Stablecoin payments for marketplaces and platforms

Is stablecoin settlement right for your platform?

Sentvia fits platforms where each payment is worth settling properly: a B2B order, a high-value listing, a subscription invoiced to a company, or a seller's monthly payout. Buyers in markets where dollar wires are slow or hard to send often already hold USDT or USDC, and paying that way is easier for them.

If you need a checkout button for thousands of small consumer payments, a crypto payment gateway is built for that. Our guide to crypto gateways and stablecoin off-ramps explains the difference, and some platforms use both.

Your revenue or your sellers' money

Before anything else, be clear whose money a payment is. It decides how the flow is set up.

Payments for your own goods or services

When a buyer pays you for something you sell, such as a subscription, a listing fee or your own stock, the money is your revenue. It settles into your named account like any other sale.

Payments you collect for sellers

When a buyer pays for a seller's goods and you pass the money on, you are moving money between other people. In many countries that can be a regulated payment activity in its own right. Take legal advice on your position before you build the flow, and tell us how it works when you apply, so we can set up your accounts to match.

How collecting from buyers works

1. Request a quote. Tell us the amount the buyer will send in USDT, USDC or EURC.
2. Lock the rate. Approve the quote; that is the rate the conversion settles at.
3. The buyer sends the stablecoins to the address we give you for that conversion. We screen the payment on arrival.
4. Receive fiat into your platform's named IBAN account, in the currency you chose. Then fulfil the order as normal.

Buyers who pay by bank transfer pay into the same named accounts, so your receipts have one home whichever way a buyer pays.

Paying sellers and partners

1. Add each seller as a beneficiary. Our compliance team reviews each one once, with supporting documents such as your agreement with the seller.
2. Instruct the payout from the account in the seller's currency, converting first if you need to.
3. Approve and release. Your own approval rules apply before any funds leave.
4. The seller is paid in fiat over the rail for that currency.

Review new sellers before their first payout is due, so a regular payout cycle runs on time. Where a seller asks to be paid in stablecoins, Sentvia can convert fiat to stablecoins and send them; raise it when you apply. Read more about first- and third-party payments and payment approval controls.

Processing times depend on currency, jurisdiction and bank rails used.

Refunds and disputes

A stablecoin transfer can't be pulled back once it is sent, so a refund is always a new outgoing payment. Write three things into your terms before you accept the first stablecoin payment:

• which currency refunds are paid in, stablecoins or the buyer's own currency
• which rate applies, since the rate on the refund day may differ from the original one
• where the refund is sent, and how the buyer shows the destination is theirs

Compliance expectations for platforms

• Your platform is verified first. We check the company, who owns and controls it, and how money flows through it before the account opens.
• Every incoming payment is screened on the blockchain before conversion, for risks such as sanctioned addresses and illicit services. See how stablecoin AML screening works.
• Source of funds for larger payments. We may ask how a buyer came to hold the stablecoins they are sending. Our guide to source of funds for stablecoin payments lists the evidence that answers it.
• Each seller is reviewed once as a beneficiary, and monitoring runs in real time on every transaction.

Your own obligations, such as checks on the sellers you let onto your platform, stay with you; ours sit alongside them. Our compliance and regulation page sets out our registrations.

Currencies

Each pair has its own page, starting with USDT to USD and USDT to EUR. See all supported currencies and stablecoins.

Which products fit

• Multi-currency accounts. Hold USD, EUR, GBP and AED side by side, so you can pay a seller in the currency a buyer paid in without converting twice.
• Named IBAN accounts. Accounts in your platform's own legal name, provided through regulated banking partners.
• Payments. Payouts to approved sellers and partners, with approval controls before release.
• Prime OTC desk. For a single large conversion, such as a month of receipts converted at once.

Payments, conversions and transaction history sit in one dashboard, on the web or in the Sentvia Pay app. For other sectors we serve, see industries.

Before you accept your first stablecoin payment

• Decide whether each payment is your revenue or money you collect for a seller, and take advice on the second.
• Start with the buyers who are already asking to pay in stablecoins.
• Choose the settlement currency for each flow, and lock the rate before a buyer sends.
• Write your refund terms: currency, rate and destination.
• Send us seller documents early, so beneficiary review is done before the first payout.

This page explains how Sentvia processes payments. It is not investment or legal advice.