Stripe stablecoin subscriptions and Fianto, compared as of October 2026.

What are Stripe stablecoin subscriptions?

Stripe has two related products. Stablecoin payments let a business accept stablecoins in its normal Stripe checkout. Stablecoin subscriptions build on that, so a customer can pay a recurring Stripe Billing subscription from a crypto wallet.

Stripe announced stablecoin subscriptions on 14 October 2025. The announcement says a smart contract lets customers save their crypto wallet as a payment method and authorise recurring payments without signing each one, that subscription payments are made in USDC on Base and Polygon, and that the feature is in private preview for US businesses. As of 14 October 2026, Stripe's subscription guide still opens with a form to request access. That guide does not list which networks subscriptions support today, so the announcement's Base and Polygon is the most recent network list Stripe has published for subscriptions that we could find.

Stripe's one-off stablecoin payments cover more. As of 14 October 2026, its documentation lists USDC on Tempo, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Base, plus USDP and USDG on some networks for US businesses only, with prices shown in US dollars and a limit of 10,000 USD per transaction.

Fianto does one thing in this space: USDC on Solana, as one-off payments or as subscriptions that renew automatically. The customer approves once in their own wallet, and the Solana Foundation's Subscriptions program checks every later collection against the cap they approved.

Stripe vs Fianto at a glance

Stripe's column is what Stripe's own pages said on 14 October 2026. Fianto's column is the product as it runs today.

Who can use Stripe stablecoin subscriptions?

As of 14 October 2026, Stripe's stablecoin payments page says customers can pay from anywhere except sanctioned countries, but only businesses in supported countries can accept the payments. The supported list is the US. Businesses operating in the European Union, Hong Kong, Mexico and Switzerland can join a private preview, and the page's list also names Norway, Liechtenstein and Gibraltar. Stripe's help centre article on getting started says the method is "only available to US merchants". Stablecoin subscriptions add one more gate: the October 2025 announcement limits them to US businesses, and the guide asks for an access request.

Fianto has no list of supported business countries. A merchant signs up with an email and a password, fills in a business profile (a registered company, an unregistered business, or an individual), turns on two-factor sign-in, proves its receiving wallet with a signed message, and submits for review. A person at Fianto approves the merchant before it can take a payment. Fianto promises no review time. Fianto's terms and acceptable-use policy apply, and whether taking USDC is regulated where you are depends on your country: this is not legal advice.

On the customer's side the gap runs the other way. A Stripe customer can pick from several networks and stablecoins. A Fianto customer needs a Solana wallet that can sign transactions, such as Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or MetaMask, with USDC for the price and a little SOL for the network fee and account rent.

How much does each one cost?

As of 14 October 2026, Stripe's pricing page lists stablecoin payments at 1.5% of the transaction amount in USD, and says the rate includes conversion to fiat, wallet and AML screening, fraud prevention and gas sponsorship. The same page lists Stripe Billing at 0.7% of Billing volume on pay-as-you-go, which applies to subscriptions billed through Stripe Billing. Domestic US cards are 2.9% plus 30 cents.

Fianto charges the merchant nothing, and the merchant never pays a network fee: the price the merchant sets is what lands in its wallet. The customer pays the costs of the chain:

• A flat 0.01 USDC network fee on every subscription charge today, the first one included, on plans created since 6 October 2026. One-off payments carry none.
• The Solana fee of the transaction they sign at checkout, under $0.01.
• Account rent for a subscription: about 0.00197 SOL today for the subscription account, returned when the customer reclaims it after the subscription ends, and about 0.00163 SOL once for the wallet setup account on a wallet's first subscription, which is not returned.

There is no Fianto fee during the beta. After the beta, the customer will pay a Fianto fee of about 0.1% to 0.5% on top of the price; the merchant still pays nothing. The worked maths for a 20.00 monthly plan and a 120.00 sale, including cards, is in USDC vs card fees, worked through, and the current numbers are on the pricing page.

How does a stablecoin subscription renew on each?

Stripe's announcement describes a smart contract that lets the customer save a wallet as a payment method and authorise recurring payments without signing each one. Its guide creates a Checkout Session in subscription mode, and the customer authorises their wallet for future payments through Stripe. Renewals then run through Stripe Billing as invoices: the guide lists invoice.paid for a successful payment and invoice.payment_failed for a failed one, with the advice to email the customer and ask them to pay again.

On Fianto a subscription works like this:

1. The customer signs one transaction on Fianto's hosted checkout. It sets up the subscription with a cap per billing period, the price plus the fees, and pays the first period.
2. A monthly plan renews every 30 days and a yearly plan every 365 days. There are no other intervals and no free trials.
3. On each due date Fianto asks the Subscriptions program to collect. The program refuses any amount above the cap, any wallet the plan does not name, and any signer not on its list of collectors. The customer signs nothing at renewal.
4. If the wallet is short, nothing is taken and the subscription is past due. Fianto tries again one hour, six hours and one day into the period. After the fourth failed attempt the subscription ends, and that period is never charged later.
5. The customer cancels in the customer portal with one signature, and the subscription runs to the end of the paid period. Removing the permission in the wallet is not a cancel: the next renewal fails and the subscription goes past due.

The retry schedule is fixed; the details are in failed renewals and retries, and the cap is explained in Solana token delegation explained. Fianto sends no renewal emails to customers, so tell them yourself if you want them to know before a charge.

What happens with refunds and disputes?

As of 14 October 2026, Stripe's stablecoin page says dispute support is "No" and that "you won't have disputes that turn into chargebacks". Refunds and partial refunds go through Stripe's normal refund flow, and the money goes back as stablecoins to the customer's original wallet.

Fianto has no chargebacks either, and no refund API. A refund is the merchant sending USDC back from its own wallet, because the money was never anywhere else. That is simpler to reason about, but it is manual, and the record of it lives in your wallet rather than in a refund object. More on this in chargebacks vs crypto refunds.

How do developers integrate each one?

Stripe stablecoin payments are a payment method you turn on in the Stripe Dashboard. They then appear in Stripe Checkout, Elements, Payment Links and Invoicing, and subscriptions use a Checkout Session with mode=subscription. Stripe has a sandbox, and its guide walks through testing with testnet USDC. If you already run Stripe Billing, stablecoins are one more method on the same subscriptions, invoices and webhooks.

Fianto's server API creates a checkout session with POST /v1/checkout-sessions in payment or subscription mode, and an SDK covers Next.js, Express and Hono on the server and plain JS and React in the browser. Webhooks follow Standard Webhooks signing. A subscription sends subscription.created, subscription.renewed, subscription.past_due and subscription.ended; one-off payments send order.paid. There is no test mode or sandbox: you test with a test webhook event, the CLI, or a self-hosted backend. Payment links, coupons and the shop are dashboard only, so a merchant can sell without code. The reference is on the developers page and at docs.fianto.xyz.

When is Stripe the better fit, and when is Fianto?

Stripe fits better when

• Most of your customers have no crypto wallet. Stripe puts cards and stablecoins in one checkout.
• You want dollars in a bank account. Stripe settles stablecoin payments in your Stripe balance in your local currency; Fianto has no fiat payout.
• You already bill with Stripe and want one system for invoices, cards and stablecoins. Fianto has no invoices.
• Your customers pay on Ethereum, Base, Polygon or another network Stripe supports, or you need a sandbox.

Fianto fits better when

• Your customers already hold USDC on Solana.
• Your business is outside Stripe's stablecoin countries, or you cannot get into the preview.
• You want each payment in your own wallet, with no balance or payout in between, and no fee taken from your price.
• You want subscriptions, payment links or a shop without writing code, and a customer portal where customers cancel themselves.

Running both is reasonable: cards and Stripe for customers without wallets, Fianto for customers who pay in Solana USDC. Stripe stablecoin subscriptions are a preview, so check its pages before you decide; everything above about Stripe is dated 14 October 2026.