Bitcoin or Stablecoin at Checkout: What Customers Actually Chose

Rather than guessing which asset to support, we offered both at checkout for a quarter and measured what happened.

Selection

For business customers, stablecoin accounted for the large majority of crypto payments. Bitcoin was a small minority.

For individual customers, the split was closer to even, with Bitcoin slightly ahead.

This matches what the sector reports and it is worth measuring for your own customers rather than assuming, because the split varies by market. Measured against a Bitcoin payment gateway with guaranteed fiat settlement, the differences below are straightforward to reproduce.

Completion rate

Stablecoin payments completed at a noticeably higher rate than Bitcoin ones.

The gap was concentrated in the waiting period. Bitcoin payments abandoned more often between the address being displayed and the payment arriving, which is consistent with the confirmation time variance.

Support load

Bitcoin generated roughly three times the support contacts per payment.

The causes, in order: payment pending longer than expected because of a low fee, underpayment because the wallet deducted the fee, and confusion about confirmation status. Payment companies face this at a different scale, which is what crypto acquiring for businesses addresses.

Stablecoin’s support contacts were almost entirely one thing: sending on the wrong network.

The fixes that worked

For Bitcoin: a longer payment window, clear copy explaining the wait, and a provider that flags an underpaid fee rather than leaving it pending.

For stablecoin: naming the network in full on the payment page, and generating a network-specific payment request so the customer cannot pick a different one.

Both roughly halved the relevant support contacts.

The cost comparison

Network costs favoured stablecoin substantially on the networks we accepted.

Provider fees were identical for both, as they are at most gateways.

What we concluded

Support both, because the incremental cost through a provider is close to zero and the customer split is not uniform.

Emphasise stablecoin for business customers and name the network prominently. Emphasise Bitcoin where your customers are individuals, and invest in the waiting-period copy rather than in anything technical.

And measure your own split rather than trusting a general figure. Ours differed from what we expected in both directions, by segment. For a working reference against everything above, a crypto exchange with published fees publishes the equivalent terms.