CoinGate Review – Is This Crypto Payment Processor Worth Using?

About CoinGate

CoinGate is a Lithuanian-based fintech company founded in 2014 that specializes as a crypto payment processor for businesses. 

The platform’s name itself stems from its aim to be the leading payment processor as the “CoinGate” payment gateway. 

In addition to being a cryptocurrency payments processor, CoinGate also has its own crypto exchange to buy and sell digital currencies directly from its platform, so users can easily swap back and forth between any assets they or their business may receive.

While CoinGate has a wide range of supported countries, many countries, including the United States, are not currently supported.

If you want to learn all about the different CoinGate services and whether they’re right for you, stick around for this in-depth CoinGate review.

Why Accept Crypto Payments

Before diving into the CoinGate payment processor solutions, it will be helpful to understand the potential advantages of accepting crypto payments.

The first benefit to accepting crypto is they are irreversible. Once you spend crypto, it’s cemented on the blockchain, so you will get your payment with 100% certainty. 

Another benefit of paying with cryptocurrencies is customers don’t have to disclose their private information. 

The Bitcoin network, specifically, operates without trusting any third parties; thus, it’s always up to you how much information you want to get from your shoppers with any bitcoin payments. 

The last advantage to accepting crypto is lower merchant fees. Credit card companies usually charge up to 3% of the transaction amount, in addition to various other fees. 

With CoinGate, however, you can accept cryptocurrency payments for only 1% of the transaction amount.

CoinGate Crypto Payments

With that context out of the way, let’s get back to CoinGate and the tools it provides to accept crypto payments.

With its state-of-the-art payments solutions, CoinGate can collect payments with 70+ crypto assets, send billing invoices, track transactions, and offers multiple payout options.

Through CoinGate, you can request any payments be paid out to an external crypto wallet, instantly convert them into your fiat currency/stablecoin of choice, or exchange them for your preferred cryptocurrency.

CoinGate also allows users to use instant email billing solutions to request payments. All you have to do is create a contact, fill in all the payment details, and then send the bill via email or link. 

You can even add a schedule to create automatic recurring payment requests, including any payments to other businesses or suppliers.

CoinGate Payment Gateway

Aside from email billing, CoinGate lets you accept crypto payments in a number of different ways.

First, you can download the CoinGate plugin to install on your preferred e-commerce platform. CoinGate has several add-on modules that allow customers of merchants like WooCommerce, Magneto, PrestaShop, and much more to easily handle payments. 

The second option is to add simple payment buttons to your website. Each payment button is customizable with your logo and product information and has easy-to-use templates to choose from. 

You can choose between a fixed price, a slider with minimum and maximum values, or a list with several different fixed values.

The last option to receive payments is with CoinGate’s API. The API integration is the most versatile and customizable option applicable to virtually any site and suitable for enterprise-level integrations.

Regardless of what you sell, CoinGate’s payment processor solutions are relatively easy to set up and should seamlessly integrate with just about any website.

CoinGate Crypto Exchange

While the CoinGate platform is hardly a place for active trading, they have a cryptocurrency exchange built in, so users can easily buy and sell crypto assets as they please.

There are several ways customers can obtain cryptocurrencies right through CoinGate. Some methods include international bank transfers/SEPA bank transfers, credit or debit cards, and linking one’s fiat currency bank accounts.

Whether that’s a credit or debit card purchase of crypto or an exchange between two different crypto assets, CoinGate allows you to easily manage whatever assets you have or receive through your business operations.

CoinGate supports 25 different currencies and 250 pairs with a 0% swap fee, so it’s a very affordable and convenient option. 

CoinGate Merchant Directory

The CoinGate merchant directory is a search engine where you can find businesses that accept cryptocurrencies (or at least accept bitcoin).

You can search by category, browse by products, or do a basic typed search to find hundreds of companies that accept cryptocurrency for payments.

All the company websites are linked in the merchant directory for easy access, and included with each company’s name is a rating and brief description of what they do.

All crypto aspects aside, the directory is a great information aggregator to quickly sift through companies. And although most of the companies are centered around crypto, many accept fiat currency as well.

CoinGate Gift Cards

Another unique service CoinGate provides is the sale of more than 1,500 gift cards you can purchase with cryptocurrency. 

Nearly every gift card is deliverable via email, and many gift card options include the likes of Amazon, eBay, Xbox, Starbucks, Target, Nike, and pretty much any major store that offers gift cards.

If you head to the gift card section of their website, you’ll see CoinGate has a search bar in addition to a wide range of categories so you can easily find what you’re looking for.

The gift cards themselves don’t have crypto on them, but they work the same as any other gift card and are an excellent option for anyone looking to spend some of their crypto.

It should also be noted that you can’t currently buy gift cards with fiat currency on CoinGate.

Conclusion: CoinGate Review 

After diving into all its services for this CoinGate review, we believe that CoinGate is an excellent option for businesses looking to expand their reach into the world of crypto.

Given crypto is such a nascent industry, organizing payments in a professional manner can be challenging, but the payment processor integrations, ways to track orders and transactions, and the ability to manage invoices and earnings make CoinGate a legitimate crypto payment gateway.

Even if you aren’t particularly interested in crypto, using CoinGate to receive payments in stablecoins can save you quite a bit on merchant fees, so it’s worth considering adding one of CoinGate’s payment integrations for purely economic reasons.

And while the crypto exchange isn’t CoinGate’s focus like it may be with platforms like WhiteBIT or Alterdice, the 250 pairs and 0% swap fees CoinGate offers make it a great option for anyone wanting to buy and sell crypto, including businesses that want to quickly settle their payments or balances in a specific currency. 

So despite CoinGate’s main draw being its payment processor solutions, it remains a competitive alternative to other basic exchanges and should serve businesses well in facilitating any and all of the crypto swaps they need.

Aside from the business advantages CoinGate provides, its retail services are also noteworthy. Both the merchant directory and gift cards provide excellent options for any crypto spenders.

Trying to track down all the crypto-friendly companies online can quickly turn into a wild goose chase, so having hundreds of them all indexed in the merchant directory is incredibly convenient.

And if you can’t find any companies worthy of your crypto, there’s bound to be a gift card CoinGate offers that interests you, so there really is something for everyone.

It’s hard to say how much demand there is to actually spend/sell crypto, but having so many options in one place makes CoinGate one of the best places to go if you are someone who likes to spend it.

All in all, CoinGate is an excellent platform for businesses looking to broaden their customer base and payment options and even a reasonable option for casual crypto investors.

If you’re a business interested in crypto or just looking for cheaper merchant fees, CoinGate is an excellent option to consider. It stands by its claim as a true crypto payment gateway.