NOWPayments vs Plisio

How much is the coverage worth?#

NOWPayments publishes the longest asset list of any provider here by a wide margin, and Plisio publishes one of the shortest. Twelve assets covers a business whose customers pay in Bitcoin and a stablecoin, and loses anyone outside that.

The loss is invisible, which is what makes it easy to underestimate. A customer who cannot pay in the asset they hold does not file a complaint, they simply do not buy, and no report will ever attribute the missing revenue to the asset list.

Is half the rate worth half the coverage?#

On a hundred thousand of monthly volume the rate difference is around five hundred a month. Whether losing occasional international sales costs more than that is a question about your customer base rather than about either provider.

There is also a floor caveat on both sides. Neither publishes conversion cost, so 0.5% and 1% are both starting points and the gap between them could narrow or widen once the spread is known.

What separates them beyond price and breadth?#

Plisio prices white label openly at 1.5%, which NOWPayments does not publish at all, and supports Monero and Zcash, which almost nobody does.

NOWPayments is documented as non custodial, so settlement reaches a wallet you control rather than a provider balance. For a merchant who intends to hold crypto anyway, that removes the one risk in this category you cannot recover from, as the custody guide argues.

Which should you shortlist?#

Shortlist NOWPayments if you sell internationally, if the asset mix of your customers is unpredictable, or if custody matters to you. Shortlist Plisio if your customers pay in a handful of known assets, if you need privacy coins, or if white label is on the roadmap.

Both are worth asking the same three written questions: conversion spread, payout cost, and what merchant verification actually requires. Neither publishes any of the three.

Both non custodial, which is unusual for a pair#

Most comparisons in this index put a custodial provider against a non custodial one, and the custody question then dominates. Here both are documented non custodial, so it drops out entirely and the comparison becomes purely coverage against price.

That makes this an unusually clean trade. Neither provider is asking you to accept counterparty risk, and neither can offer fiat settlement.

What the shared gap means#

Both sit at 68% disclosure and both withhold the same fields: conversion and payout. So the 0.5% and the 1% are floors measured the same way, which at least makes them comparable to each other even if neither is a total.

Send both the same two questions. Because the gaps are identical, the replies will be directly comparable in a way they usually are not.

What to send both of them#

The same two questions to both, which is unusual and useful: what is the conversion spread, and what does a payout cost. Both withhold exactly those fields, so the replies will be directly comparable.

Then ask Plisio whether the assets you need are on its twelve-asset list, and ask NOWPayments nothing further about coverage, because that is the one thing it publishes exhaustively.

Neither will hold your funds, so the custody question that dominates most pairs in this index does not arise here at all.

Reading this pair by business type#

A business selling internationally takes NOWPayments and pays double the headline for coverage that prevents invisible losses. A business with a known, narrow customer base takes Plisio and keeps the saving.

Neither suits a merchant needing fiat settlement, since both are non custodial and neither can convert what it never receives. That constraint eliminates this whole page for a large class of readers.

A business needing privacy assets takes Plisio, and that requirement overrides both the rate and the coverage argument entirely.

What would change this comparison#

Either publishing a conversion figure, since they withhold the same fields and closing one side would immediately make the comparison asymmetric and easier.

Plisio adding assets would change the structural half, though its narrow list looks deliberate rather than incidental.

If you only do one thing#

List the assets your customers have actually paid in over the last year. If they fit inside twelve, take the cheaper provider; if they do not, you have measured exactly what the wider list is worth to you.

What this comparison leaves open#

What neither resolves is what happens if you later need fiat settlement. Both are non custodial, so neither can offer it, and a business whose finance function changes its mind would be changing provider rather than changing a setting. Worth knowing before the integration rather than after.

Both withhold the same two fields, so this comparison will change symmetrically if either publishes. Check the dates on both cards before relying on the figures.

Two non-custodial cards, one with plugins#

Both settle to a wallet the merchant controls, which is rare enough that this pair is worth reading on other axes entirely. Plisio names five ecommerce platforms; NOWPayments enumerates none.

For a shop that is decisive, and for an API integration it is irrelevant. Plisio also names Monero, Dash and Zcash, which appear on very few cards here and matter enormously to the merchants who need them.