Getting paid by international customers without card currency-conversion fees.

How much does an international card payment cost a merchant?

An international card payment through Stripe costs a US merchant 4.4% + 30 cents before conversion, and a UK merchant 3.15% + 20p, according to Stripe's pricing pages on 15 October 2026. Fianto publishes this post and sells USDC payments, so the card figures below are Stripe's own, linked and dated, and Stripe is only one processor among many.

Sources: Stripe US pricing and Stripe UK pricing. Conversion is required when the currency you charge in differs from the currency your bank account is paid in, so a UK seller charging an American customer in dollars and settling in pounds pays the extra 2%.

Who pays the foreign exchange fee on a card payment?

Both sides can pay one: the merchant pays the processor's conversion surcharge, and the customer may pay their own bank's foreign exchange fee. Stripe's currency documentation puts the customer side this way: "If the charge currency differs from the customer's payment method currency, their bank or card issuer might charge the customer a foreign exchange fee. The bank or card issuer might also charge the customer if the payment method and your business are in different countries, regardless of the currency used."

You never see that second fee, and you cannot remove it by pricing in the customer's currency: the last clause says the issuer may charge for a cross-border payment even when no currency changes. The customer sees it on their statement, often after the sale.

What changes when an international customer pays in USDC?

Nothing in a USDC payment converts currency: you set a price in USDC, and the customer's wallet sends that exact USDC amount to your wallet in one Solana transaction. USDC is a stablecoin issued by Circle, whose page says: "USDC is a digital dollar backed 100% by highly liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets and is redeemable 1:1 for US dollars." (Circle's USDC page). A customer in Lisbon and one in Lagos pay the same 49.00 USDC for the same product, and the same 49.00 USDC lands in your wallet.

• You pay nothing: no Fianto fee and no network fee, whatever the customer's country.
• The customer pays the Solana transaction fee, under $0.01, and needs a little SOL in the wallet for it; the checkout tells them the exact amount.
• No Fianto fee during the beta. After it, the customer pays about 0.1 to 0.5% on top of your price.
• Subscriptions add a flat 0.01 USDC network fee with each charge today, paid by the customer; one-off payments carry none.
• There are no chargebacks. A refund is you sending USDC back from your own wallet.

What the customer sees before signing is listed in the docs under what it costs, and the merchant setup in how to accept USDC on Solana.

What does a 100.00 sale to a customer abroad cost each way?

On a 100.00 sale to a customer abroad, a US merchant on Stripe pays 4.70 with an international card, or 5.70 if conversion is needed; a UK merchant pays 3.35 or 5.35; a Fianto merchant pays nothing. The card figures apply Stripe's published rates on 15 October 2026 to 100 units of the merchant's currency; the USDC row counts 1 USDC as $1.

The domestic-only version of this arithmetic, with Stripe Billing and a monthly plan, is in USDC vs card fees. The point here is the spread: on Stripe's published rates, a sale to a buyer abroad that needs conversion costs a US merchant 2.5 percentage points more than a domestic one, and a UK merchant 3.65 points more. In USDC, the buyer's country does not change your cost.

Where does the currency conversion go instead?

The conversion moves outside the payment, to the edges: the customer converts local money into USDC before paying, and you convert USDC into local money after, if you need to. Neither step happens on Fianto, and neither is free.

The customer's side

A customer who already holds USDC on Solana, from earnings, trading or a previous sale, pays no conversion at all. A customer who starts with euros or rupees buys USDC on an exchange or in a wallet app first, at that provider's rate and fee, and Fianto never sees that cost. For them, the total may be close to what a card would have cost, so do not promise international customers that USDC is cheaper for them. It is cheaper for you.

Your side

Every sale arrives as USDC in your wallet, never as pounds, euros or naira: Fianto has no off-ramp or fiat payout. If your costs are in another currency, you sell USDC through a third party when you need to, and between sales you hold a dollar-tracking balance, which is a currency position of its own. The routes and records are in turning USDC revenue into local currency. Whether you can sell at all where you are based is a separate question, covered in Stripe isn't available in my country. For an EU business, what MiCA says about stablecoins is in MiCA and stablecoins for EU businesses.

When are cards still the better option for international sales?

Cards stay the better option whenever your international customers do not already hold USDC, because asking them to buy it first adds a step and a cost. Stripe's own documentation makes the case for local prices: "Converting prices to local currencies can improve customer conversion and authorization rates, while lowering payment processing costs."

• Keep cards if your buyers are consumers in many countries who pay by card today.
• Add USDC if a meaningful share of your buyers are crypto-native, such as developers, traders or remote workers paid in stablecoins, or if card surcharges eat a thin margin on cross-border sales.
• Use USDC as the main rail only if you cannot get a card account, or if most buyers ask for it.

Fianto takes only USDC on Solana. It has no card payments, no bank transfers and no local-currency pricing, so it sits beside a card processor rather than replacing one for most international businesses. If you would rather take stablecoins inside the processor you already use, Stripe's US pricing page lists stablecoin payments at "1.5% of the transaction amount in USD", with conversion to fiat included; Stripe stablecoin subscriptions compared with Fianto covers that option, and merchants of record such as Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy and Paddle are compared in Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy and Paddle for crypto sellers.