DePay vs Apa: Token Flexibility vs Chain Breadth

DePay is a web3 payment gateway. A customer connects their wallet at checkout, DePay's widget detects the tokens they hold, and if they don't already have the token you want to receive, it routes an on-the-fly swap through the cheapest available decentralized exchange so the payment lands in your wallet as your preferred asset. You can drop it in as a WooCommerce, Shopify or WordPress plugin, generate no-code payment links, or embed the open-source widget directly via its JavaScript/React SDK.

Apa works along the same non-custodial lines but leads with a hosted checkout and payment links rather than a wallet-connect widget. A customer picks the asset and chain they want to pay with, sends an on-chain payment, and Apa confirms it and settles the funds to the wallet you nominated. You can use the hosted checkout, share payment links, or drive everything through Apa's API and webhooks.

The practical distinction: DePay's flow shines when your buyers are crypto-native and hold a grab-bag of tokens they want to spend directly from a connected wallet. Apa's flow is built for a broader set of payers — including people paying in Bitcoin or Tron-based stablecoins — who just need a clean page to send a payment to.

Neither platform is custodial, and this is the most important thing they have in common. With DePay, funds move wallet-to-wallet — straight from the customer's wallet to your merchant wallet — with no third party holding money in between. DePay describes this explicitly as eliminating intermediary custody and custodial risk.

Apa is non-custodial in the same way: payments settle directly to a wallet you control, and Apa never holds a balance on your behalf. There's no platform account for your money to sit in, and therefore no withdrawal step to move it out.

Because both are non-custodial, neither imposes the kind of platform-balance withdrawal fees you'd see on a custodial exchange or processor. The comparison here isn't about who holds your money — nobody does — it's about how each routes the payment to your wallet and what chains and assets that covers.

This is where the two diverge most. DePay is live on 10 blockchains as of early 2026: Solana plus the major EVM networks — Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Gnosis, Base and World Chain. Its headline capability is that customers can pay with almost any token: DePay auto-converts via DEX routing, so a shopper can pay in an obscure ERC-20 and you still receive, say, USDC. Tokens qualify if they have enough on-chain liquidity (roughly $20k, per DePay's docs). Notably, DePay does not support native Bitcoin — its model depends on EVM/Solana DEX liquidity.

Apa also spans roughly 10 chains, but with a different footprint: native Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Tron among them. It accepts BTC, ETH, SOL, USDC, USDT, POL, BNB, AVAX and TRX. That includes non-EVM networks — native Bitcoin and Tron — that a DEX-conversion model can't reach, since there's no on-chain DEX to swap through on those chains.

So the trade-off is real and honest: DePay gives you far more accepted tokens on the chains it covers (the long tail of DeFi tokens, converted on the fly). Apa gives you more base chains and native assets, including the two biggest non-EVM ecosystems for payments — Bitcoin and Tron/USDT — plus the ability to have the customer's pay-in asset differ from your payout asset.

DePay's standard and pro plans charge a flat 1.5% transaction fee, with no setup or monthly fees, per its pricing page as of early 2026. There's a 0% open-source tier for teams that self-host DePay's MIT-licensed widgets without the managed platform features (dashboard, statistics, payment links, managed plugins), and an enterprise tier advertised as low as 0.5% based on volume (listed as coming soon). Because DePay is non-custodial, there's no separate withdrawal fee — funds arrive in your wallet as part of the payment.

Apa charges 1.5% flat and final, all-in — and 0% for direct same-asset settlement, where the customer pays the exact asset and chain you want to receive, so no conversion is needed. Like DePay, Apa settles straight to your own wallet, so there's no platform balance and no separate withdrawal fee.

The two are close on headline pricing: both land at 1.5% for the common case and both have a genuine 0% path (DePay via self-hosting the open-source widget; Apa via direct same-asset settlement). One nuance worth knowing: DePay's 0% tier requires giving up the managed platform features, whereas Apa's 0% path applies to same-asset payments without dropping the hosted product.

DePay's auto-conversion means you can be paid out in a token of your choice — commonly a stablecoin — even when the customer pays with something else. On the chains DePay supports, this is an elegant way to sidestep volatility: the DEX swap happens as part of the payment, and the token you asked for is what lands in your wallet.

Apa lets you choose your payout asset and chain and decouples the pay-in from the payout: a customer can pay in BTC and you can receive USDC. That's the same volatility-management idea, extended to chains DePay doesn't touch — for example, accepting native Bitcoin while settling to a stablecoin.

If your buyers pay mostly in EVM or Solana tokens, DePay's on-the-fly conversion is smooth and battle-tested. If you need to accept Bitcoin or Tron-based USDT and still control your payout asset, Apa's decoupled model reaches further, because it isn't limited to assets that have a DEX pair to swap against.

Both platforms inherit the finality of on-chain settlement, and both make a point of it. DePay emphasizes that its payments are irreversible with no chargebacks or fraud risk — once a blockchain transaction confirms, it can't be clawed back the way a card payment can.

Apa is identical here: confirmed on-chain payments are final, so there are no chargebacks. For merchants coming from card processing, this removes an entire category of loss and dispute overhead.

This is a shared strength rather than a differentiator. Whichever you choose, you get the same fundamental guarantee — settled crypto payments don't reverse — because it's a property of the underlying blockchains, not the gateway.

DePay has a mature, developer-friendly surface. Its widgets are open source under the MIT license and available via CDN or the @depay/widgets NPM package, with React components and platform-specific packages for EVM and Solana. The library ships Payment, Connect and Login widgets, supports managed integration IDs or fully unmanaged configuration (you specify blockchains, tokens, amounts and receiver addresses), and exposes client-side callbacks for the payment lifecycle. There are official plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce and WordPress, plus no-code payment links.

Apa offers a hosted checkout, payment links and an API with webhooks. The hosted checkout means you can take payments without embedding a wallet-connect widget or managing front-end token logic, and webhooks let your backend react to confirmed payments. Apa is also self-hostable if you want to run the stack yourself.

For a crypto-native team that wants to embed a customizable wallet-connect widget and tap thousands of tokens, DePay's open-source SDK is a strong fit. For a team that wants a hosted page plus a clean server-to-server API and webhooks — and doesn't want to manage wallet-connect UX — Apa's model is more turnkey.

Choose DePay if your audience is web3-native and you want to accept the widest possible range of tokens on EVM chains and Solana. Its auto-conversion and open-source widgets are purpose-built for crypto-first stores, DeFi apps and communities where customers connect a wallet and want to pay with whatever token they're holding. The MIT-licensed widget and 0% self-host tier are appealing if you have engineers and want full control.

Choose Apa if you need broader chain coverage — especially native Bitcoin, Solana and Tron — and want a hosted checkout, payment links and an API without building wallet-connect UX yourself. Apa's flat 1.5% (0% for direct same-asset settlement), decoupled pay-in/payout, and non-EVM reach make it a fit for merchants whose customers pay in Bitcoin or Tron-based USDT as much as in EVM tokens.

Many businesses could use either. The clearest decision points: token variety on EVM/Solana favors DePay; native Bitcoin and Tron coverage plus a turnkey hosted checkout favors Apa. Both keep you non-custodial and both deliver on-chain finality.

Getting started with Apa takes minutes. You point Apa at the wallet you want funds to settle into, choose the assets and chains you want to accept — including native Bitcoin, Solana, Tron and the major EVM networks — and pick your payout asset. Because Apa is non-custodial, that wallet is yours; there's no platform account holding your money and no withdrawal step to configure.

From there you can start taking payments through the hosted checkout, share payment links, or wire up the API and webhooks so your backend is notified the moment a payment confirms on-chain. Pricing is 1.5% flat and final, or 0% when a customer pays the exact asset and chain you want to receive.

If you're already leaning on DePay for EVM and Solana token flexibility, Apa can sit alongside it to cover the chains and assets DePay doesn't — native Bitcoin and Tron in particular — while giving you a hosted checkout and decoupled payouts. Either way, your money settles straight to your own wallet.