Crypto Payment Gateway

YOUR BRAND, YOUR DOMAINSTABLECOINS AND CRYPTO, RECONCILEDBUILT AROUND YOUR LICENSE

A crypto payment gateway is the software that lets a business charge in crypto-assets or stablecoins, confirm each payment on-chain and reconcile it with its accounting. Unknown Gravity develops white-label gateways; operating one for other businesses usually requires a license, such as CASP authorization in the EU or money transmitter registration in the US, held by the client or a licensed partner.

A white-label crypto payment gateway is payment software that a business or a payment company runs under its own brand to charge in crypto-assets or stablecoins, confirm each payment on-chain, convert it when needed and reconcile it with its accounting. Unknown Gravity designs and develops it for payment companies, crypto-asset service providers, financial institutions and merchants with significant cross-border sales.

We build the technology; the license to operate it belongs to you or to your licensed partner. We are not a payment institution, an electronic money institution, a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) or a money transmitter, and we do not hold the funds or keys of your merchants or their customers.

01 / What we build in a white-label crypto payment gateway

The gateway covers the whole payment cycle, from the price shown at checkout to the entry in the merchant’s books. These are the modules we design and develop, adapted to your model:

Module	What it does	Who stays responsible
Checkout and payment links	Hosted payment page, payment links and invoices under your brand; the customer pays from their own wallet or exchange account	You, as the gateway operator
Merchant API and webhooks	Creating charges, checking their status and sending events to the merchant’s systems	You and each merchant
On-chain monitoring	Watching each network, applying the confirmation threshold you set and flagging underpayments, overpayments and late payments	You, who set the rules
Conversion and payouts	Connecting to the licensed provider that converts to fiat or holds stablecoin balances, and scheduling payouts to merchants	The licensed partner that executes them
Reconciliation and reporting	Matching each payment to its invoice and exporting it to the ERP or accounting system	The merchant’s finance team
Compliance hooks	Merchant (KYB) and payer (KYC) onboarding with your provider, screening, limits and the data the Travel Rule requires	The licensed entity responsible for anti-money laundering
Merchant dashboard	Users and roles, transactions, refunds, exports and settings	You

Everything runs under your brand and domain, on the networks and with the assets you decide to support. Treasury and merchant wallets can be built with our wallet and custody development service.

02 / Stablecoin payments: MiCA e-money tokens and the GENIUS Act

Stablecoins remove the volatility problem of a crypto payment, but in each market the law decides which ones a regulated gateway can work with. For the integration side, see our stablecoin payment integration service.

European Union: e-money tokens under MiCA

A stablecoin that references a single official currency is an e-money token (EMT), and EMTs are deemed to be electronic money (MiCA, art. 48(2)). As a general rule, an EMT can only be offered to the public by its issuer, authorized as a credit institution or an electronic money institution, with a white paper notified and published (art. 48(1)). Holders can redeem at par value at any time (art. 49(4)), and neither issuers nor CASPs may pay interest on EMTs (art. 50). ESMA’s register lists the notified white papers: as of October 13, 2026 it includes, for example, USDC and EURC, issued by Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS.

United States: the GENIUS Act is enacted but not yet in effect

The GENIUS Act (Public Law 119-27) was signed on July 18, 2025. It takes effect on the earlier of 18 months after enactment or 120 days after the primary federal regulators issue final regulations (Sec. 20). As of October 13, 2026 no final substantive rule had been published, and the Treasury expects the effective date to be January 18, 2027. The rules are still being written: the Treasury’s proposal on the issuance, offer and sale of payment stablecoins is open for comments until October 19, 2026. Three provisions matter for a gateway:

From the effective date, only permitted payment stablecoin issuers may issue a payment stablecoin in the US (Sec. 3(a)).
From July 18, 2028, a digital asset service provider may not offer or sell to a person in the US a payment stablecoin that a permitted issuer did not issue, except under the safe harbors of Sec. 3(c) or for foreign issuers that meet the conditions of Sec. 18 (Sec. 3(b)(1)).
Exchanging digital assets for monetary value, transferring them to a third party or acting as a custodian, for compensation or profit, falls within the Act’s definition of a digital asset service provider (Sec. 2(7)).

03 / Reconciliation: from on-chain payment to accounting entry

Accepting a payment on a blockchain is the easy part; the work is making each payment reach the merchant’s books with its reference, its exchange rate and its fees. This is how we design reconciliation:

One charge, one identifier. Each invoice gets its own deposit address or payment reference, so every incoming transfer matches a single charge.
Rules for imperfect payments. Underpayments, overpayments, late payments and payments sent on the wrong network follow rules you define, with a clear status for the merchant.
Confirmations per network. A payment is marked as paid after the number of confirmations you set for each network and amount.
Rate and fees on record. The exchange rate applied, the network fee and the gateway fee are stored with each payment, so the accounting entry can be justified later.
Export to your systems. Payments, refunds and payouts reach the ERP or accounting system through its API or through files, and month-end balances against the settlement statements of your licensed partner.

04 / KYC/AML and the Travel Rule, built into the flow

Compliance is part of the gateway from the first version, because the licensed entity that operates it has anti-money laundering duties on every payment.

European Union

Since December 30, 2024, CASPs must send and check information on the originator and the beneficiary of each crypto-asset transfer (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, arts. 14, 16 and 40). When the payer uses a self-hosted address and the amount exceeds €1,000, the CASP must take adequate measures to assess whether that address is owned or controlled by its customer (arts. 14(5) and 16(2)). The gateway collects that data and passes it to the licensed party. More in our Travel Rule entry.

United States

FinCEN’s guidance treats crypto payment processors, which accept crypto from customers and pay merchants in currency or vice versa, as money transmitters that do not qualify for the payment processor exemption (FIN-2019-G001, Section 4.6; 31 CFR 1010.100(ff)(5)(ii)(B)). A money transmitter must register with FinCEN within 180 days of starting (31 CFR 1022.380) and meet its recordkeeping, reporting and monitoring duties. States add their own licenses: in New York, receiving virtual currency for transmission or transmitting it requires a BitLicense, while a merchant that only accepts virtual currency as payment for goods or services is exempt (23 NYCRR 200.2(q) and 200.3(c)).

In both markets the gateway integrates your KYC and KYB provider, sanctions and address screening, limits per customer and per transaction, and the records your compliance team needs.

05 / What we are not, and how we build it

Unknown Gravity is a technology provider: we design, develop, deploy and maintain the gateway. Operating it for merchants is a regulated activity, and the license must sit with you or with a licensed partner.

Who	What they do
Unknown Gravity	Architecture, checkout, API, dashboard, reconciliation, smart contracts where the design needs them, integrations, testing, deployment and maintenance. We do not hold funds or keys of merchants or payers
You, as gateway operator, or your licensed partner	In the EU, authorization for the crypto-asset services the model involves, such as custody, exchange of crypto-assets for funds or transfer services (MiCA, arts. 3(1)(16) and 59(1)), and authorization under the Payment Services Directive for the related payment services (art. 70(4)). In the US, FinCEN registration and the state licenses that apply
The merchant	Accepting payment for its own goods and services, its accounting and its tax treatment

FinCEN’s 2019 guidance draws the same line: the developer of a decentralized application (DApp) is not a money transmitter for the mere act of creating it, but becomes one if it uses or deploys the DApp to engage in money transmission (FIN-2019-G001, Section 5.2.2). That is why we build and you operate. If you plan to obtain the EU license yourself, our guide to the CASP license in Spain explains the process.

1. Scope with your counsel and your partner

Payment flows, networks and assets, who holds funds at each step, the conversion route and the licenses involved.

2. Architecture

The custody model for each balance, the data model for reconciliation and the specification of each integration.

3. Development in releases

Checkout, API, monitoring and dashboard, delivered in releases your team tests on testnets.

4. Integrations and testing

Connections to the licensed partner, the KYC/AML provider and the ERP, with end-to-end testing.

5. Security review and launch

An audit of any smart contracts, fixes for whatever it finds and production deployment.

6. Operation

Handover, technical documentation and maintenance.

When a gateway is not the answer. If your customers are domestic, pay by card and have never asked for crypto, a gateway adds a payment method nobody will use. It makes sense when you sell across borders, when you settle with partners in stablecoins or when your customers already hold crypto-assets.

How we work

Unknown Gravity is a Spanish tokenization technology and blockchain infrastructure company. We build the gateway, the smart contracts and the integrations, and we work with your legal counsel and with the licensed entities that operate the payments: CASPs and electronic money or payment institutions in the EU, and registered money transmitters in the US. We are not any of those entities.

Official sources

This page is informative only and does not constitute legal, tax or investment advice.

Framework verified as of October 13, 2026. Planning a crypto or stablecoin gateway under your own brand? Talk to us.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a license to run a white-label crypto payment gateway?

Usually yes, if you operate it for other businesses. In the EU, custody, exchange of crypto-assets for funds and transfer services are crypto-asset services that require CASP authorization or one of the authorizations listed in art. 60 of MiCA (art. 59(1)), and related payment services require authorization under the Payment Services Directive (art. 70(4)). In the US, FinCEN treats crypto payment processors as money transmitters (FIN-2019-G001, Section 4.6), and states such as New York add their own licenses. If you do not hold them, the usual route is to operate with a licensed partner.

Can the gateway settle in stablecoins such as USDC or EURC?

Technically, yes. In the EU, work with e-money tokens whose issuer is authorized and whose white paper appears in ESMA’s register, as is the case for USDC and EURC as of October 13, 2026. In the US, the GENIUS Act is not yet in effect (the expected date is January 18, 2027), and from July 18, 2028 digital asset service providers may only offer or sell to US persons payment stablecoins from permitted issuers, subject to the exceptions in Sec. 3(c) and Sec. 18 (foreign issuers from comparable regimes). Your licensed partner decides which assets it supports.

How do you handle crypto price volatility?

In one of two ways, depending on your model: charging in stablecoins that reference the currency you invoice in, or converting each crypto payment through your licensed partner when it is confirmed. In both cases the rate applied and the fees are stored with the payment, so the amount booked matches what was settled.