USDC on Solana, Ethereum, Base or Polygon: which network to take payments on.

How this comparison was made

Fianto publishes this post, and Fianto accepts USDC on Solana only, so read it knowing which side we are on. Every network figure below comes from that network's own documentation or from Circle, read on 15 October 2026, and the sources are listed at the end. Where a network's docs give no figure, we say so instead of filling the gap.

Circle says "USDC is natively supported across 38 blockchain networks" as of June 2026, on its multi-chain USDC page. All four networks here are on that list. Native means Circle issues the token on that network itself, as opposed to a bridged copy that someone else issues against USDC locked elsewhere. How to tell the two apart on Solana is in real USDC on Solana: the mint address.

How do Solana, Ethereum, Base and Polygon compare for USDC payments?

Solana, Ethereum, Base and Polygon differ for USDC payments in the fee token the payer needs, how the fee is set and how fast a payment becomes final.

The addresses are shortened in the table; the full ones are on Circle's USDC contract addresses page. They matter because a token that copies the name USDC but has another address is not USDC.

Which network costs the payer least to send USDC?

On every one of these networks the payer needs a second token for the fee, so the question is less "which is cheapest" than "which token does my customer already hold".

• Solana. The Solana fee docs give a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, "split 50% burned / 50% to the validator", plus a priority fee of compute unit price times compute unit limit, "100% to the validator". A lamport is one billionth of a SOL. On Fianto's checkout the payer sees the Solana fee as "paid by you, under $0.01". For a one-off payment the wallet must hold about 0.00067 SOL as of 15 October 2026: the fee, a margin for a priority fee the wallet adds, and the minimum balance Solana makes a wallet keep. Only the fee is spent, and the checkout tells the payer the exact amount if the wallet is short.
• Ethereum. ethereum.org says "Gas fees have to be paid in Ethereum's native currency, ether (ETH)", computed as units of gas used times the base fee plus a priority fee, and the base fee is burned. A plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas; a USDC transfer is a call to the token contract.
• Base. Base's network fees page says "Every Base transaction consists of two costs: an L2 (execution) fee and an L1 (security) fee", and that "Typically the L1 security fee is higher than the L2 execution fee." Its one dollar figure is a floor for the L2 part alone: about $0.002 for a 200,000-gas transaction at the minimum base fee and an ETH price of $2,000. Base's connection details list ETH as the network's currency.
• Polygon. Polygon's RPC reference lists POL as the gas token for Polygon PoS mainnet.

Fees are not always the payer's. A processor or an app can sponsor them, and on Fianto renewals the payer signs nothing at all. That split is the subject of who pays the fees in a crypto payment, and the payer's SOL question has its own post, why you need SOL to send USDC.

How long until a USDC payment is final on each network?

Finality is the point after which a transaction cannot be reversed by the network, and it is the moment a merchant should treat a payment as money. Each network describes it its own way:

• Solana's RPC docs define confirmed as "a block directly voted on by a supermajority of stake" and finalized as a block the cluster recognises "as finalized with maximum lockout". Until the Alpenglow upgrade activates, scheduled for 21 October 2026, finalized takes about 12.8 seconds; Alpenglow targets about 150 ms, and confirmed and finalized become the same thing. Fianto shows the payer success at confirmed and marks the order paid, and sends order.paid, only at finalized.
• Ethereum divides time into 12-second slots and 32-slot epochs, places a checkpoint at the start of each epoch, and finalizes checkpoints once votes from at least two-thirds of staked ETH back them, per ethereum.org's proof-of-stake page.
• Base lists four stages in its transaction finality docs: a Flashblock preconfirmation after about 200 ms, an L2 block after about 2 seconds, a batch posted to Ethereum after about 2 minutes, and L1 batch finality after about 20 minutes.
• Polygon says "Milestones typically finalize a transaction within 2 to 5 seconds" in its finality docs.

The confirmed-versus-finalized gap on Solana, and why Fianto waits for the second, is covered in when a Solana payment is final.

What happens when a customer holds USDC on another network?

A customer whose USDC sits on Base, Ethereum or Polygon cannot pay a Solana checkout with it, because USDC on each network is a separate token at a separate address. Moving it across is covered in how to move USDC to Solana. Fianto's checkout builds a Solana transaction for the Solana USDC mint, so a wallet with no USDC on Solana has nothing to pay with.

The customer has two ways to get USDC onto Solana before paying:

1. Withdraw from an exchange account and choose Solana as the withdrawal network, to their own Solana wallet address.
2. Move it themselves with Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which Circle's CCTP docs describe as transferring USDC "across blockchains using burn-and-mint": burned on one network, minted natively on the other.

Why does Fianto accept USDC on Solana only?

Fianto runs on Solana because the Solana Foundation's Subscriptions program lets a customer approve a capped recurring payment once, and the program checks every later collection on chain. The program refuses any collection above the plan's cap per period, to a wallet the plan does not name, or by a signer not on the plan's list of collectors. That is what makes Solana subscriptions renew without a signature each month.

The fee split follows from it. The customer signs one transaction at checkout and pays its Solana fee, under $0.01. On each renewal, Fianto's charging key signs and is the fee payer, and on plans created since 6 October 2026 the customer pays a flat 0.01 USDC network fee per subscription charge today toward those costs. The merchant pays no fee of any kind.

When is another network the better choice?

Another network is the better choice when your customers already hold USDC there and moving it would cost you the sale. Customers paid on Base or living in Ethereum apps should not have to learn bridging to buy from you. For subscriptions, USDC autopay on Base vs Solana compares the two approval models.

In that case use a processor that accepts several networks. As of 15 October 2026, Stripe's stablecoin payments docs list USDC on Tempo, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Base, settled to the business's Stripe balance in local currency, with a customer limit of 10,000 USD per transaction. Businesses in the US can accept them; businesses in the EU, Hong Kong, Mexico and Switzerland can in private preview. Stripe stablecoin subscriptions vs Fianto compares the two in detail.

Fianto's limits, plainly: one token, one network, no bridging, no fiat payout, and a customer who needs a Solana wallet that can sign transactions. If your customers hold USDT rather than USDC, the issuer question comes first; see USDC vs USDT for accepting payments. For taking USDC on Solana step by step, start with how to accept USDC on Solana.