Stablecoins.
USDC and other stablecoins for a business: how they are backed, which network to take them on, and the rules that apply to them.
Stablecoin payments for business: a plain guide to taking USDC
Accepting stablecoin payments means a customer pays you in a dollar token such as USDC, sent from their wallet to yours in one blockchain transaction, with no card network or processor balance in between. You get money that cannot be charged back and needs no payout; you take on keeping your wallet safe, sending refunds by hand and recording each payment's dollar value. With Fianto you accept USDC on Solana only and pay nothing as the merchant; there is no Fianto fee during the beta.
StablecoinsCompareUSDC on Solana vs Ethereum, Base or Polygon: which network for payments
USDC is issued natively on Solana, Ethereum, Base and Polygon, and one USDC is the same dollar claim on each, but the network decides what the payer needs for fees and how long a payment takes to become final. Solana charges 5,000 lamports per signature, paid in SOL; Ethereum and Base charge gas in ETH and Polygon in POL. For payments the bigger difference is practical: the customer must hold USDC on the network the merchant accepts, and Fianto accepts Solana only.
StablecoinsUSDC vs USDT for accepting payments: what a merchant should compare
For a business taking payments, USDC and USDT both aim to be worth one US dollar, and the differences that matter are the issuer, how reserves are reported, who can redeem, and where each may be offered. USDT is the bigger token, about $184.6 billion issued at the end of June 2026 against $73.3 billion of USDC; on 15 October 2026 ESMA's MiCA register lists Circle as an e-money token issuer and does not list Tether. Accept the one your customers hold, and know that Fianto takes USDC on Solana only.
StablecoinsTurning USDC revenue into local currency: what Fianto does and does not do
Fianto does not turn USDC into local currency: every payment lands as USDC in your own Solana wallet, and Fianto has no off-ramp, payout or bank transfer. To get money into a bank account you sell the USDC through a third party, usually an exchange account or an off-ramp service; Circle, which issues USDC, redeems it 1:1 for dollars only for institutions through Circle Mint. Each sale is a transaction you record for tax, and nothing here is financial, tax or legal advice.
StablecoinsWhy price a subscription in USDC, not SOL: volatility, caps and trade-offs
Price a subscription in USDC because a recurring charge on Solana is capped by a fixed number of token units, and SOL's dollar value moves too much for a fixed number to stay a fair bill. On Coinbase, SOL closed at $202.55 on 14 October 2025 and $104.18 on 14 October 2026, with a low close of $62.15 on 6 June 2026, so 20 dollars took anywhere from 0.0987 to 0.3218 SOL in that year. A plan priced at 20.00 USDC asks the same amount every period; Fianto bills in USDC on Solana only.
StablecoinsThe GENIUS Act explained for merchants: dates, rules and what it regulates
Signed on 18 July 2025, the GENIUS Act (Public Law 119-27) sets the US rules for payment stablecoins such as USDC: who may issue them, what reserves back them and what issuers must publish. It takes effect on 18 January 2027 at the latest, and as of 15 October 2026 its implementing rules are still proposals, apart from one procedural interim rule from Treasury. Its obligations fall on issuers and on "digital asset service providers", and the word "merchant" appears in it only once, in an unrelated phrase. This post is not legal advice.
StablecoinsMiCA and stablecoins: what EU businesses can accept, from the regulation and the regulators
MiCA, the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, addresses its rules to stablecoin issuers, people who offer crypto-assets to the public and crypto-asset service providers. An e-money token, a stablecoin that tracks one currency, may be offered to the public in the EU only by its issuer, authorised as a bank or e-money institution with a published white paper, or by others with the issuer's written consent; as of 15 October 2026 ESMA's register lists Circle's EU entity, authorised in France, with a USDC white paper. This post quotes the regulation and the regulators with dates, is not legal advice, and does not say whether MiCA applies to your business.
StablecoinsWalletsReal USDC on Solana: the mint address, and native vs bridged USDC
Real USDC on Solana is the token whose mint address is EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v, the address Circle publishes for USDC on Solana mainnet. Anyone can create a token called USDC with the same symbol and logo; nobody can give it that address, so the address is the check. Fianto's checkout accepts only this native mint: bridged versions of USDC and lookalikes are different mints, and a wallet that holds only those cannot pay.
StablecoinsForm 1099-DA and crypto payments: what US merchants paid in USDC should know
Form 1099-DA is the IRS information return a US digital asset broker files for the sales it carries out for its customers: gross proceeds for sales from 1 January 2025, and cost basis for some sales from 2026. When a customer pays you in USDC, the customer is the one disposing of USDC and you are receiving it as payment, so the 1099-DA a merchant usually meets is the one an exchange sends after the merchant sells its USDC there. A broker using the optional stablecoin method need not report those sales at all while they stay at or under $10,000 for the year.
StablecoinsCan USDC be frozen? The freeze authority on Solana, and what it does to a payment
Yes, USDC can be frozen. On Solana the USDC mint names a freeze authority, a key that can freeze any USDC token account, and Circle's USDC terms reserve the right to block addresses and freeze the USDC tied to them. A frozen account keeps its balance but cannot send or receive USDC until it is thawed, so it cannot pay at a Fianto checkout, and each subscription renewal from it fails and counts toward the four attempts before the subscription ends.
StablecoinsHow to move USDC to Solana from another chain: CCTP, exchanges and wrapped tokens
To move USDC to Solana, either withdraw it from an exchange straight to your Solana address on the Solana network, or use Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), which burns USDC on the chain it leaves and mints native USDC on Solana. Both routes end with the native mint EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v, the only USDC a Fianto checkout accepts. Avoid any bridge that hands you a wrapped copy instead.
StablecoinsHow USDC is backed and redeemed: reading the reserve report
USDC is backed by dollar assets Circle holds apart from its own money: on 31 August 2026 its reserve report showed $73,398,532,613 against 73,320,757,305 USDC in circulation, about 85% of it in a government money market fund holding Treasury repos and bills, and most of the rest in cash at regulated financial institutions. Only holders with a Circle Mint account can redeem USDC with Circle for dollars; everyone else sells it through a third party.