One USDC sale through Stripe and through Fianto: fees, limits and where the money lands.

What does this comparison cover?

This post compares one-off payments only: a customer pays once in a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency that tracks the US dollar, such as USDC. Fianto publishes it, so you are reading a vendor's comparison; every Stripe fact links to a Stripe page and is dated 15 October 2026. Recurring billing is a different product on both sides, and it has its own comparison in Stripe stablecoin subscriptions vs Fianto.

Stripe's version is a payment method called Stablecoins and Crypto that you switch on inside an existing Stripe account. Fianto's version is a hosted USDC checkout that you open from your server, a payment link or a shop. They solve the same problem from opposite ends: Stripe turns the stablecoin into dollars for you, and Fianto never touches the money at all.

What happens to a 120.00 sale on each?

On Stripe

1. The customer picks Crypto on your Stripe Checkout, Payment Link or Elements form.
2. Stripe sends them to crypto.stripe.com, where they choose a stablecoin and a network and connect their wallet. Stripe's docs list USDC on Tempo, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Base, plus USDP and USDG for US businesses only.
3. The customer pays 120.00. Stripe takes 1.5%, which is 1.80.
4. Your Stripe balance shows 118.20 in your local currency. Stripe lists payout timing for the method as "Varies by network".

On Fianto

1. Your server creates a checkout session for 120.00 USDC with POST /v1/checkout-sessions, or the customer clicks Pay on a payment link or Buy in your shop.
2. The customer opens the hosted checkout and connects a Solana wallet that can sign transactions, such as Phantom, Solflare or Backpack.
3. They sign one transaction. It sends 120.00 USDC from their wallet to yours. A one-off payment carries no USDC network fee; the customer pays the Solana transaction fee, under $0.01, in SOL.
4. The checkout shows success at confirmed. At finalized, Fianto marks the order paid; for a session your server created, it sends the order.paid and checkout.session.completed webhooks. You received 120.00 USDC; there is no balance or payout after it.

Before the customer signs, Fianto checks that the wallet holds enough SOL: the wallet's own rent-exempt minimum (650,240 lamports, about 0.00065 SOL, on 15 October 2026), plus the transaction fee and a small margin. The checkout tells the customer the exact amount if they are short. A one-off payment creates no new account for the customer, so there is no rent to pay or reclaim.

How much does Stripe charge for USDC payments?

Stripe's pricing page lists stablecoin payments at "1.5% of the transaction amount in USD" as of 15 October 2026, and says the price includes "conversion to fiat, wallet and AML screening, fraud prevention, gas sponsorship". The stablecoin entry shows no fee charged to the customer. The same page lists stablecoins a second time, in its Link section: "0.8% per successful transaction", with the note "Promotional rate through January 1, 2027; + 0.2% thereafter". The page does not say how the two entries relate, so ask Stripe which rate your checkout gets.

Fianto charges the merchant nothing, and the merchant never pays a network fee. 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, so on a 120.00 sale about 0.12 to 0.60 USDC more for the customer, and still 120.00 USDC for you.

The card column uses Stripe's published US rate for domestic cards, 2.9% + 30 cents per successful transaction, read the same day. The table leaves out one cost on the Fianto side that may matter to you: you receive USDC, not dollars, and Fianto has no off-ramp. If you sell the USDC, your exchange sets that price. More arithmetic, including subscriptions, is in USDC vs card fees, worked through.

Who can accept Stripe stablecoin payments, and up to how much?

Stripe stablecoin payments are for US businesses, with a private preview elsewhere. As of 15 October 2026, Stripe's setup guide says: "Stablecoin payments are available to businesses in all US states, except New York." Its payment method page adds: "Stablecoin payments are available in private preview to businesses operating in the European Union, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Switzerland." You request the method in your Dashboard, it shows as Pending while Stripe reviews the request, and it turns on once approved. Customers can pay from anywhere except sanctioned countries, and Stripe caps each payment at 10,000 USD. Businesses outside Stripe's countries have other routes, compared in Stripe isn't available in my country.

Fianto reviews every merchant by hand before the first payment: a business profile, two-factor sign-in, and a signed message proving the receiving wallet. Fianto promises no review time. Prices run from 0.01 to 1,000,000 USDC, with up to six decimals. Whether accepting USDC is regulated where you are depends on your country; this is not legal advice.

How does the integration differ for developers?

On Stripe there is little to build if you already use Checkout, Elements or Payment Links with dynamic payment methods: Stripe shows the crypto option to eligible customers once the method is active. A Checkout Session needs every line item in usd, and Stripe's sandbox lets you test with testnet USDC.

On Fianto you create a session from your server with HTTP Basic auth and an Idempotency-Key header, which every v1 POST requires. This is the request from the Fianto docs:

curl https://api.fianto.xyz/v1/checkout-sessions \
  --user "$FIANTO_APP_ID:$FIANTO_APP_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: checkout-order_1001-1" \
  -d '{
    "mode": "payment",
    "order_id": "order_1001",
    "amount": "12.50",
    "description": "Coffee beans, 1 kg",
    "success_url": "https://shop.example/thank-you",
    "cancel_url": "https://shop.example/cart"
  }'

The order_id is yours. Creating again with the same id while its session is open returns that session, and a paid order answers 409 order_already_paid, so a retry cannot charge twice. Sessions last 30 minutes by default. Fulfil from the signed order.paid webhook, never from the customer's return to your site. There is no test mode or sandbox: you test with a test webhook event, the CLI, or a self-hosted backend. The SDK wraps all of this for Next.js, Express and Hono; the quickstart in the docs builds the route, the button and the webhook handler.

What about refunds, disputes and tax?

Stripe stablecoin refunds go through the normal Stripe refund flow, partial refunds included, and the docs say: "For stablecoin payments, the refund goes back as stablecoins in the customer's original wallet." Stripe lists dispute support as "No", so there are no chargebacks on these payments.

Fianto has no chargebacks and no refund API. A refund is you sending USDC back from your own wallet, by hand, because the money was never anywhere else. Fianto does not calculate or collect tax. How to handle a refund and write a refund policy is in how to refund a USDC payment.

When should you choose Stripe over Fianto for one-off USDC?

Stripe is the better choice when

• You are a US business outside New York, or you are in the preview, and you want dollars rather than stablecoins.
• Most of your customers pay by card and only some by crypto, and you want both in one checkout.
• Your customers hold USDC on Ethereum, Base, Polygon or Tempo, not only Solana.
• You want refunds issued from the processor, or a sandbox with testnet assets.

Fianto is the better choice when

• You want to keep USDC, in a wallet you control, with nothing deducted from the price.
• Your business cannot get Stripe's crypto payment method.
• A single sale can exceed 10,000 USD.
• You want to sell without code: a USDC payment link or a shop, both from the dashboard. A link pastes into WordPress, Webflow, Framer or Notion.

Fianto's limits: USDC on Solana only, no card payments, no fiat payout, no test mode, no tax and no refund API. Running both is reasonable: Stripe for cards and dollars, Fianto for customers who already pay in Solana USDC; adding USDC beside Stripe shows how, from a link per plan to one checkout route.