NOWPayments vs Apa: Two Non-Custodial Gateways Compared

NOWPayments is a non-custodial payment API. A customer pays in one of 350+ supported cryptocurrencies through a NOWPayments checkout, invoice or plugin, and the funds settle directly to the merchant's own wallet, typically within minutes of confirmation. The platform never holds merchant funds; it routes the payment and optionally auto-converts it to an outcome currency you specify before it reaches your wallet.

Apa is also non-custodial. When a customer pays, the funds settle on-chain directly to the wallet you control in the asset and chain you selected. Apa provides the hosted checkout, payment links and developer tooling, and like NOWPayments never holds a balance for you.

Because both are non-custodial, the comparison is less about who holds your money, since neither does, and more about coin coverage, fee structure, settlement mechanics and deployment options, which is where the two differ.

NOWPayments is non-custodial. Per its own documentation, it does not hold merchant funds at any point, and payments are settled directly to the merchant's wallet. This means there is no platform balance sitting between a completed sale and your control of the money, and you are not trusting the gateway to safeguard or release your funds.

Apa is non-custodial in exactly the same sense. Apa never holds a balance for you; each payment settles straight to your own wallet on-chain. You retain the keys and immediate control throughout.

This is the one row where the two platforms are genuinely aligned rather than opposed. For merchants who consider custody the single most important property of a payment gateway, both NOWPayments and Apa satisfy that requirement, and the decision then comes down to the practical differences in coins, fees, settlement and self-hosting.

NOWPayments supports 350+ cryptocurrencies, one of the largest catalogs among gateways. That includes majors like BTC, ETH and SOL, altcoins such as ADA and DOT, and 30+ stablecoins including USDT, USDC and DAI. On the network side, its stablecoin settlement spans Ethereum, Tron, BNB Chain, Solana, Polygon and Bitcoin, among other networks.

Settlement is on-chain and direct: funds reach your wallet typically within minutes of the payment confirming, and you can optionally have incoming payments auto-converted to a chosen outcome currency before they land. NOWPayments has also promoted zero-network-fee offers on specific rails such as USDT (TRC20) for new partners.

Apa accepts nine core assets, BTC, ETH, SOL, USDC, USDT, POL, BNB, AVAX and TRX, across about ten chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche and Tron. Every payment settles on-chain directly to your wallet in the asset and chain you selected. NOWPayments wins on raw coin breadth; Apa concentrates on the major assets with direct settlement and a curated chain set.

NOWPayments charges a 0.5% service fee per transaction, per its pricing page. When you use auto-conversion to swap the incoming coin into your outcome currency, an additional 0.5% exchange fee applies, so the effective rate is either 0.5% without conversion or 1% with it. There are no setup fees and no recurring monthly fees, and volume-based discounts reduce the rate as monthly flow (measured in BTC) rises.

Apa's pricing is a flat 1.5% that is final and all-in, and it drops to 0% for direct same-asset settlements. Because both platforms are non-custodial, the fee is genuinely all-in for each: funds settle in one on-chain step to your own wallet with no platform balance and no separate withdrawal fee, so neither buries a payout charge behind the headline. The honest distinction here is on rate and structure rather than hidden costs: NOWPayments's 0.5% base is lower on paper but rises to 1% whenever you auto-convert a paid asset into a different outcome currency, while Apa charges 0% for a direct same-asset settlement and 1.5% otherwise, and delivers the same pay-in/payout decoupling so a customer can pay BTC while you receive USDC.

For merchants who do not need conversion, both sit in a similar low-cost band well under the roughly 2.9% + fixed-fee card norm, and each avoids the card model's percentage-plus-fixed structure entirely.

NOWPayments gives you outcome control through its auto-conversion feature: you can choose the payout or outcome currency your incoming payments convert into before they settle to your wallet, which lets a merchant neutralize volatility by receiving a stablecoin. It also supports mass payouts to many wallets, which is useful for platforms that need to distribute funds. The trade-off is the extra 0.5% exchange fee when conversion is used.

Apa decouples pay-in from payout at the settlement layer: a customer can pay in BTC while you receive USDC directly on-chain in a wallet you control. You choose both the payout asset and the chain.

Both platforms therefore let a merchant sidestep crypto volatility by settling into a stablecoin. NOWPayments does this via auto-conversion to your chosen outcome currency, and Apa does it by decoupling the paid asset from the received asset, both while keeping the model non-custodial so funds still reach a wallet you control.

Neither platform is subject to card-style chargebacks, because confirmed on-chain cryptocurrency payments are final and irreversible. Once a blockchain transaction confirms, it cannot be reversed by the payer or clawed back through a card dispute weeks later.

For NOWPayments merchants, this finality removes fraudulent-reversal risk entirely. Any refund is an outbound payment the merchant chooses to send, not a reversal forced by a dispute process.

Apa provides identical finality. Because payments settle on-chain directly to your wallet with no intermediary, there is no mechanism to reverse a confirmed payment. For digital-goods, subscription and high-risk merchants, eliminating chargeback fraud is one of the strongest reasons to accept crypto through either non-custodial gateway.

NOWPayments offers a hosted checkout and invoices, payment links, and a REST API with IPN (instant payment notification) callbacks so you can react to payment events programmatically. It provides e-commerce plugins for platforms like WooCommerce and publishes open-source SDKs and plugins that developers can inspect and extend.

Apa offers a hosted checkout, shareable payment links, and a developer API with webhooks, covering both no-code and programmatic integration. Webhooks let you reconcile confirmed on-chain settlements against orders in real time.

The deployment models differ. NOWPayments is a hosted API service: while its SDKs and plugins are open source, you integrate against its cloud infrastructure and the gateway itself is not self-hostable. Apa is self-hostable, so a team that wants to run the checkout on its own infrastructure, rather than depend on a third-party service, can do so while keeping a comparable developer experience.

NOWPayments is a strong fit for merchants who want maximum coin coverage in a non-custodial package. If accepting a very long tail of 350+ cryptocurrencies matters to your audience, and you want a clear 0.5% base fee, optional auto-conversion, mass payouts and a mature plugin and API ecosystem, NOWPayments delivers that at scale without holding your funds.

Apa is a strong fit for merchants who want non-custodial settlement of the major assets with the added control of self-hosting and pay-in/payout decoupling. If you value running the checkout on your own infrastructure, receiving each payment directly on-chain in the asset and chain you choose, and keeping effective fees low through cheapest-route settlement, Apa is built for that.

Since both are non-custodial, the decision often comes down to breadth versus control: NOWPayments for the widest coin catalog and hosted convenience, Apa for a focused asset set, self-hosting and direct on-chain settlement.

Getting started with Apa is fast because, like NOWPayments, it is non-custodial, so there is no platform balance to manage before money reaches you. You connect the wallet you want funds to settle into, choose which of the nine supported assets and roughly ten chains you want to accept, and you are ready to take payments.

From there you can use a hosted checkout, generate shareable payment links for invoices or one-off sales, or integrate the developer API and webhooks to automate fulfillment when a payment confirms on-chain. To remove volatility, set your payout asset to a stablecoin such as USDC so customers can pay in BTC while you receive USDC directly.

Where Apa goes further than a hosted-only gateway is self-hosting: because Apa is self-hostable, you can run the checkout on your own infrastructure while keeping the non-custodial model and an effective fee well below the card norm.