At a glance
Ethereum on Paymos
Supported stablecoins
- USDT Tether USD
- USDC USD Coin
- USD1 World Liberty USD1
- DAI Dai
- XAUT Tether Gold
Confirmation speed
| Up to $100 | 2 blocks |
| Up to $1,000 | 6 blocks |
| Up to $10,000 | 12 blocks |
| Larger amounts | 32 blocks |
Why Ethereum for crypto payments
Ethereum mainnet is where the large stablecoin balances sit — treasury desks, OTC, B2B settlement — and it issues every asset Paymos accepts on the chain. It is also the only Paymos network carrying all five families at once, including USD1, the Treasury-backed institutional stablecoin World Liberty Financial launched on Ethereum in March 2025 . For a merchant, it's the right rail when the other side is a business or a high-value payer already on mainnet. Post-merge gas runs to a couple of cents in calm conditions, so above ~$1,000 the cost is a rounding error and Ethereum's track record wins. For sub-$100 retail, the cheaper rails are BSC, Polygon, the L2s, and Solana — Tron is the priciest network for the customer, not the cheapest.
Supported stablecoins on Ethereum
Five families settle here, each issued on the chain rather than bridged in: USDT and USDC at 6 decimals, USD1 (World Liberty Financial) and DAI (Sky, formerly MakerDAO) at 18, plus XAUT (Tether Gold) — a gold-backed real-world asset, not a stablecoin, where one token tracks one troy ounce. DAI and XAUT live only on Ethereum; USD1 runs on just Ethereum and Solana, so mainnet is the one place a payer can settle the whole set. The panel above shows the live tokens; this is the issuer detail behind it.
How confirmations work on Ethereum
Ethereum produces a block every 12 seconds, and Paymos reads the chain's own finality on top of that. Confirmation depth scales with the invoice: a sub-$100 payment clears in well under a minute, while a five-figure transfer waits the deepest tier — a few minutes — before Paymos calls it settled. Block speed sets the wall-clock time; the amount sets how deep the wait goes. The top tier sits well past anything a healthy post-merge chain reorganises, which under proof-of-stake has stayed shallow — the seven-block event crypto still cites was on the pre-merge Beacon Chain .
Fees and gas
Gas is paid by the customer in ETH at broadcast. Post-merge, a typical ERC-20 stablecoin transfer settles for a couple of cents in calm conditions; spikes to a few dollars happen during major NFT mints or DeFi launches but are the exception. On a $1,000 invoice that gas is a rounding error. On a $50 ticket the same few cents is a larger share, so customers paying small amounts often prefer an L2.
Paymos pricing on Ethereum is the same as every other network — 1.0% Standard, 0.3% Enterprise on request. Acceptance and the on-chain sweep are covered inside that 1.0%, even though mainnet gas runs higher than on L2. On withdrawal we take 0 commission and subsidise the network fee — you pay a reduced figure set below what the chain charges, and Paymos covers the rest. Withdrawals settle to a whitelisted wallet in USDT or USDC.
Compared to a typical crypto gateway
Most gateways apply a flat confirmation count to Ethereum regardless of amount. Paymos picks the threshold by risk, so a $50 retail invoice doesn't wait the same as a $50,000 B2B one. The webhook contract is a single signed POST with X-Webhook-Signature: t={timestamp},v1={hmac_hex}, retried up to 11 times across ~32 hours. Resend the same external_order_id and you get the original invoice back, never a duplicate charge — the idempotency key is yours, with no extra header to manage. Auth is HMAC-SHA256 — not Bearer — so a leaked log line never compromises a key.
What we don't do on Ethereum
Bridge-wrapped stablecoins are out — Paymos credits the canonical token on Ethereum, never a third-party wrapper. There's no swap and no off-ramp: a USD1 payment stays USD1, a DAI payment stays DAI, and your balance never converts to fiat behind your back. And the customer's ETH for gas is on them — a wallet holding stablecoins but zero ETH can't broadcast, and the transfer fails before it reaches the chain.
Frequently asked questions
Why are L2s cheaper than Ethereum L1?
L2 rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) batch many transactions together and post a compressed proof to Ethereum. The L1 fee is amortized across the batch, dropping per-user cost dramatically. The trade-off is slightly different security guarantees and a 7-day canonical withdrawal back to L1 (irrelevant if you stay on the L2 or use a fast bridge).
Can a customer pay me in ETH?
No. Paymos is settlement-focused — customers pay in stablecoins (USDT, USDC, USD1, or DAI) or gold-backed XAUT, and your balance stays in that same asset. ETH only ever leaves the customer's wallet as the gas that powers the transfer, never as the payment itself.
Does Paymos run its own Ethereum node?
We run scanner workers connected through multiple RPC providers for redundancy. Merchants do not run any infrastructure — integration is purely API-level.
Is Ethereum L1 too slow for retail?
For sub-$50 retail payments, yes — the wait plus gas eats too much of the experience. For $50+ payments the trade-off is acceptable. For B2B, L1 is standard.
Can I accept USDT and USDC both on Ethereum?
Yes. Enable both tokens in your project; the customer picks at checkout. Balances segregate by (token, network) — USDT on Ethereum and USDC on Ethereum show as separate balance lines.