Cost to Develop a Crypto Payment Gateway: Full 2025 Breakdown

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The Quick Answer

Building a crypto payment gateway costs between $5,000 and $500,000+, depending on whether you use an off-the-shelf SaaS product, re-skin a white-label platform, or develop from scratch. Most businesses don't need a custom build. A SaaS gateway like NOWPayments or Coinbase Commerce costs $0 up front and charges 0.5%–1% per transaction. Custom development only makes sense if you process more than $10M/month or need features no existing platform offers.

Here's a breakdown across the three main approaches:

Three Paths: Build, White-Label, or SaaS

Every company considering a crypto payment gateway faces the same fork in the road. The choice depends on transaction volume, regulatory needs, and how much control you want over the payment flow.

When SaaS Makes Sense

If you process under $1M/month and don't need deep customization, a hosted gateway is the obvious pick. BitPay has processed over $10 billion in crypto payments since 2011. Coinbase Commerce handles checkout for thousands of merchants. NOWPayments supports 300+ cryptocurrencies. You sign up, grab an API key, and start accepting payments the same afternoon.

The per-transaction fees (typically 0.5%–1%) seem high at scale, but they cover node infrastructure, wallet management, compliance, and 24/7 uptime. For most businesses under $500K/month in volume, a SaaS gateway is cheaper than maintaining even a small dev team.

When White-Label Works

White-label gateways give you a branded payment experience built on someone else's infrastructure. Companies like GoCrypto, Coinremitter, and UniPayment offer this model. You get your own dashboard, your branding on the checkout page, and some degree of customization — without managing blockchain nodes.

The sweet spot: businesses processing $1M–$10M/month that need brand consistency but can't justify a full engineering team.

When Custom Build Is Justified

A from-scratch build is warranted when you need proprietary settlement logic, operate under strict regulatory requirements (like holding a money transmitter license), or plan to be a payment gateway yourself. Exchanges like Binance Pay and Crypto.com Pay built their gateways in-house because their core business is crypto infrastructure.

Custom Build Cost Breakdown

A custom crypto payment gateway has several core components. Here's what each one costs to build with a mid-tier development team ($60–$100/hour):

Blockchain Node Infrastructure: $8K–$30K

You need full nodes for every blockchain you plan to support. Running a Bitcoin full node is straightforward; Ethereum requires significant storage (over 1 TB for an archive node). Each additional chain — Tron, Solana, Polygon — adds infrastructure and maintenance overhead.

• Bitcoin + Ethereum nodes: $3K–$8K setup + $500–$2K/month hosting
• Each additional chain: $2K–$5K setup + $200–$800/month
• Managed node services (Alchemy, QuickNode): $49–$699/month per chain, no setup

Wallet Management System: $15K–$50K

The wallet system handles address generation, key storage (typically using HSMs — hardware security modules), transaction signing, and balance reconciliation. This is the most security-critical component. A breach here means lost funds.

• HD wallet implementation: $8K–$15K
• HSM integration (Thales, AWS CloudHSM): $5K–$20K
• Multi-signature support: $5K–$15K

Payment Processing Engine: $20K–$60K

This handles invoice creation, payment detection, confirmation tracking, exchange-rate locking, and auto-conversion to fiat. The complexity scales with the number of supported currencies and the sophistication of your pricing logic.

Merchant Dashboard & API: $10K–$40K

Merchants need transaction history, settlement reports, webhook configuration, and API keys. The API itself needs to handle checkout session creation, payment status callbacks, and refund initiation.

Compliance & KYC Module: $10K–$35K

If you're operating as a licensed money transmitter, you'll need identity verification, transaction monitoring for AML, sanctions screening, and reporting tools. Services like Chainalysis and Elliptic charge $25K–$100K/year for transaction monitoring APIs. You can skip this entirely if you're building a non-custodial, no-KYC gateway like BTCPay Server.

Security & Testing: $8K–$25K

Penetration testing, smart contract audits (if applicable), rate limiting, DDoS protection, and cold storage procedures. Skipping this line item is a recipe for a hack that costs 100x more.

White-Label Solutions: $10K–$80K

White-label crypto gateways provide pre-built infrastructure that you brand as your own. Typical pricing models:

• One-time license fee: $10K–$50K for the software
• Monthly hosting + support: $1K–$5K
• Revenue share: Some providers take 0.1%–0.3% of transaction volume instead of (or on top of) license fees

Providers worth evaluating include CoinRemitter (API-first, low fees), GoCrypto (strong in EU markets), and UniPayment (supports 40+ coins with fiat settlement). Most white-label solutions launch in 2–8 weeks, depending on how much customization you need.

SaaS / Hosted Gateways: $0–$500 Upfront

Hosted solutions are the fastest path to accepting crypto. Here's a quick comparison:

For a detailed setup walkthrough, see our guide to accepting crypto payments on your website.

Tech Stack Choices and Their Cost Impact

Your technology choices directly affect development speed and ongoing maintenance costs.

Backend Language

Go and Rust are popular for crypto infrastructure because of their performance and memory safety. Node.js works for lighter-volume gateways. Python is fine for prototypes but struggles with the concurrency demands of payment processing at scale.

• Go: Large pool of crypto-experienced developers, good standard library for networking. Average rate: $80–$150/hour.
• Rust: Best performance and security guarantees, but smaller talent pool. Average rate: $100–$200/hour.
• Node.js: Fastest development time, abundant libraries (ethers.js, bitcoinjs-lib). Average rate: $50–$120/hour.

Database

PostgreSQL is the default choice. You'll need robust transaction logging, so plan for replication and point-in-time recovery from day one. Redis handles caching for exchange rates and session data.

Blockchain Interaction

Direct RPC calls to your own nodes give you the most control. Managed services (Alchemy, Infura, QuickNode) reduce operational burden but add per-request costs and a dependency on third-party uptime.

Realistic Timelines

• MVP (2 chains, basic checkout): 3–4 months with a team of 3–4 developers
• Production-ready (5+ chains, fiat settlement, compliance): 6–9 months with a team of 5–8
• Enterprise (multi-currency, multi-region, licensed): 9–18 months with 8–15 people

Most teams underestimate the time needed for security audits and regulatory approvals. Budget an extra 2–3 months for these.

Hidden Costs Most Teams Miss

The initial build is only part of the story. These ongoing costs catch many teams off guard:

Blockchain Upgrades

Ethereum's upgrades (like the Dencun upgrade in March 2024) regularly change gas mechanics and transaction processing. Each major upgrade requires testing and potentially code changes. Budget $5K–$15K per major chain upgrade.

Exchange Rate Risk

If you lock an exchange rate at checkout and settle later, you absorb the spread. Volatile markets can eat your margin. Most gateways hedge this through instant conversion, which requires an exchange integration — another $10K–$20K to build.

Customer Support

Crypto transactions sometimes fail silently, get stuck in mempool, or arrive with insufficient confirmations. You'll need support staff who understand blockchain mechanics. Budget $3K–$8K/month for a small support team.

Compliance Ongoing Costs

Money transmitter licenses in the US alone cost $5K–$50K per state, plus annual renewals. EU MiCA compliance requires ongoing reporting. A compliance officer costs $80K–$150K/year.

Security Monitoring

24/7 monitoring, incident response planning, and regular penetration testing. Budget $2K–$10K/month.

How to Cut Costs Without Cutting Corners

1. Start with 2–3 chains, not 20. Bitcoin and Ethereum (including USDT/USDC on Ethereum) cover 80%+ of crypto payment volume. Add chains based on actual merchant demand.
2. Use managed node services initially. Alchemy's free tier handles 300M compute units/month. Switch to self-hosted nodes only when the cost justifies it.
3. Adopt open-source components. BTCPay Server's codebase is MIT-licensed. You can fork and extend it instead of building from zero. Several companies have built commercial products on top of BTCPay's architecture.
4. Outsource compliance. Services like Sumsub (KYC) and Chainalysis (AML) cost less than building in-house tools and carry less regulatory risk.
5. Skip fiat settlement initially. Holding crypto and letting merchants withdraw to their own exchange account eliminates the need for banking partnerships and settlement infrastructure.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Our Recommendation

For 90% of businesses, start with a SaaS gateway. NOWPayments (0.5% fees, 300+ coins) or BTCPay Server (0% fees, self-hosted) cover most use cases. If you outgrow them, graduate to a white-label solution before committing to a custom build.

Custom development makes financial sense only when your transaction volume generates enough savings on per-transaction fees to offset $50K+ in build costs and $5K+/month in maintenance. For most companies, that crossover point is around $10M/month in processed volume.

Wondering which approach fits your B2B operation? Read our guide on the benefits of accepting crypto payments for B2B companies to understand the business case before making a technology decision.