icpay - Stripe for Crypto

There is a problem at the heart of modern payment processing. A globally-inflecting, gargantuan industry with an estimated worth in excess of $100 billion, all built on outdated infrastructure. Innovation drives progress, and the innovation of icpay holds the cure to the industry's manifold ailments: tardy transactions, overinflated processing fees, and under-served global markets.

Payment processors, from Stripe to Square, were set up to serve the businesses that utilise them. But they are hamstrung by their reliance on the orthodox banking framework. In a system where ACH/BACS transfers complete in 1-3 business days, delays are rife, regardless of Faster Payment. Such delays are a troubling contributing factor to the cash flow issues suffered by 61% of small businesses (per QuickBooks); high processing fees are another. Almost every major payment processor charges the same rate: 2.9%, plus $0.30 per transaction. This is no coincidence. It has become an intractable industry standard, leaving businesses little choice but to accept this accumulation of interchange fees (to consumer banks), assessment fees (to card networks), and processor markups. With 43% of small businesses operating on profit margins below 10%, every percentage point of fees is of critical importance.

Transactional delays and fees might be considered micro-financial maladies, but the limited global reach of existing payment processing represents a far more comprehensive missed opportunity. Only 46 of the world's 195 countries have access to Stripe, the current most popular payment processor. That leaves 5.2 billion people – or 65% of the global population – in unsupported regions. It is imperative that the blood flow of the modern global economy reaches these under-served regions, including, but not limited to, Nigeria ($440bn GDP), Bangladesh ($460bn GDP), Pakistan ($380bn GDP), and Indonesia ($1.3trn GDP). The traditional banking system patently has a circulation issue.

The issues, then, should be apparent. icpay holds the solution.

icpay is the first truly global payment processor. Enabling cross-border payments with near-instant settlement, it offers new lifeblood to businesses worldwide – a new payment infrastructure, powered by the Internet Computer (ICP) network, to right the wrongs of the old guard. Our developer-first approach prioritises ease-of-use; our free-to-use TypeScript SDK allows anybody, anywhere in the world, to start accepting crypto payments in minutes. Opening up the current liquidity in the crypto market to practical use is a victory on two fronts. For businesses, the benefits of a 0.5% transaction fee and sub-2 second settlement time, as well as exposure to an emerging asset class, are obvious. For cryptocurrency holders, icpay's utility as a crypto-native processor for web3 payments is invaluable.

The Internet Computer's decentralised infrastructure enables service of customers worldwide, free from banking partnerships or geographical restrictions. Without the constrictions of commercial intermediaries – ICP's applications run on-chain with native HTTPS integration – the fees, delays, and bottlenecks which hamper traditional ACH transactions disappear. If orthodox payment processing is an aging and ailing system, then its replacement is not just leaner and faster, but more intelligent: icpay's programmable smart contracts logically execute more complex transaction types such as revenue splits, conditional escrow, and automated subscription management. And these transactions are limitlessly customisable, owing to the open-source platform access. Just as PayPal stepped up during the shift from Web1 to Web2 at the turn of the century, so too does icpay stand ready at the dawn of Web3.

At its technical core, icpay runs on canister smart contracts, a new class of scalable compute units native to the Internet Computer. These canisters act as both infrastructure and logic, executing payments, managing subscriptions, and integrating seamlessly with dApps, all without intermediaries. By removing the banking rails and running everything on-chain, icpay achieves speed and efficiency levels impossible for incumbents still tied to the legacy system.

Security and identity are equally critical. icpay leverages Internet Identity, a protocol-level authentication system, to allow frictionless user onboarding without the burden of passwords, or reliance on third-party providers. Fraud protection and trust are not bolted on as afterthoughts but embedded into the fabric of the platform itself. The result is a payment network that is both more resilient and more open – capable of handling global commerce while adapting to the next wave of digital innovation.

Old infrastructure has carried the industry as far as it can. Slow, costly, and geographically constrained, it is an architecture showing its age. icpay represents a generational upgrade: faster, cheaper, borderless, and programmable by design. The shift is more than skin-deep – a new operating layer for the world's transactions.

Payment processing is entering a new era. With icpay, businesses will no longer be constrained by the limitations of legacy systems; they are empowered by a platform that matches the speed and scope of the internet itself.

Join the next evolution of payments: icpay.org