Coinbase Commerce closed on 31 March 2026 for every merchant outside the United States and Singapore. Its successor, Coinbase Business, is custodial, US and Singapore only, and settles in USDC. This guide compares eight replacements by custody model, geography and integration effort, and shows what migration costs in practice.
What happened to Coinbase Commerce
Coinbase folded Commerce into Coinbase Business and shut the Commerce portal on 31 March 2026. Merchants in the US and Singapore could apply for the new product. Everyone else had to move to another provider before the deadline or lose their crypto checkout. As of 13 August 2026, Coinbase’s transition page still lists only those two countries as eligible.
The shutdown date and who it affected
The deadline applied to every Commerce account. According to Coinbase’s transition notice, the merchant portal became permanently inaccessible after 31 March, charges could no longer be created, and the withdrawal tool was switched off on the same date. Merchants who had not moved funds out by then were left with their seed phrase as the only route back to their balance.
That last point mattered more than it sounds. Commerce generated a fresh receiving address for every payment, so a long-running store could have funds spread across hundreds or thousands of addresses, while a standard wallet import scans only the first twenty unused ones. Coinbase’s guidance recommended the consolidating withdrawal tool over a seed-phrase import, particularly for Bitcoin and other UTXO assets.
Figures for how many merchants were affected circulate widely, but the number most often repeated traces back to a competing provider’s blog post rather than to Coinbase. No official count exists.
What Coinbase Business is, and why it is not a replacement for most
Coinbase Business is a custodial platform with bank off-ramps, invoicing and accounting integrations. It answers a different question than Commerce did. Commerce was open globally, required no business verification, held no funds and supported hundreds of assets. Business is restricted to two countries, verifies the entity, holds the balance and settles a single stablecoin.
Coinbase publishes the comparison itself. The table below reproduces the differences that decide whether a former Commerce merchant can use it at all, as documented on the transition page and checked on 13 August 2026.
| Capability | Coinbase Commerce | Coinbase Business |
|---|---|---|
| Eligibility | Open globally, no business verification | United States and Singapore, application required |
| Custody | Merchant held the keys | Coinbase holds the balance |
| Assets | Hundreds | USDC, with USDT announced |
| Networks | Ethereum, Polygon, Base | Five major EVM networks |
| Fiat off-ramp | None | Direct bank off-ramp |
| Transaction history | Export before 31 March | Does not carry over |
Two rows in that table remove the option entirely for most readers. A merchant registered in Berlin, Toronto or São Paulo cannot apply, and a merchant who chose Commerce because funds landed in a wallet only they controlled loses that property even where the product is available. Coinbase says expansion to more countries continues through 2026 without naming them or committing to a date.
What Coinbase Payments is
Coinbase Payments is a stablecoin payment stack for platforms, not a merchant account. Launched in June 2025 and built on Base, it handles authorisation, capture and refunds through an escrow smart contract and reaches merchants through commerce platforms rather than direct signup. Shopify was its first large integration.
For a store on Shopify Payments this is worth knowing: USDC acceptance on Base arrives as a checkout option there without a separate gateway, and Coinbase’s launch announcement states that merchants receive local currency by default. For everyone else, it is infrastructure sold to platforms rather than a product a merchant integrates.
One restriction runs across all three products. Gambling appears in Coinbase’s Prohibited & Conditional Use policy, so iGaming operators were never inside this ecosystem and are not choosing between these options today.
What to look for in a replacement
Start from what Commerce actually gave you, because that defines the gap. Four properties covered most of its appeal: any merchant anywhere could open an account, funds settled to a wallet the merchant controlled, coin coverage was broad, and a hosted checkout worked without engineering work. Rank those four for your business before comparing brands.
Custody is the first fork. A non-custodial gateway forwards payments to your wallet and never holds a balance, which removes counterparty risk and usually removes fiat settlement at the same time. A custodial provider holds funds, converts them and pays out to a bank account, which is what most finance teams want.
Geography is the second. Verification requirements, payout currencies and prohibited business lists vary far more between providers than fee schedules do, and they are the reason applications get declined.
The third is integration surface: a plugin, a hosted checkout page, payment links, or a REST API with webhooks. The fourth is your vertical. Gambling, adult content and high-risk retail are refused outright by several providers, and finding this out during onboarding wastes weeks.
What a payment costs on each network right now
Network fees are paid by the customer, not the merchant, and they shape conversion at checkout more than the gateway’s percentage does. A merchant leaving Base and USDC needs to know what the alternatives cost before opening new rails. The measurements below were taken directly from each chain on 13 August 2026.
On Ethereum, the median base fee across the last 1,024 blocks was 0.065 gwei. A USDT transfer at roughly 63,000 gas therefore costs about 0.8 US cents at an ETH price of 1,885 dollars. On Base, the base fee held at 0.005 gwei across the same window, putting a USDC transfer near a tenth of a cent. On TRON, the network’s own chain parameters returned an energy price of 100 sun; a USDT transfer to an address that already holds the token consumes roughly 65,000 energy, which works out to about 6.5 TRX, or 2.17 dollars at a TRX price of 0.334. A transfer to an address holding no USDT yet costs roughly double.
That ordering surprises people who last checked in 2023. TRC-20, still described across the industry as the cheap rail, currently costs a customer several hundred times what the same payment costs on Ethereum mainnet and several thousand times what it costs on Base. Conditions change, and these are spot measurements rather than permanent facts. The practical instruction is to check before you standardise on a network, and to open more than one so the customer can choose.
Eight Coinbase Commerce alternatives compared
The eight below were selected on four criteria: they accept new merchants today, they publish their terms, they cover at least one of the properties Commerce merchants lost, and no regulator has published an enforcement action against them. Two widely listed processors were excluded under the last criterion.
| Provider | Custody | Pricing model | Integration | Settlement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speend | Merchant balance, withdrawal on demand | From 0.5%, no setup or monthly fee | WooCommerce plugin, REST API, payment links, hosted invoices | Crypto, auto-conversion to stablecoin, fiat through partner channels |
| NOWPayments | Provider infrastructure, forwarding to merchant wallet | Percentage per transaction, published on site | Plugins, API, invoices | Crypto and stablecoins |
| CoinGate | Custodial | Percentage per transaction, published on site | Plugins, API, hosted checkout | Crypto, euro payouts to bank |
| BitPay | Custodial | Percentage per transaction, published on site | Plugins, API, hosted checkout | Crypto and fiat settlement |
| BTCPay Server | Merchant runs the server, holds the keys | No processing fee, hosting and maintenance instead | Self-hosted, plugins, API | Direct to merchant wallet |
| BlockBee | Non-custodial | Percentage per transaction, published on site | API, plugins, checkout page | Direct to merchant wallet |
| MoonPay Commerce | Custodial | Percentage per transaction, quoted on request | API, widgets, Shopify, pay links | Crypto, stablecoins, USD, EUR, GBP in supported regions |
| Paymento | Non-custodial | Percentage per transaction, published on site | WooCommerce, WHMCS, API, payment links | Direct to merchant wallet |
1. Speend
Speend covers the two properties Commerce merchants lose most often: global availability and settlement the merchant controls. Payments land on a merchant balance and are withdrawn on demand to a self-custodial wallet, an exchange or a supported bank channel, so there is no single settlement route imposed on the business.
Coverage runs to 300 or more coins across 18 networks, with USDT available on TRON, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon and Solana. Pricing starts at 0.5% with no connection fee and no monthly fee, network costs pass through at blockchain rates without a markup, and Bitcoin converts to a stablecoin at 0% on arrival. Auto-conversion into a different payout currency is charged at 1% for USDT and Ethereum.
Onboarding runs through business verification rather than payer identification: KYB takes one to three working days once documents are in, and technical integration is scoped at 24 hours. A WooCommerce plugin is published for download, and stores on other platforms connect through the REST API, hosted invoices or payment links. The sandbox mirrors production, and webhooks fire on receipt and on each retry, which matters when you are rebuilding callbacks that used to point at Commerce.
Speend fits merchants who need coverage outside the two Coinbase jurisdictions, who want to decide when funds move, and who sell in ecommerce, SaaS, adult or iGaming. iGaming pricing starts at 0.2% on volume tiers and requires a current gaming licence from an accepted jurisdiction.
2. NOWPayments
NOWPayments lists more than 350 assets and 30 or more stablecoins, which is the widest coverage in this group and the closest match for a Commerce store that accepted long-tail coins. Payments route to the merchant’s wallet, with auto-conversion into a chosen settlement asset. There is no fiat payout, so a business that needs money in a bank account will pair it with an exchange. Verification requirements vary by region and vertical.
3. CoinGate
CoinGate has operated from Lithuania since 2014 and is the most conventional option here: custodial processing, a hosted checkout, plugins for the usual platforms, and euro payouts to a bank account. That combination suits European stores that want an accounting-friendly flow rather than crypto balances. The trade-off is the one Commerce merchants left behind, since the provider holds funds between payment and payout.
4. BitPay
BitPay is the oldest name in the category and the most enterprise-oriented, with fiat settlement, invoicing and a long integration list. Verification is heavier than elsewhere in this group, and its prohibited business list is worth reading before applying rather than after. A merchant who valued Commerce for the absence of paperwork will find this the largest step in the opposite direction.
5. BTCPay Server
BTCPay Server is open-source software the merchant hosts. There is no processing fee and no third party in the payment path, which makes it the purest replacement for the self-custodial part of Commerce. Bitcoin and Lightning are supported natively, other chains through community plugins. The costs move rather than disappear: server hosting, updates, key management and monitoring become the merchant’s job, and support is community-based.
6. BlockBee
BlockBee is a non-custodial gateway with 70 or more cryptocurrencies, an API, a ready-made checkout page and plugins, plus mass payouts. Its own site reports more than 100 million dollars processed by January 2026 across 10,000 or more merchants, and states no setup or monthly fees. Funds go straight to the merchant’s wallet. Fiat settlement is not part of the product.
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MoonPay Commerce sits at the other end of the range: custodial, with routing and conversion across chains, card payments for customers without crypto, and settlement in USD, EUR or GBP in supported regions. MoonPay states more than 6,000 businesses on the platform. It fits a merchant who wants crypto acceptance to behave like card acceptance, including a Shopify path, and who is comfortable with a provider holding funds in transit.
8. Paymento
Paymento is a small non-custodial gateway that never holds merchant funds and asks for no merchant verification, with WooCommerce, WHMCS, API and payment link integrations. It suits crypto-native stores that want the Commerce model preserved as literally as possible. Coverage of fiat settlement, support depth and operational tooling is thinner than at the larger providers, which is the trade being made.
Which alternative fits which merchant
Match the choice to four attributes: where you are registered, whether you need money in a bank account, what your vertical is, and how much operational work you can absorb. Those four settle the decision faster than any feature list.
A store outside the US and Singapore that wants the Commerce experience preserved should look at Speend, BlockBee or Paymento first, and at BTCPay Server if the team can run a server. A business that needs euro or dollar payouts for accounting should compare Speend, CoinGate, BitPay and MoonPay Commerce, and check payout currencies against its own banking setup.
An iGaming operator has a shorter list, since several providers refuse the vertical outright. Speend supports it from 0.2% on volume tiers against a current licence. A SaaS company billing on a schedule needs recurring charges rather than one-off checkouts: Speend signs a spending permission with the customer’s wallet at sign-up, sends a webhook if the customer revokes it, and retries failed charges at 24, 72 and 168 hours before applying the chosen fallback. A high-volume store where customers pay in one asset should compare network coverage and the checkout cost for its own buyers rather than the headline percentage.
How to migrate from one crypto payment gateway to another
Migration is four jobs: export what you will not be able to retrieve later, run both providers at once, rewrite the callbacks, then cut over. The checklist below applies to any gateway change, not only the Coinbase one, and is written to be reused the next time a provider changes its terms.
Before you switch
Export transaction history, invoices and payout records in a format your accounting system reads. Coinbase’s transition notice was explicit that history does not carry over to the new product, and the same is true of every migration in this category.
Withdraw balances to a wallet you control before the account closes. Record the wallet addresses and API credentials currently in use, then list every place a checkout link, address or webhook URL appears: your store, your invoicing tool, your emails, your documentation and any partner integration.
Running both in parallel
Keep the old provider live for new payments while the new one is tested, then reverse the priority once the first real payments settle. Overlap costs a fixed fee at most and removes the single point of failure that a hard cutover creates.
Route a small share of live traffic to the new gateway first: one product, one payment link, or one currency. Reconcile those payments against your ledger before widening the share.
Rewriting webhooks and callbacks
Webhook payloads differ between providers in field names, signature scheme and retry behaviour, so this is where most engineering time goes. Point the new gateway at a fresh endpoint rather than the old one, and keep both endpoints alive during the overlap.
Handle repeat delivery explicitly. Providers resend a webhook when they do not receive a confirmation, so an endpoint that is not idempotent will credit an order twice. Store the event identifier, ignore duplicates, and confirm receipt before running your business logic. Test the failure cases as well: underpayment, overpayment, late confirmation and a payment sent on a network you do not accept.
What breaks most often
Four things account for most incidents. Callbacks still pointing at the old endpoint, so orders sit unpaid while the money has arrived. Rounding and decimal differences between providers, which turn exact payments into underpayments. Network coverage that does not match the old set, so a returning customer sends on a chain you no longer accept. Payout addresses copied from an old dashboard without re-verification.
Test each one in a sandbox before the cutover. Speend’s sandbox mirrors production, which makes underpayment and duplicate-webhook cases reproducible before real money is involved.
What merchants got wrong during the March migration
The recurring failure was leaving funds in place. Coinbase warned that after 31 March the withdrawal tool would be disabled and that a seed-phrase import might not reveal the full balance, because a standard wallet scans a limited number of addresses and Commerce had generated one per payment.
The second failure was phishing. Migration periods produce pages that ask for a seed phrase, and this one was no exception given that Coinbase’s own recovery path involved one. No gateway needs your seed phrase to onboard you. A page that asks for it during a provider switch is stealing funds, whatever logo sits at the top.
The third was treating the deadline as the start of the project rather than the end. Business verification takes days at most providers, integration and reconciliation take longer, and both had to finish before the old checkout stopped working.
FAQ
Is Coinbase Commerce shut down?
Yes. The Commerce portal closed permanently on 31 March 2026 and no extensions were offered. Existing merchants cannot log in, create charges or process payments through it.
What replaced Coinbase Commerce?
Coinbase Business for merchants in the United States and Singapore, and Coinbase Payments as infrastructure for commerce platforms. Neither reproduces what Commerce did: Business is custodial and limited to two countries, and Payments reaches merchants through platforms such as Shopify rather than direct signup.
Is Coinbase Business available in my country?
Only if your business entity is registered in the United States or Singapore. Coinbase states that expansion to more countries continues through 2026 without naming them, so a merchant elsewhere needs another provider now rather than a place in a queue.
What is the best Coinbase Commerce alternative in 2026?
There is no single answer, because the choice turns on custody, geography and vertical. Merchants who valued self-custody and global access most tend toward Speend, BlockBee, Paymento or a self-hosted BTCPay Server; merchants who need bank payouts compare Speend, CoinGate, BitPay and MoonPay Commerce.
Does Coinbase Business allow gambling businesses?
No. Gambling appears in Coinbase’s Prohibited & Conditional Use policy across its products, which is why iGaming operators were not part of this migration in the first place.
How do I migrate without downtime?
Run both providers in parallel. Integrate and test the new gateway while the old one still processes payments, move a small share of live traffic across, reconcile it, then switch the default and keep the old endpoint alive until the last pending payment settles.
Which alternative supports Shopify and WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is covered by a plugin at most providers, including Speend. Shopify is more restrictive: some providers publish an app, and others connect through hosted checkout, payment links or the API, which is how a Speend integration on Shopify works today. Confirm the current integration path with the provider before you plan the switch.
Migrate to Speend
If your Commerce checkout is still down, or you moved to a stopgap in March and want to settle the question properly, the practical steps are short. Business verification runs one to three working days from complete documents, integration is scoped at 24 hours, and the sandbox lets you reproduce your current payment flows before any real money moves.
Start with the full comparison of crypto payment gateways if you are still shortlisting, or how crypto payment setup works if you are ready to plan the integration. Online stores can review crypto payments for online stores, and subscription businesses recurring crypto payments for SaaS. The Speend crypto payment gateway accepts applications from merchants in the jurisdictions Coinbase Business does not cover.
