Merchants across ecommerce, marketplaces, travel, digital goods, and cross‑border commerce are increasingly asking their payment service providers a simple question: Why can’t I accept crypto and stablecoins as easily as cards or bank payments?
For PSPs, the hesitation is not just about demand. It is about regulatory clarity, compliance responsibility, and operational control. Crypto payments promise faster settlement and lower costs, but what’s most important it that it aligns with regulated payment environments.
This guide builds on the ideas explored in “What’s stopping you from receiving stablecoins?” and reframes them specifically for PSPs. It explains why crypto adoption has stalled, how regulatory expectations differ across markets, and how PSPs can offer crypto and stablecoin payments without introducing new compliance or operational risk.
The Real Barriers to Crypto Adoption for PSPs
From a PSP perspective, crypto payments have historically introduced more questions than answers. The core challenges are practical rather than ideological.
Regulation remains fragmented across jurisdictions, leaving PSPs unclear on how responsibilities are shared between wallets, merchants, and payment providers. Questions around KYC, AML, and sanctions screening often become more complex when payments originate from self‑custody wallets rather than traditional accounts. At the same time, wallet and chain fragmentation dramatically increases integration and compliance scope, making it difficult to scale support safely.
Operational concerns compound these regulatory issues. Many crypto payment solutions introduce new settlement behaviors, unfamiliar reconciliation models, or incomplete reporting. For PSPs that operate regulated, high‑volume payment systems, unpredictability is a non‑starter.
Why Regulation Looks Different by Market
Crypto and stablecoin payments do not exist outside regulation. In practice, PSPs must deliver onchain payments within existing payments, e‑money, and financial crime frameworks, and those frameworks vary significantly by region.
In the European Union, stablecoins increasingly fall under MiCA and established e‑money rules. PSPs remain responsible for merchant due diligence, transaction monitoring, and auditability. For crypto payments to be viable, they must behave like regulated payment methods with clear settlement and reporting, not like ad‑hoc wallet transfers.
In the United Kingdom, stablecoins are moving toward formal recognition within payments regulation. PSPs are still expected to uphold AML, sanctions screening, and consumer protection standards. Any solution that bypasses familiar authorization or settlement flows increases regulatory exposure.
In the United States, compliance obligations are shaped by a mix of state money transmission laws and federal AML requirements. PSPs must be particularly cautious around custody and direct interaction with unvetted wallets. Solutions that require PSPs to touch user funds or manage wallet risk often fall outside acceptable operating models.
In Singapore, crypto payment activity is regulated under the Payment Services Act, with clear expectations around transaction monitoring, safeguarding, and operational resilience. Onchain payments must integrate cleanly into existing payment operations to meet these standards.
Across all regions, the pattern is consistent: crypto payments are only viable when they fit existing PSP compliance and operational frameworks.
Stablecoins Are a Critical Step, But Not the Full Answer
Stablecoins such as USDC and EURC address one of the biggest historical barriers to crypto payments: volatility. By offering fiat‑denominated value onchain, they make pricing, checkout, and settlement far more predictable for merchants.
However, stablecoins alone do not solve the PSP problem. They do not address wallet fragmentation, they do not define authorization or settlement flows, and they do not automatically integrate into reconciliation and reporting systems. Without the right infrastructure, stablecoins simply move complexity from one layer to another.
For stablecoins to work at scale, they must be delivered through payment‑native infrastructure that aligns with how PSPs already operate.
The PSP Requirement: Crypto Must Behave Like a Payment Method
PSPs adopt new payment methods based on consistency, not novelty. A viable payment method must be predictable, auditable, reconcilable, and compliant by design.
Crypto solutions struggle when they introduce wallet‑specific logic, require bespoke settlement workflows, or expand regulatory scope beyond what PSPs can support. When crypto behaves like a crypto product, adoption stalls.
For crypto to scale, it must look and feel like an alternative payment method, not a separate system.
How WalletConnect Pay Makes Crypto Compliant by Design
WalletConnect Pay is built specifically for this reality. It is a complete, end‑to‑end crypto payment solution that makes wallets compatible with existing PSP payment flows.
Crucially, PSPs do not need to change how they operate. Existing KYC, AML, sanctions screening, merchant onboarding, authorization, settlement, reconciliation, and reporting models remain intact. Crypto payments are introduced as another payment method, not as a parallel system.
WalletConnect Pay abstracts wallet and chain complexity while preserving PSP control. The result is a payment flow that feels familiar to PSPs, merchants, and regulators alike.
A Compliance‑First Architecture Built for PSPs
WalletConnect Pay is designed to align with existing PSP compliance and operational standards. Before a payment begins, WalletConnect Pay handles Travel Rule and sanctions checks, ensuring the required information is available upfront.
PSPs never custody user funds and don’t need to introduce new accounts or wallet-level integrations. Instead, WalletConnect Pay provides the data PSPs need to settle, audit, and reconcile crypto and stablecoin payments using their existing processes.
The result is simple: crypto payments that fit cleanly into regulated payment flows—without turning PSPs into crypto platforms.
One Integration, Global Coverage
By integrating with the WalletConnect network, PSPs gain access to hundreds of millions of users across more than 700 wallets through a single, standardized connection.
Instead of supporting individual wallets or expanding compliance scope with every new chain, PSPs integrate once and scale globally. The complexity stays in the infrastructure, not in PSP operations.
What This Unlocks for PSPs
With WalletConnect Pay, PSPs can respond to merchant demand for crypto and stablecoin payments while maintaining full control over compliance and risk. They can offer faster settlement, lower acceptance costs, and global reach, without introducing new operational models or regulatory exposure.
Most importantly, PSPs can launch crypto payments without changing how payments operate today.
The Bottom Line
Crypto adoption at scale does not require new compliance frameworks. It requires infrastructure that respects existing ones.
WalletConnect Pay enables PSPs to accept crypto and stablecoin payments within current regulatory environments, using familiar payment flows and one simple integration.
Crypto that behaves like payments. That’s WalletConnect Pay.