How to pay with crypto, step by step

Every order is paid on NOWPayments' payment page. Why we only take crypto covers the reason and where to buy crypto safely. This guide is for our checkout and the payment page itself.

Get the coin before you check out

An order waits 3 hours for its payment and then cancels itself. An exchange's ID check can take longer than that, so buy the coin first and check out once it's in your account.

The order is priced in US dollars, and the payment page works out how much of your coin that is.

Which coin

We take every coin NOWPayments supports, and the payment page lists them all. Buy exactly the coin you'll pay with, because paying with something else means converting it first and paying fees twice.

• A stablecoin like USDT or USDC is pegged to the dollar.
  The price won't drift while you pay. The same coin runs on several networks, so check which one the page names.
• Bitcoin is on almost every app, but it's slower.
  It can take ten minutes to an hour to confirm, and its fee goes up when the network is busy.

Exchange or wallet

You can pay from either.

• An exchange holds the coins for you.
  Coinbase and Kraken are exchanges, and apps like Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Revolut work the same way. The first time you send coins out, it may ask you to confirm who you're or hold the withdrawal for a while.
• A wallet is an app where you hold the coins yourself.
  You move them from the exchange into it first. It's one more step, but you see exactly what leaves when you press send.

For a first order, sending straight from the exchange is fine. Just read its send screen carefully, because that's where most short payments come from.

The network fee

Every send pays a small fee to the network, and it comes out of your coins. What counts is that the full amount on the payment page arrives.

• If your exchange adds the fee on top, send the exact amount the page shows.
• If it takes the fee out of what you type, the other side gets less than you typed. Look for a line like "recipient gets" or "you'll receive" and make that match the payment page, even if it means typing a slightly bigger number.

That's why you buy a little more than the order costs.

Paying, step by step

You don't have to keep the page open. Your order shows Waiting for payment until the coins confirm. Then you get a Payment confirmed email, and your order page moves on to shipping, or to the Your card details box for firmware. If your balance covers the whole order, the button says Place order instead and there's nothing to send.

If it says "Paid too little"

That's NOWPayments' "partially paid": coins arrived, but fewer than the order asked for. Usually the exchange took its fee out of the amount.

The order doesn't go ahead until it's paid in full, and it doesn't cancel itself either, so what you sent isn't lost. Your order page shows Paid too little with what arrived, what was asked for and what's still owed, in the same coin.

Send the rest, then open a ticket in our Discord with your order number and both TXIDs. NOWPayments records a second send as a separate payment, so our team checks both and confirms your order by hand.

Sent the wrong coin or network

Coins sent that way usually never reach the payment page, and we can't promise to get them back. Open a ticket with your TXID straight away anyway, and we'll look.

Crypto payments are final. Nobody can reverse them, us included, so check the network and the address before you press send.

If your order cancelled itself

An order where nothing arrived cancels itself after 3 hours, and nothing is charged. Any balance you put towards it goes back on your account, and you get an email saying so. Add the items again when you have the coin ready.

If you did send coins and the order still cancelled, they still reach us, and our team sorts it out by hand. Open a ticket with your order number and TXID.

Once it confirms, After you order covers what happens next.