NOWPayments CEO Kate Lifshits Says Businesses Should Stop Paying for Crypto Payouts

NOWPayments says it has launched a zero-fee crypto payout infrastructure that routes payouts via instant email-based delivery instead of wallet-to-wallet transfers, eliminating network/service fees and cutting payout failure/support costs. The company estimates that at high volumes (hundreds of thousands to millions of payouts), annual savings could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on blockchain fees and coin choice. Overall, it positions crypto payouts as a simpler “person-to-person” flow, shifting the economics away from per-transaction fees.

Analysis

This reads more like a distribution wedge than a durable cost revolution. The economic value is less about eliminating blockchain fees and more about collapsing onboarding friction, which matters most for high-frequency, low-average-ticket payout businesses where recipient support and failed-transfer handling are the real drag on margin. If the workflow truly reduces customer service touches and reconciliation, the beneficiary set is broader than crypto-native firms: affiliate networks, gaming, creator monetization, and cross-border gig payroll could see higher payout frequency and lower churn.

The main losers are not obvious incumbents so much as the fee-monetization layer around wallets, routing, and payout orchestration. But the claimed savings likely get re-labeled elsewhere as FX spread, custody, compliance, or liquidity costs, so the headline "zero fee" can overstate the net economic impact. That makes this more threatening to small point-solution vendors than to scaled fintechs with bundled compliance and treasury infrastructure.

Catalyst path: in 1-3 months, the key tells are customer logos, actual processed volume, and whether gross profit per payout is preserved after subsidies. Over 6-18 months, if this is real, it could incrementally pressure payout-oriented fintech pricing and increase stablecoin transfer volumes; if not, it fades as a marketing claim. The contrarian risk is that the market is over-fixated on blockchain fees when the binding constraint is KYC/AML and counterparty risk, not network cost.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No immediate directional trade in DGTEF; treat as a claim-risk event until third-party evidence of transaction volume, retention, and net take-rate appears.
• Set a 1-3 month alert on PAYO and PYPL commentary: if management starts discussing pricing pressure or crypto payout substitution, consider shorting rallies in payout-sensitive fintechs.
• Conditional relative-value idea: long CRCL / short PAYO for 1-2 quarters only if stablecoin-based enterprise flows accelerate and payout pricing compresses; stop-loss if PAYO shows stable share or CRCL volume stalls.
• Watch ETH fee activity and on-chain transfer counts over the next quarter; if this style of payout abstraction scales and fee revenue weakens, use that to fade any reflexive strength in fee-sensitive blockchain proxies.