Sell a sub-dollar ticket and keep the margin
Take ticket money in stablecoins on a rail no bank lists as restricted, with a percentage-only fee that doesn't gut a cheap ticket. A draw is final once it clears — no chargeback claws an entry back — and winnings go to a player's wallet the moment you settle the draw.
Where a licensed lottery operator loses money on payments
Why does a small-ticket lottery barely survive on card rails?
Four costs between a ticket sale and your account — banks that refuse the category, a fixed fee that crushes small tickets, crypto-processor teasers, and cross-border markups.
Banks list lottery as restricted by default
Mainstream processors keep lottery on their restricted lists, and the specialist acquirers that take it treat the category as high-risk — reserves, payout holds and surcharges baked in. A licence to run the draw doesn't change the bank-side policy. For an operator selling tickets straight to players, the easy fintech stack is closed at the door.
A fixed per-transaction fee guts a small ticket
Card pricing carries a percentage plus a fixed fee, and the fixed part doesn't shrink with the ticket. On a low-priced ticket that fixed fee alone can be a third of the sale — the percentage barely matters next to it. Lottery only works on a rail where the cost tracks ticket size with no floor under it.
A crypto gateway's headline hides the real ticket cost
Other crypto gateways show a low headline, then add an exchange-rate markup, a transfer fee and merchant-paid network costs — charged on the ticket sale and again on the winner payout. Tallied across the ticket leg and the winner leg, the genuine cost frequently lands at 1.5–2% or above. The number on the page is rarely what you settle at.
Cross-border resale bleeds on currency markups
If you resell international draws, a card adds a cross-border charge of roughly 1–2.5% plus a foreign-currency surcharge on every mismatched sale — money you absorb or pass to the player. On a book of international tickets, that markup leaves your treasury on every purchase, on top of the category surcharge.
How stablecoin settlement unlocks the economics
What changes when tickets and payouts run on stablecoins?
Four things that change the per-ticket math the moment you stop depending on card rails and teaser-priced gateways.
No bank blocks lottery, and a sale is final
A stablecoin ticket sale doesn't route through an issuer that can refuse the category, and once it clears it can't be charged back — no chargeback claws a settled draw back. No reserve, no payout hold, no surcharge for being lottery. The cash credits your Paymos balance at sale, yours to deploy.
Percentage-only cost — a small ticket keeps its margin
There's no fixed-fee floor, so the cost tracks the ticket linearly: a low-priced ticket and a high-priced ticket carry the same percentage. That makes the high-volume small-ticket model viable for the first time on a fintech-class rail — the cost on a one-dollar ticket is a fraction of a cent, not a third of the sale.
One all-in rate on the ticket — no second fee on the payout
The ticket leg is one flat 1.0%, with acceptance gas, the sweep, and same-token settlement already inside it — no exchange-rate markup, no separate transfer line. The winner leg carries no second processing fee: Paymos takes nothing on a payout, you cover only a reduced network fee, less than the chain bills direct. Sell an international draw and you settle in the same dollar stablecoin a domestic buyer pays in. Numbers in Pricing.
Pay winners in seconds, when the draw settles
The draw concludes, your engine identifies winners, and your payout calls fire. A secondary-prize winner has the funds in their wallet in seconds; a jackpot winner can be held for your own large-payout review. Both flows finish inside the same operational window, each payout a single transfer with no Paymos cut and only a reduced network fee to cover.
How a lottery operator wires Paymos in
Which integration fits your ticket flow?
Three ways to wire stablecoin ticket sales and winner payouts into your platform.
Hosted Checkout — ticket-purchase page, no code
For operators without a custom checkout, Hosted Checkout serves the ticket page from a Paymos-hosted URL. The player picks numbers, hits buy, pays from their wallet, and gets a confirmation; your platform receives an HMAC-SHA256 webhook with the ticket ID. Zero front-end engineering on your side.
See details
Host-to-Host API — draw-settlement hooks
For operators running their own platform with a draw engine, the API issues ticket invoices, watches confirmations and triggers winner payouts on settlement over signed webhooks. Match the cadence to your draw — daily pick, weekly jackpot, monthly event — and the API handles entry inflow and payout outflow on whatever schedule you operate. Sandbox is 1:1 with production.
See details
Payment Links — syndicate-share collection
For syndicates that split a high-value bundle, generate one payment link per share. Each member pays their fraction, and your engine watches all the share webhooks before issuing the consolidated ticket purchase. A clean fit for syndicate-share collection across a group, charity-lottery donor shares, and office pools.
See detailsLottery ticket flows on stablecoins today
What lottery patterns run cleanly on a wallet?
Four flows from licensed operators — single ticket, multi-ticket bundle, syndicate share, and winner payout.
Single ticket — Hosted Checkout
A player buys one ticket. The stablecoin sale settles in seconds with no fixed-fee floor eating the small ticket, and the confirmation reaches your platform right away. No issuer decline on the category, nothing held in reserve, and no chargeback to claw the entry back after the draw.
Multi-ticket bundle — Embedded Checkout
A player buys a multi-line bundle through your embedded flow — one payment, one settlement, one ticket batch issued. The cost tracks the bundle size with no fixed floor, so the margin holds, and the player stays on your platform throughout the purchase rather than bouncing to a hosted page.
Syndicate share — Payment Links
A syndicate splits a high-value bundle across a group of members. You generate one link per share, each member pays their fraction, and your engine watches every share confirm. When the threshold is met, the consolidated ticket purchase fires; if a share fails to fund in the window, the engine cancels and refunds the contributors from your wallet.
Winner payout — Host-to-Host API
The draw settles and your engine identifies winners. Secondary prizes go out as individual operator-initiated transfers, each landing in seconds, while the jackpot winner is flagged for your manual large-payout review. Both flows finish inside the same window — Paymos takes nothing on a payout, you cover only a reduced network fee, and no processing fee is charged a second time on the way out.
Lottery on stablecoins
Frequently asked questions
Does Paymos verify the operator's lottery licence?
How does Paymos handle the jackpot-winner KYC requirement?
Can Paymos handle high-volume jackpot-spike traffic?
How do syndicate refunds work if the share threshold isn't met?
Do international resellers face currency-conversion or cross-border charges?
Which networks fit small-ticket purchases best?
Honest disqualifier
When NOT to use Paymos for lottery
Four lottery models where the rail underdelivers.
You'd resell draws into state-monopoly markets
Where ticket sales are reserved to the state commission, a private reseller is outside the law no matter how the player pays — a stablecoin checkout doesn't reclassify the model. Resale works where licensed agents buy genuine local tickets; whether your markets fall on the right side of that line is a question for counsel, not for a PSP.
Your charity draws run on an older donor base
Charity-lottery donors who've paid by card for twenty years don't want a new payment ritual, and a wallet prompt can cost the donation outright. The fee saved per ticket is real but small next to a lost donor. Keep cards as the default for that audience and offer the wallet rail to the younger, international tail.
Your bestseller is the auto-play subscription
An every-draw subscription that silently charges a stored card has no equivalent here — a wallet cannot be debited on a schedule, so each draw entry needs the player to act. A renewal invoice covers weekly bundles for engaged players, but the set-and-forget product cards enable stays on cards.
You sell sub-dollar impulse entries to first-timers
A first wallet setup takes minutes, and nobody invests minutes to buy one cheap ticket on impulse. That maths only turns when the player returns draw after draw. For one-off micro-entries from cold traffic, keep a stored-card flow; bring the wallet rail in where repeat play amortises the onboarding.
Related flows
Other iGaming & Betting sub-niches on Paymos
Pricing
1.0% per settled ticket, all-in. No fixed fee, acceptance gas covered
Same rate for the cheap single ticket and the large syndicate share — no fixed-fee floor, no exchange-rate markup, no separate transfer line, and the acceptance gas already inside the 1.0%. The winner payout carries no second processing fee: Paymos takes nothing on it, you cover only a reduced network fee. High-volume operators move to 0.3% on request. Card-rail lottery acquirers stack high-risk surcharges and reserves, and a fixed fee can swallow a third of a sub-dollar sale; other crypto gateways advertise from 0.5% but settle nearer 1.5–2% once conversion, transfer and network costs land on both legs.
See pricing