Recurring crypto payments stopped being a thought experiment in 2025. Loop Crypto processed over $40M in subscription volume across 25,000+ active mandates last year, Sphere Pay went GA on Solana recurring rails in February 2026, and Stripe finally extended its USDC product to support subscription billing in March 2026. The plumbing has caught up. What still varies wildly: fees, chains, stablecoin coverage, and whether the provider expects you to manage wallets yourself.
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This guide compares 10 platforms that actually offer recurring USDC, USDT, or PYUSD billing in production. We focus on integration complexity, supported stablecoins, fee structure, and target customer (SaaS, content creators, B2B invoicing). All pricing reflects each provider's published rates as of May 2026.
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ERC-20 tokens have no native "pull" semantics. A merchant cannot debit a customer's wallet on a schedule the way a card network debits a bank account. Every recurring crypto payments stack has to solve this with either token approvals plus a relayer, a smart-contract subscription module, account abstraction (ERC-4337) with session keys, or the newer EIP-7702 delegation pattern that gives EOAs temporary smart-account powers.
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That architectural fork drives every other tradeoff. Approval-based providers (Loop, Sphere) are cheap but require customers to trust a contract with a spending allowance. AA-based providers (Mesh, Privy) cost more in gas but give finer-grained control. Custodial providers (Bitwave, Helio) hide the complexity entirely but charge SaaS-style platform fees on top of network costs.
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The matrix below uses each provider's public pricing and docs. Fees are merchant-side unless noted. Integration complexity is rated 1 (drop-in widget) to 5 (raw smart-contract wiring).

Loop Crypto is the most widely deployed recurring crypto payments stack. It uses a token-approval model: customers grant Loop's audited contract a spending allowance, and Loop debits on the merchant's schedule. The team publishes monthly volume reports; February 2026 showed $4.2M processed across 27,000 active subscriptions.
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Fee is a flat 0.75% on charge value. Chains include Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and BNB Chain. Stablecoins: USDC, USDT, DAI, PYUSD. Integration is hosted-checkout-plus-API, so engineering time is typically under a sprint. Best fit: B2B SaaS selling to crypto-native customers who already hold stablecoins in self-custody wallets.
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Sphere Pay went GA on Solana recurring billing in February 2026, using a Solana-native subscription program rather than token approvals. Fees are 0.5% plus roughly 0.0005 SOL per debit. Sphere supports USDC, USDT, PYUSD, and EURC across Solana and Eclipse. Integration is a TypeScript SDK with React hooks.
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Helio Pay (acquired by MoonPay in late 2024) targets the creator economy. Helio Lite is 0% merchant fee for low-volume creators, while Helio Pro charges 1.0% with priority support and Shopify-style storefront tools. Recurring billing supports USDC, USDT, native SOL, and Bitcoin (via Lightning and Bitcoin L2 rails added in 2025). Best fit: Discord communities, NFT memberships, and content creators monetizing subscriptions without an engineering team.
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Bitwave is the closest thing to a stablecoin-native NetSuite. It handles recurring invoicing, automated reconciliation, and crypto AR/AP for enterprises using NetSuite, QuickBooks, or Xero. Pricing is custom enterprise SaaS (typically starting around $30k/year per published case studies). Bitwave supports USDC, USDT, PYUSD, and USDP across Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Avalanche. Customers include Consensys, MoonPay, and BitGo.
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Slash takes a different angle. It pairs a corporate Mastercard with stablecoin-funded recurring vendor payments, so businesses can pay SaaS vendors that bill in USD without manual treasury work. Fee is 0.5% on the stablecoin leg. Best fit: crypto-native businesses paying traditional SaaS vendors on a schedule.
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If you control both sides of the relationship (in-app subscriptions for a wallet, protocol, or game), AA-based subscriptions are increasingly attractive. ERC-4337 session keys let a customer authorize a contract to spend up to $X of USDC per month, with hard-coded constraints (max amount, time window, allowed contracts). Privy ships session-key tooling that pairs with any custom subscription contract; you bring the contract logic, Privy handles wallet UX, MFA, and recovery.
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EIP-7702, live on Ethereum mainnet since the Pectra upgrade in May 2025, gives this power to existing EOAs without forcing wallet migration. A customer signs one delegation transaction, and their EOA can then execute scheduled pulls under contract-enforced rules. See EIP-7702 and stablecoins for the mechanics. Tradeoff: you are operating raw smart-contract infrastructure, which means audits, monitoring, and 24/7 ops.
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Stripe extended its USDC product to recurring billing in March 2026. If your business already uses Stripe Billing, enabling stablecoin subscriptions is a checkbox in the dashboard plus a webhook update. Fee is 1.5% recurring (plus a 0.5% stablecoin pass-through), so Stripe is the most expensive listed here, but unbeatable for SaaS teams that want one billing stack across cards and crypto. Chains: Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Solana. Stablecoin: USDC only.
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Circle's stack is more à la carte. You compose Programmable Wallets (custodial or developer-controlled), the Smart Contract Platform for deploying a subscription contract, and Circle Mint for treasury. Fees scale with MAU and gas station usage. USDC and EURC only. For teams committed to USDC-only on regulated rails, this is the most flexible path; for teams that want multi-stablecoin, look elsewhere. Compare against accepting USDC payments for the non-recurring baseline.
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Three questions decide most of it. First, what stablecoins do your customers actually hold? Solana-heavy audiences push you to Sphere or Helio; USDC-only fintechs gravitate to Stripe or Circle; multi-stablecoin B2B lands on Loop or Bitwave. Second, who owns the customer's wallet? Custodial flows (Helio, Stripe, Circle Programmable Wallets) hide complexity but constrain power-users; self-custody flows (Loop, Sphere, Privy, raw 7702) preserve user sovereignty but require wallet UX investment. Third, what is your engineering budget? Drop-in widgets ship in days; AA and 7702 stacks need weeks of contract work plus an audit.
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Pricing pulled May 2026 from each provider's official site: loopcrypto.xyz, spherepay.co, hel.io, bitwave.io, slash.fi, meshconnect.com, circle.com/programmable-wallets, stripe.com/payments/stablecoin, privy.io. Chain and stablecoin coverage cross-referenced against each provider's developer documentation. EIP-7702 mechanics from the Ethereum Pectra upgrade specification. Volume figures from Loop Crypto's February 2026 transparency report.
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