Exploring the Potential of Recurring Crypto Payments

Popular methods of Automated Recurring Payments

There are only a few companies in the market that offer recurring services. However, most of them do not offer fully recurring payments. They often involve email billing, where users receive payment notifications via email or links to make payments. Alternatively, they may require users to create an account with a payment provider and link it to the merchant, depositing funds into the account for service usage. This process, developers argue, is inconvenient and resembles a temporary and partial solution, often referred to as a "crutch."

E-mail subscriptions enable users to stay updated on various aspects of their recurring crypto payments. They serve as channels for communication between businesses and customers, providing notifications, reminders, and updates regarding payment schedules, transaction confirmations, and account status. 

There are solutions available in the market that offer a traditional and "correct" approach by connecting the end user's web3 wallet. This method ensures security and consent for debiting funds through a smart contract. Smart contracts offer the ability to prove that a user viewed something and release payment automatically, simplifying billing and auditing processes. Instead of using credit cards and bank accounts, users would connect their crypto wallets. Therefore, to accept crypto, integration with various user wallets would be necessary.

Industries Opting for Crypto Recurring Payments

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, industries across the spectrum are embracing the convenience and efficiency of recurring payments. From e-commerce platforms to high risk industries, various sectors are recognizing the value of recurring payment models in enhancing customer satisfaction and streamlining revenue streams.

1) E-commerce:

E-commerce platforms are at the forefront of adopting recurring payment solutions. By offering recurring payments, e-commerce businesses can secure predictable revenue streams while providing convenience to their customers.

2) Finance and Banking:

In the finance and banking sector, recurring payments play a crucial role in automating bill payments, loan repayments, and subscription services. Banks and financial institutions leverage recurring payments to ensure timely transactions and improve customer retention.

3) Healthcare Services:

Recurring payments in healthcare streamline billing processes and enable patients to access essential services without disruption.

4) Streaming Services:

Streaming platforms rely heavily on recurring payments to monetize their content libraries. Subscription-based models for streaming services like Netflix, Spotify, and Disney+ offer consumers access to a vast array of entertainment options for a monthly fee, driving recurring revenue for the platforms.

5) Software as a Service (SaaS):

Businesses subscribe to SaaS products for various needs such as project management, customer relationship management (CRM), and accounting software. Recurring payments allow SaaS providers to maintain steady cash flow while continuously delivering value to their customers.

6) Online Gaming and Gambling: 

Online gaming and gambling platforms often face stringent regulations and heightened fraud risks. Despite these challenges, recurring payments are commonly used to facilitate subscription-based memberships, in-game purchases, or betting subscriptions, ensuring a seamless user experience and consistent revenue generation.

If you run SaaS billing, iGaming subscriptions or streaming-style recurring revenue and need crypto subscriptions live this quarter — book a 25-min walkthrough. We'll map our setup against your stack, volume and chargeback profile. Reply within 4 business hours.

Challenges for Cryptocurrency for Recurring Payments

Cryptocurrency systems aren't inherently geared towards recurring billing, although many businesses aspire to offer this option to their customers. The 'push' system characteristic of cryptocurrency poses challenges for managing recurring payments, as customers must initiate payments on schedule.

Wallets have the potential to enable merchants to integrate cryptocurrency as a payment option. Some platforms allow businesses to establish 'smart contracts' with customers to regulate recurring billing. However, significant obstacles hinder the adoption of cryptocurrency as a payment option:

• Volatility in cryptocurrency prices presents risks for users of Crypto Autopay, affecting their financial planning and budgeting.

• Cryptocurrency empowers subscribers, making it challenging to track customers who cancel payments.

• SaaS and other subscription-based companies cannot adjust prices without explicit user permission. Ideally, providers should automatically adjust prices and notify users by charging their credit cards.

• Cryptocurrency wallets necessitate companies to create new smart contracts each time the price changes.

Despite efforts by wallet platforms to mitigate these challenges, using cryptocurrency for recurring payments remains complex. For now, it may be more cost-effective and preferable to adhere to a secure, reliable payment processing platform for subscription-based payments.

These constraints are real — volatility, cancellation tracking, price-adjustment without explicit consent — and each one is solvable when the gateway handles smart-contract triggers and on-chain monitoring. Send us your billing model and volume; we'll come back with how each constraint is handled in our setup. 4-hour reply.

Benefits of Crypto Recurring Payments

Cryptocurrency offers a highly transparent form of payment, where account owners have access to the public ledger, enabling them to track all transactions and monitor the movement of their funds. This transparency is especially valuable for subscription-based companies, allowing them to efficiently manage their transactions. Moreover, businesses can rest assured that the coins in their account are secure and not being used elsewhere without their knowledge.

When it comes to recurring payments, cryptocurrency offers several benefits. 

Unlimited Global Payments

Facilitates seamless global payments by eliminating traditional financial barriers, fees, and geographic restrictions, thereby enhancing the smoothness and accessibility of international subscriptions and transactions.

Reduce transaction fees

Adopting crypto recurring payments cuts transaction fee costs. Inqud offers fees as low as 0.5%, a cost-efficient shift from traditional methods.

Zero chargebacks

Crypto payments reduce fraud and chargebacks, making transactions safer for both sellers and buyers, thereby enhancing trust in crypto as a superior payment choice.

Safe & secure

Only you have full control and access to your assets, with the wallet serving as the sole manager.

How Inqud Recurring Payments Works Today (Updated May 2026)

When this article was first published in June 2024, Inqud's recurring crypto payments product was in late-stage development. Two years on, it's live and in production with merchants across SaaS, VPN, streaming, gambling and betting, marketplaces, and creator/content platforms.

Here's what the setup looks like today.

Web3, not Web2

Recurring runs on a non-custodial model. The customer connects their own Web3 wallet (MetaMask, Rainbow, Trust Wallet) and authorizes a smart contract to debit on schedule. They keep custody of their assets between charges; we never hold the balance. This is the key difference from our Crypto Acquiring product, where the user sends funds themselves — Recurring lets us initiate the charge.

Two plan types: Subscription and On-Demand

Subscription is the classic fixed-amount, fixed-period model — hourly (for testing), daily, weekly, monthly, 3-monthly or yearly. Invoices fire automatically one day before the next period closes. Best fit for VPN, SaaS, streaming platforms, scheduled service top-ups.

On-Demand gives the merchant control over amount and timing. The customer signs an infinite approve once; the merchant calls the API to charge whenever the business logic requires. Best fit for gambling and betting (balance top-ups), marketplaces with variable fees, and freelance platforms.

Supported assets

Stablecoins only — USDT and USDC on EVM networks. Native crypto (BTC, ETH) is not supported for Recurring by design: we removed volatility from the recurring billing equation. This is one of the constraints we flagged in the «Challenges» section above — it's now resolved through asset selection rather than hedging.

Gas mechanics

The end-user pays the network fee for the one-time approve transaction. Inqud pays the gas for every recurring charge after that. The user signs once, then sees no further wallet pop-ups.

Cancellation and lifecycle

Subscriptions move through INITIATED → ACTIVE → CANCELLED or EXPIRED. Cancellation today is merchant-initiated through the dashboard — a self-serve customer portal is on the roadmap, not yet shipped. If a charge fails because of insufficient balance, a configurable Grace Period gives the system additional retry attempts before the subscription cancels.

Compliance

KYT screening and AML monitoring are built into the transaction flow. No chargebacks by design — blockchain transactions are final.

If you want to see this on your stack — talk to our team. A 25-minute product call with our integration lead. We'll map our setup against your billing flow, volume and target verticals, and send you sandbox keys within 1 business day. We reply within 4 business hours, Telegram monitored 24/7.

Book a 25-min product call →