NOWPayments Shifts Crypto Payment Risk Onto the Buyer

NOWPayments lets a shop add a surcharge of up to 10% on a crypto checkout, and that extra comes from the buyer. A second slider, payment covering, lets the same shop treat a shortfall of up to 10% as paid in full. The company sells both as volatility tools. The help center describes a different split of who actually pays.

The gateway, part of the ChangeNOW group, still argues that crypto rails are faster and cheaper than cards if a merchant can live with the tape. Markup, covering, a 10-minute freeze, and dollar coins are how it tells shops to live with it. Each tool parks the move on a different party.

Markup Adds as Much as $10 on a $100 Cart

Payment markup is a straight surcharge. In the covering and markup settings, the range is 0% to 10%. At the cap, a $100 price is estimated as $110 in crypto, a $10 add-on billed to the customer before they send.

NOWPayments says the extra is there to reduce volatility when the exchange rate is high, or to move service fees onto the buyer. Those are two jobs sharing one slider. A shop that leaves markup on is not hedging Bitcoin. It is raising the ticket.

On August 28, 2026, the company restated standard rates of 1% and 1.5% after it found old 0.5% copy still on the site. Eligible firms can still negotiate as low as 0.3%. Markup sits on top of that take, which means a buyer can pay the surcharge and the processing cut in the same send.

The marketing post that still frames these sliders as volatility control uses a milder example: 5% on $100, so the customer pays $105. The dashboard cap is twice that. Either way, the person at checkout funds the buffer.

WHO PAYS FOR THE SWING

Shops that already run a NOWPayments crypto gateway for merchants see these as dashboard toggles, not as a market desk. The table is the whole product: one slider taxes the buyer, one writes off the shop, and only the freeze puts the tape on the processor.

Covering Treats a Shortfall as Paid

Payment covering is the quieter control, and it is easy to misread. The range is also 0% to 10%, but the money flows the other way. The merchant names a slice of the deposit it will absorb and still call the invoice finished instead of partially paid.

The percent of the deposit (from 0 to 10) you are ready to lose and still consider the payment as finished instead of partially paid – for example, if a piece of the payment was lost on the network fee. That is, if the buyer sent 9.95 instead of 10, then with the payment covering set to 0.5% such payment will be indicated as finished.

NOWPayments Help Center, dashboard guide, May 30, 2026

That 0.5% example is arithmetic, not poetry: 0.5% of 10 is 0.05, so 9.95 clears. The company’s older marketing post used a fatter 5% band, where $95 against a $100 price would also close. Both are write-offs. Neither is a forward hedge.

Covering shipped on January 26, 2020, as payment cover, and the launch note was blunt about the job. If a client forgot the network fee, the shop could still treat the send as done. The cover percentage is calculated from the Pay Price and compared with the cryptocurrency the user actually sent. Six years later the volatility blog still presents the same control as protection against a falling coin. The help center has not moved with that pitch.

A shop that sets covering at 10% is volunteering to give away a tenth of the ticket so support tickets die. That is a customer-service budget with a percentage attached.

The 10-Minute Freeze Against a 15-Minute Rival

The tool that actually touches the tape is fixed rate, and it is sold separately. NOWPayments will freeze the conversion rate for 10 minutes if the customer sends inside that window. Miss it, and the payment reverts to the classic rate, which the fees page says can change during the exchange.

That freeze is not free. The same 1% and 1.5% service fees schedule, updated September 8, 2026, charges 1.5% when fixed rate or fee-paid-by-user is on. Fee-paid-by-user cannot run on the classic rate; turn it on and the freeze comes with it. The processor is explicit that it then takes the market risk for those 10 minutes.

BitPay, a rival that settles many merchants in fiat the next business day, uses a longer clock. Its support desk says a BitPay invoice is only valid for a 15-minute locked invoice window, and the rate is guaranteed for that stretch so the shop is not sitting on the coin. After 15 minutes the buyer has to generate a new invoice. BitPay also folds volatility into the quoted rate, so the lock is an inventory product, not a slider the merchant aims at customers.

NOWPayments’ default flow is more exposed even before the tape moves. The customer pays the first network fee from their wallet. The processor does not count that fee when it sets the amount due, and it says any underpay caused by an exchange deducting commission is entirely on the user. Processing then takes a second network fee plus the service cut, and a third network fee hits when funds leave for the merchant’s wallet. Three chain fees sit around a percentage commission, which is why covering exists and why markup is so tempting to leave on.

Bitcoin’s 27.2% Tape Meets a 10% Markup

A 10% buffer would have looked tight in older Bitcoin years. It looks large against the tape VanEck published in mid-August.

THE TAPE THE SURCHARGE IS PRICED AGAINST

• August 11 close: Bitcoin finished at $63,549, down 0.3% on the month, in a $62,265 to $66,509 band.
• 30-day realized vol: VanEck measured 27.2% annualized realized volatility, under the prior month’s 30.4% and well under a long-run average near 80%.
• Drawdown: The same note put BTC about 49% below its peak, with 8 of 12 capitulation signals firing.
• Crash tape: S&P Global described an 8% drop between 21:00 and 21:20 UTC on October 10, 2025, a 20-minute air pocket inside a larger liquidation hour.

On a quiet summer print, a 10-minute checkout is a thin slice of a 27.2% year. On October 10, 2025, 20 minutes were enough to move the coin 8%. Markup priced at 5% or 10% is crash insurance collected on every cart, including the ones that settle in a calm hour. The buyer funds that insurance whether or not the crash arrives.

Shops that want the crash off their books have a cleaner switch than a surcharge: take USDT, USD1, or USA₮, or pay 1.5% for the 10-minute freeze. Leaving a 10% markup on through a 27.2% vol regime is a margin decision dressed as risk policy.

Why a Full Coin Send Still Shows Partial

The ugly status is partially paid. NOWPayments treats it as a completed payment that came in light, and it does not refund those sends because it no longer holds the coins. The merchant can flip the status to finished by hand, or mark it cancelled and then refund from its own wallet. Cancelled is not an automatic return of funds.

The trap that looks like volatility, and sometimes is, sits in the technical FAQ. A payment can land as partially paid even when the customer sent the exact coin amount, because the status is based on the final fiat equivalent. The coin did not have to move after the click. The dollar reading did. Covering will swallow some of that gap if the shop has set a band. Past the band, someone in operations has to click.

A six-month NOWPayments e-commerce sample circulating in early September 2026 put Finished payments at 63.81% of invoices created. Two partner implementations in that set ran from 40.50% to 66.38% Finished, a 25.88 point gap. Bitcoin was 16.11% of successful payments, ether 3.88%, and USDC 1.63%, or 21.62% together. Most of the book is already somewhere other than BTC, which is the asset the volatility blog still worries about.

WHAT STILL OPENS A PARTIAL

• Network fee on send: The due amount ignores the miner fee the wallet strips out, so a precise spend can arrive light.
• Fiat equivalent: The exact coin amount can still fail if the dollar reading has moved by the time the deposit is scored.
• Wrong asset or network: Those deposits sit until a merchant hits continue, unless auto-processing is on.
• Human error on the invoice: A buyer on a hosting bill in late August 2026 said a USD/GBP symbol mix marked the send as underpaid, and the vendor said it had to be cleared by hand.

Covering is built for the first two. It does nothing for a wrong network. It also does nothing for a shop that refuses to ship on partially paid, which is the help center’s advice for e-commerce and travel. iGaming and trading shops are told they can treat any inbound as finished. The same slider is a write-off in one vertical and a compliance problem in another.

Stablecoins Remove the Argument at Checkout

The processor’s own feed has already moved past the two sliders. On May 29, 2026, NOWPayments posted that USA₮ on Ethereum was live, calling it a dollar-backed coin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank under the GENIUS Act, and it sold the listing as compliant payments with zero price volatility.

USA₮ (Ethereum) is now live on NOWPayments!

This is Tether's U.S.-focused, regulated, dollar-backed stablecoin, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and built under the GENIUS Act, backed in full by liquid reserves.

Get compliant payments with zero price volatility!…

— NOWPayments (@NOWPayments_io) May 29, 2026

In late August it added USD1 on five networks: BNB Smart Chain, Solana, Ethereum, TRON, and Aptos. The volatility blog still lists Tether on ERC-20 and TRC-20, DAI, and TrueUSD as the simple way to keep crypto rails without the tape. Dollar coins do not retire covering. A USDT send can still arrive short by a network fee. They do retire the reason to mark the ticket up 10% in the name of Bitcoin.

That is the tell. If markup were mainly an FX hedge, it would be off by default once the shop settles in a dollar coin. If it stays on, it is a fee, and the buyer is the one paying it.

The Desk That Buys the 10-Minute Move

When a merchant turns on fixed rate, NOWPayments is the party that has to stand behind the number on the screen. The company says it shows the rate, takes the risk, and exchanges at that rate if the deposit lands inside 10 minutes. That is a tiny options book embedded in checkout. The 1.5% fee is the premium.

Markup does not put the shop in that book. It overcharges the customer so the shop’s worst 10 minutes still print a profit. Covering does not put the shop in that book either. It lets a light deposit close so the warehouse can ship. The conversion desk is the only hidden stakeholder that is actually trading the interval the blog calls volatility.

Leave the sliders where the 2020 launch put them, as a network-fee patch and a surcharge, and they still do useful work. Call them a volatility system and the buyer funds a hedge the processor already sells for 1.5% and 10 minutes, while Bitcoin’s 27.2% summer print makes a 10% cart tax look like a very expensive night watchman.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is NOWPayments payment covering?

It is a 0% to 10% band the merchant agrees to lose while still marking the invoice Finished. The 2020 launch measured that band from the Pay Price against the coins actually received, so a 1% cover on a $10 bill would accept $9.90. It was built for network-fee shorts, and it will also close a small fiat-equivalent gap, but it is a write-off rather than a locked rate.

Does fee paid by user change the rate type?

Yes. The technical FAQ says fee paid by user cannot run without fixed rate, so the freeze turns on with the flag and the service fee becomes 1.5%. The customer then funds the processor cut and the network fees, on top of any markup the shop has left on.

Can NOWPayments refund a partially paid invoice?

No. The refund policy says completed and partially paid sends are the merchant’s problem because the coins have already been paid out. Setting a payment to cancelled only notifies a customer who left an email; the shop still has to send the money back itself.

What happens if a customer misses the 10-minute freeze?

The invoice leaves the guaranteed rate and continues at the classic rate, which can move while the exchange runs. The fixed-rate explainer also allows a refund or a continue-at-current-rate path when the deposit is late, so the buyer is no longer holding the number they saw at the start.

Do dollar coins make covering useless?

No. USD1 on five networks and USA₮ on Ethereum take the FX argument off the table, but a stablecoin send can still arrive light after a wallet strips a network fee. Covering still closes that short. Markup, in that setup, is only a price increase.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of NOWPayments checkout tools, fees, and published market figures. It is informational only and is not investment, tax, legal, or payments advice, and it is not a recommendation to accept, refuse, mark up, or convert cryptocurrency. Merchants and buyers should consult a qualified payments lawyer, accountant, or registered financial adviser before changing checkout settings, fee flags, or settlement coins. Figures, fee schedules, supported assets, and invoice statuses reflect the cited help pages, company posts, and research notes as of the dates on those documents and may change.