At a glance
Base on Paymos
Supported stablecoins
- USDC USD Coin
Confirmation speed
| Up to $100 | 5 blocks |
| Up to $1,000 | 15 blocks |
| Up to $10,000 | 30 blocks |
| Larger amounts | 100 blocks |
Why Base for crypto payments
Base is the shortest path from a Coinbase balance to your wallet. It is Coinbase's Ethereum Layer-2, live since August 2023 , and its users sit inside the Coinbase ecosystem — retail holders with USDC on the Coinbase exchange or in Coinbase Wallet, plus US fintech consumers. Coinbase last reported over 100 million verified accounts , and a large share of US retail crypto already settles on Base. If your audience is US-focused or Coinbase-adjacent, accepting Base means they pay from a balance that is already there — no bridge, no extra hop.
Supported stablecoins on Base
The panel above shows what's live, and on Base that's USDC only. Tether has not deployed USDT on Base — there is no canonical USDT on this chain, and anything labeled "USDT on Base" is a third-party bridge wrapper Paymos won't accept. If a customer needs to pay in USDT, route them to a chain where Tether issues natively: Ethereum, Tron, BSC, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Optimism.
How confirmations work on Base
Base produces a block every 2 seconds. Paymos sets confirmation depth by invoice value at the moment the transfer is detected: a retail USDC payment clears in seconds, while a large transfer waits long enough to be safe against sequencer or rollup-state issues — still under a minute on a chain this fast. Small tickets clear without waiting on the deeper confirmation a five-figure transfer requires.
Fees and gas
The customer pays the network fee in ETH on Base. A USDC transfer currently runs a few cents. Coinbase Wallet often handles micro-buying ETH for gas when the user's Base wallet has none; MetaMask users may need to bridge ETH manually.
Paymos pricing on Base: 1.0% Standard, 0.3% Enterprise on request. Acceptance and sweep gas sit inside that 1.0% — no surcharge. Withdrawals carry no Paymos commission: you pay a network fee set below Base's actual cost, and we absorb the rest . Cash out in USDC to any whitelisted wallet.
Compared to a typical crypto gateway
A typical gateway picks one confirmation count for Base and applies it to every payment, big or small. Paymos scales the depth to the invoice, so a coffee-sized USDC payment clears in seconds while a five-figure transfer waits for safe finality. Every state change posts an HMAC-SHA256-signed webhook, replayed across an 11-attempt schedule over roughly 32 hours if your endpoint is down. You key each invoice with your own external_order_id, so a retried call returns the original invoice instead of creating a duplicate — no extra idempotency header to track.
What we don't do on Base
We do not accept USDT on Base — Tether has not deployed it here. We do not accept bridged stablecoins. A USDC payment lands in your balance as USDC: Paymos never converts it to another token or to fiat, so the asset you settle is the one the customer sent. And we don't top up the customer's ETH for gas — Coinbase Wallet handles that for most of them on its own side.
Frequently asked questions
Is Base operated by Coinbase the same way the Coinbase exchange is?
Base is a separate product from the Coinbase exchange, but operated by the same parent company. Base is a Layer-2 blockchain; the Coinbase exchange is a centralized trading platform. Funds on Base are on-chain — you control your private key if using self-custody — and not Coinbase-custodial unless you specifically use a Coinbase product that holds them for you.
Can a customer pay me from their Coinbase exchange account directly?
Indirectly. The customer withdraws USDC from their Coinbase exchange balance, selecting Base as the network. Coinbase sends the funds to your Paymos deposit address. The flow takes about a minute end-to-end. For Coinbase Wallet (self-custodial) the flow is faster — typically under 30 seconds.
Why no USDT on Base?
Tether has not issued USDT on Base. Anything labeled "USDT on Base" is a third-party bridge wrapper, and Paymos doesn't accept bridge variants. If your customer needs to pay in USDT, route them to a chain where Tether has deployed natively — Ethereum, Tron, BSC, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Optimism.
What gas token does Base use?
ETH. A customer paying USDC on Base needs a small ETH balance on Base — a few cents covers a transfer — to broadcast the transaction. Coinbase Wallet handles this automatically for many users; MetaMask users may need to bridge or acquire ETH on Base separately.
Is Base more secure than Polygon or BSC?
Architecturally, Base inherits security from Ethereum L1 via fraud proofs (optimistic rollup model). Polygon PoS has its own validator security; BSC has a smaller delegated-proof-of-stake set. Base's security model is closer to Ethereum's. For payment acceptance all three have been operationally reliable; the security difference is more relevant for high-value treasury operations than for typical merchant flows.
Does accepting payments on Base change now that it's leaving the OP Stack?
No. In February 2026 Coinbase announced Base is moving from Optimism's OP Stack to its own unified stack, rolled out over a sequence of hard forks . For a merchant accepting USDC this is invisible: the chain ID, your deposit addresses, the 2-second blocks, and native USDC all stay the same, and Base still settles to Ethereum as an optimistic rollup. Paymos tracks the upgrade so your integration keeps working through it.