Crypto Payment Gateway

A crypto payment gateway is a merchant service that accepts cryptocurrency at checkout: it prices the order, watches the blockchain for the incoming payment, and can convert the proceeds into local currency. It spares the merchant from handling private keys and from price movement between order and settlement, in exchange for a fee and a degree of custody over funds in transit. Gateways set a confirmation policy — how many blocks to wait before treating a payment as final — and define rules for underpayment, overpayment, refunds, and invoice expiry. Because the gateway is a regulated intermediary, it verifies merchant identity, can suspend payouts, and represents counterparty risk that a direct wallet-to-wallet payment would not create.