning, Shopify and Magento plugins, enterprise support, and a MiCA-licensed EU operation. A business that wants bank money and a compliance department to lean on is better served by BitPay.

Do customers really need a BitPay account to pay?

That is what BitPay's own support documentation describes as of August 2026: submitting an invoice payment requires logging in or creating an account, with document-and-selfie verification when not previously completed. Flows change, so check their current docs. NoHoldPay's checkout has no account or identity step.

Which is cheaper for a store with a $15 average order?

At BitPay's documented entry tier, 2 percent plus 25 cents is about 55 cents on a $15 order, an effective 3.7 percent. At NoHoldPay's flat 0.5% it is about $0.08. The gap narrows as tickets grow and as BitPay's volume tiers engage, and it never fully closes while the fixed fee exists.

Does BitPay hold merchant funds?

Payments land on BitPay's invoice addresses and are credited to a ledger, with settlement the next business day above per-currency minimums, in fiat or in crypto that BitPay sends to your wallet while covering the payout miner fee. Their terms frame it as holding until settlement. It is a short window, and it is still a window.