On this page
- Project fee: a one-off payment link, "Ends when full" set to 1, "Ask for email" set to required. It reads Full after the client pays.
- Retainer: a monthly payment link. The client signs once; each later charge is collected every 30 days within the cap they approved, and they cancel in the portal.
- Fianto has no invoices and sends link payers no email. Keep records from the CSV exports; the IRS treats USDC received for services as income at its dollar value.
What do you need before a client can pay you in USDC?
You need an approved Fianto account and a Solana wallet that holds USDC. The steps, in order:
- Sign up with your email, the 6-digit code sent to it, and a password of 12 characters or more.
- Fill in "Who gets paid". A freelancer without a company picks individual; a studio without registration picks unregistered business; a company adds the owners who hold 25% or more.
- Turn on two-factor sign-in. It cannot be switched off, and it comes with 10 recovery codes.
- Prove the wallet you get paid to by signing a message with it. That wallet must already have a USDC token account: if it has never held USDC, send it any amount once.
- Submit for review. An admin reviews every application by hand, and no review time is promised. Links can be created and paid only after approval.
Because the proof is a signature, the receiving wallet has to be one whose keys you hold, not a deposit address at an exchange. The account steps are in the docs page on setting up your business.
How do you bill a fixed project fee in USDC?
Bill a fixed project fee with a one-off payment link that closes after one payment. In the dashboard, open Payments, then Payment links, then New link, and fill it in:
- "New product": a name the client will recognise, such as "Brand refresh for Brisklow, phase 1"; the amount in USDC, for example 2,400; "Charge": One-off.
- "Ask for email": Ask, required, so the payment carries an address you can match. Fianto does not verify it.
- "After payment, send them to": your own https page, if you want the receipt to show a Continue button.
- "Ends when full": 1. After one paid payment, the link reads Full and takes no more.
The limit matters because a payment link is reusable: anyone who has the address can pay it. A limit of 1 turns it into a one-client link. It is not airtight. Fianto checks the limit when the checkout builds the payer's transaction, just before they sign, and holds their place for 5 minutes; but money that reaches Solana always settles, so a payment that lands after its hold ran out still counts and a link can end up over its limit. Send the link to the client only, not to a public page.
Split a larger job into milestones with one link each. A link's price never changes and a link cannot be deleted, so a revised quote is a new link; close the old one from its page. A merchant can keep up to 1,000 links that are not closed. The full tour of statuses and limits is in USDC payment links.
How does a monthly retainer in USDC work?
A monthly retainer in USDC is a subscription your client approves once: it charges the same amount every 30 days until someone cancels. Create a payment link with "Charge" set to the monthly choice, which renews every 30 days, or link an existing yearly price for a 365-day retainer. Set "Ends when full" to 1 here too: for a subscription, the count is subscriptions whose first payment succeeded.
When the client opens the link, the checkout shows what they pay today, the next charge date and the most you can take per period. They sign one transaction: it pays the first period and approves the cap, which is the retainer plus the fees. After that, each charge is collected two minutes into the new period, and the Solana Foundation's Subscriptions program refuses any pull above the cap or to a wallet the plan does not name. How that works for a single URL is in a recurring payment link. A retainer paid by the second instead of by the month is the streaming model, compared in streaming payments vs per-period subscriptions.
Acme RPC
ProStops future payments. It stays active until the end of its current billing period.
The client cancels in the customer portal at fianto.xyz/my with one signature, and the retainer runs to the end of the period already paid. You can end it from the dashboard with "Cancel now" or "At the end of this period". If a charge fails because the client's wallet is short, the subscription goes past due and Fianto tries again one hour, six hours and a day after the period boundary; after the fourth failed attempt it ends. To change the amount, add a new price and send a new link: ending the old price cancels its subscribers at the end of their paid period. More on the agency side of retainers is on USDC retainers for agencies and contractors.
Monthly or yearly retainers your client approves once, plus one-off payments for extra work.
See retainers for agenciesCan Fianto send your client an invoice?
No. Fianto has no invoices. Keep writing invoices where you write them now, state the amount in USDC, and paste the payment link where the bank details used to go. To put the same link on your own site, see adding a USDC payment link to WordPress, Webflow, Framer or Notion.
Fianto sends link payers no email either. The client's proof of payment is the receipt on the checkout page and the Solana transaction signature, which anyone can look up on an explorer. On your side the payment shows under Payments and Orders, and a monthly retainer under Subscriptions.
Who pays the fees when a client pays you in USDC?
| Cost | Project fee (one-off) | Retainer (monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| You | Nothing | Nothing |
| Solana network fee, paid by the client in SOL | Under $0.01 | Under $0.01 for the first transaction they sign; they sign nothing for later charges |
| Network fee in USDC, paid by the client | None | A flat 0.01 USDC with every charge today, the first included, on plans created since 6 October 2026 |
| Account rent, paid by the client in SOL | None | About 0.00144 SOL as of 15 October 2026, returned when they reclaim it after the retainer ends, plus about 0.00119 SOL once on a wallet's first subscription, not returned |
| Fianto fee, paid by the client | None during the beta; after it, about 0.1 to 0.5% on top | The same |
So a 2,400 USDC project link puts 2,400 USDC in your wallet. For comparison, Stripe's US pricing on 15 October 2026 was 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card payment, 1.5% more for an international card and 1% more if currency conversion is needed: $69.90 on a $2,400 domestic card payment, $105.90 on an international one. The checkout shows the client the exact rent and fees before they sign. If Stripe does not serve your country at all, see Stripe isn't available in my country.
What does your client need to pay in USDC?
Your client needs a Solana wallet that can sign transactions, enough USDC on Solana for the amount, and a little SOL for the network fee; the checkout tells them the exact SOL amount. The wallet list names nine wallets, Phantom, Solflare and Backpack among them. A client who keeps USDC only on an exchange, or only on another network, has to move it to a Solana wallet first.
That is the honest limit of this route. A client whose finance team pays by bank transfer will not switch for you, and Fianto takes no cards and no bank transfers. USDC works with clients who already hold it, so offer it beside your usual bank details rather than instead of them.
How do you record USDC client payments for tax?
Record each payment with its date, its amount in USDC and its value in your own currency on that date. The IRS's digital assets page (last reviewed 2 September 2026) lists stablecoins as digital assets and says that if you receive a digital asset in exchange for goods or services in a business context, "The income would be taxed as ordinary income or a loss." It says payments received as an independent contractor are reported on Schedule C, and asks you to keep records of "The fair market value as measured in U.S. dollars of all digital assets received as income or as a payment in the ordinary course of a trade or business".
The dashboard exports four CSV datasets, payments, orders, subscriptions and customers, up to 366 days and 50,000 rows per file. A routine built on them is in accounting for USDC revenue. This is not tax advice, and outside the US the rules are your country's: ask an accountant who knows them.