Glossary · moving money
What is a settlement currency?
The settlement currency is what an incoming payment becomes once it reaches you. A shopper pays in bitcoin, and whether you end up holding bitcoin or euros is decided by this one setting.
A setting, not a decision per order
This is the single most consequential configuration choice in a crypto payments setup, and it is usually made once by whoever did the integration and never revisited.
Set it to a fiat currency and every incoming payment converts. Your revenue behaves like any other revenue, your accounts balance without a note, and you carry no price exposure. Set it to a crypto asset and you keep what arrives, with whatever that implies.
You can also hold several balances and move between them from the dashboard, so the choice is not permanent. What it is not, at CoinGate, is a per-order decision.
One non-obvious consequence. If your settlement currency matches the currency the shopper paid in, no exchange runs and a do-not-convert fee applies instead. Setting a receive currency is therefore not automatically the cheaper option, which is worth checking against your own asset mix rather than assuming.
How to choose it
Three questions, answered once.
What currency do you report in
Matching your settlement currency to your reporting currency removes a reconciliation step permanently.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change it later?
Yes. It is an account setting rather than something baked into your integration.
Can I split settlement between currencies?
You can hold several balances and move between them. Splitting a single incoming payment across currencies automatically is not how the setting works.
Which fiat currencies can I settle into?
EUR, GBP and USD.
Is converting always cheaper than holding?
No, and this is the trap. If your receive currency equals the paid currency, a do-not-convert fee applies instead of an exchange fee. Model both. Pricing