SaturnShift vs Stripe
Stripe is the most trusted card processor in the world, and in late 2025 they added stablecoin payments. If you only take cards, go and use Stripe.
This page is about what happens when you also invoice, and when some of your customers want to pay in USDC. We are going to show you the arithmetic, including the parts where we lose.
What each of us charges
| Line item | SaturnShift | Stripe |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $69/month | $0 |
| Card processing | 2.9% + $0.30 (Stripe rails) | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| SaturnShift card fee | 0.15% + $0.10 | n/a |
| USDC | 0.75% + $0.10 | 1.5% |
| USDC settlement | Native, on-chain, your wallet | Converted to USD, held by Stripe |
| Invoicing | Included, unlimited | 0.4% per paid invoice |
| Recurring invoices | Included | Stripe Billing, from 0.7% |
| Automated reminders | · | |
| Text to Pay | · | |
| QR-code payment pages | · | |
| Unified card and crypto dashboard | · | |
| AI Copilot for payments | · | |
| Chargeback exposure on USDC | None (irreversible) | n/a |
| Custody of your funds | Never. Non-custodial | Stripe holds your balance |
Two things worth being explicit about, because most comparison pages bury them.
Our card fee sits on top of Stripe’s, not instead of it. Card payments run on Stripe rails. You pay Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 and then our 0.15% + $0.10. On cards alone, we are more expensive than going to Stripe directly. That is just true.
Stripe’s invoicing fee sits on top of processing too. Stripe states this plainly: invoicing fees do not include payment processing. A Stripe merchant invoicing a card-paying client pays both.
The arithmetic
A B2B business doing $20,000 a month across 100 paid invoices.
If your clients pay by card
| Stripe | SaturnShift | |
|---|---|---|
| Card processing | $610 | $610 |
| Invoicing | $80 | $0 |
| Platform fee | $0 | $69 |
| SaturnShift card fee | n/a | $40 |
| Total | $690 | $719 |
Stripe wins by about $29. If cards are all you do, Stripe is cheaper and you should use it.
If your clients pay in USDC
| Stripe | SaturnShift | |
|---|---|---|
| USDC fee | $300 | $150 |
| Per transaction | n/a | $10 |
| Invoicing | $80 | $0 |
| Platform fee | $0 | $69 |
| Total | $380 | $229 plus gas |
We win by roughly $150 a month. Not because our USDC rate is half theirs, though it is. We win because your invoicing is free and theirs is not.
Where we stop being worth it
Below roughly $6,000 a month in USDC volume, we cost you more than Stripe. The $69 platform fee is fixed, and at low volume it dominates.
If you are under that, and you are not invoicing much, and you do not need USDC settlement, use Stripe. We would rather tell you now than onboard you into a bill that does not make sense.
Above it, the gap widens with every invoice you send.
Where the invoicing difference really bites
Stripe charges 0.4% of the invoice value every time an invoice is paid. There is no volume discount, and the fee scales with the size of the invoice.
| Your invoice | Stripe charges | We charge |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | $0.80 | $0 |
| $1,000 | $4.00 | $0 |
| $5,000 | $20.00 | $0 |
| $25,000 | $100.00 | $0 |
If you invoice B2B clients for meaningful amounts, this is where the money is. A business invoicing $50,000 a month pays Stripe $200 in invoicing fees. We include it.
And if your invoices are recurring, Stripe moves you to Billing at 0.7%, which is higher still.
Settlement: the difference that is not about price
Stripe accepts stablecoins and converts them to USD in your Stripe balance. You end up with dollars, held by Stripe, on Stripe’s payout schedule.
We settle natively in USDC, on-chain, directly to a wallet you control. We are non-custodial. We never hold your funds and we cannot freeze them.
Be clear about what that means both ways. USDC lands in your wallet in minutes, and it is yours immediately with no payout schedule and no counterparty. It is also USDC, not dollars in a bank. We do not offer automatic conversion to fiat. If you need dollars at the end, you choose your own off-ramp.
If automatic USD conversion is what you want, Stripe does that and we do not. That is a real reason to choose them.
Chargebacks
Every card transaction carries dispute risk. Stripe charges a fee per dispute even when you win, and high dispute rates threaten your account standing.
USDC transactions are final and irreversible. There is no chargeback mechanism on a blockchain.
This cuts both ways and you should know it. Irreversibility protects you from fraudulent disputes. It also means a genuine mistake cannot be clawed back. Match the payment method to the risk profile of the transaction.
Choose Stripe if
- •Cards are all you take
- •You want stablecoins automatically converted to USD
- •Your USDC volume is under about $6,000 a month
- •You need Stripe Capital, Issuing, or Treasury
- •You want the widest global card coverage
- •You are happy to build your own merchant dashboard
Choose SaturnShift if
- •You invoice B2B clients and the 0.4% is adding up
- •You want cards, bank, and USDC on one invoice or payment link
- •You want USDC settled to a wallet you control, not converted and held
- •You want reminders, Text to Pay, QR pages, and a copilot across every method
- •You want one dashboard and one reconciliation instead of four tools
The verdict
If you take cards and nothing else, use Stripe. They are better at it and cheaper for you.
If a real share of your volume is invoiced, or your customers want to pay in USDC, the arithmetic turns. Free invoicing plus half the USDC rate beats a $69 platform fee somewhere around $6,000 a month, and it keeps getting better from there.
Run your own numbers. If they do not work, tell us and we will say so.
Send us your last three months of payment fees and we will tell you honestly whether we would save you money. If we would not, we will tell you that too.
Pricing verified against Stripe published documentation, July 2026. Stripe fees are subject to change. USDC settlement times refer to on-chain receipt, not conversion to fiat.
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