Squaretalk x CoinGate: When Crypto Payments Stop Being an Experiment

A year ago, the question most SaaS founders asked about crypto was simple. Should we even accept it?

Today the question has moved. For a growing number of companies, crypto is already running quietly in the background. The real question now is what happens when the partner processing those payments becomes a regulated financial institution. Does anything actually change, or is “regulated crypto” just a nicer phrase for the same thing?

We went back to Squaretalk to find out. We first told their story last year, the cloud communications platform then shared its experience of removing friction for its international clients. Since then, two things happened. CoinGate became licensed under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, and the way Squaretalk uses crypto kept maturing.

This is what a year of that looks like, told through what changed and the words of the people who run it.

From a client to a partner

Squaretalk has been processing crypto payments with us for a while now. What changed recently is harder to see in a dashboard. The relationship stopped sounding like a vendor arrangement and started sounding like a partnership.

“What started as a way to offer clients more payment flexibility has evolved into a strategic relationship built around innovation and compliance,” says Isaac Levi, Head of Partnerships and Business Development at Squaretalk.

The turning point was regulatory. In December 2025, CoinGate became the first homegrown Lithuanian company to secure a MiCA license from the Bank of Lithuania, alongside a payment institution license. That validated something Squaretalk had bet on from the beginning.

“It validates the compliance-first approach that was important to us from day one and strengthens our ability to offer crypto payments with confidence,” Isaac says.

What MiCA actually changed

Regulation is easy to announce and hard to feel. So we asked a practical question. Once your processor is MiCA-licensed, does your legal team treat crypto any differently?

“Absolutely. Working with a MiCA-licensed crypto payment provider is a critical requirement for us. It brings the regulatory clarity and institutional credibility we expect from our financial partners. From our perspective, it reinforces our compliance-first approach and gives both our internal teams and our clients greater confidence in the long-term sustainability of crypto as a payment method,” Isaac says.

The license is not a logo. It authorizes CoinGate to provide regulated crypto services across the entire European Economic Area under one framework, with the governance and reporting standards that come with it. For Squaretalk’s compliance and legal teams, that moved crypto closer to the financial infrastructure they already trusted.

“In practice, this means stronger confidence around KYC/AML procedures, transaction traceability, audit readiness, and operational standards. It also makes conversations with enterprise and regulated-industry clients significantly easier, because there is a clear regulatory framework behind the payment flow,” Isaac explains.

That last point is the quiet business case for regulated crypto. The objection was never really about technology. It was about who stands behind the payment when an auditor asks. MiCA gives that question an answer.

Preference and predictability

The most interesting development for Squaretalk was seeing clients move to crypto as a preferred payment method.

“The most significant trend we’ve seen is preference. For a growing segment of our international clients, crypto has become the most convenient way to transact with us. Clients appreciate the speed and predictability of the process, especially when compared to traditional cross-border transfers,” Isaac says.

The data backs the “predictability” word. The clear majority of Squaretalk’s crypto volume comes through in stablecoins, not volatile assets, and that has held true every year on the account. That mirrors the whole platform. In the first half of 2026, USDC became the single most-used payment asset across CoinGate, edging ahead of Bitcoin, and its share more than doubled over the year as the ecosystem consolidated around the compliant, dollar-pegged stablecoin. A stablecoin payment behaves like a digital dollar moving at internet speed. No three-day wire, no surprise on arrival.

And because every incoming payment converts to fiat on receipt, Squaretalk carries no price exposure at all. That was true in the first case study, and it is still the foundation. Most CoinGate merchants settle the same way, with roughly three-quarters of all orders converted straight to fiat in the first half of 2026. If you want the longer argument for why crypto volatility is a smaller risk than most assume, we made it here.

It runs itself

The least glamorous sign that a payment method has matured is that nobody talks about it anymore. It just works.

“For the most part, the process is fully automated. Payments, reporting, and reconciliation flow through our established processes with minimal manual intervention,” Isaac says.

The median crypto payment is confirmed in around six minutes, and fewer than 1% of all orders have ever needed a refund. Chargebacks, the recurring tax on card payments, simply do not exist here. A crypto transaction is final once it settles.

This is the same shift we see across the platform. In the first half of 2026, 93.2% of merchant payouts ran through the API, up from 83.3% a year earlier. Crypto stopped being something a finance team operates and became something that operates in the background.

The only manual moments at Squaretalk come from the human side, like a client sending the wrong amount. Even then, Isaac points to support rather than friction.

“CoinGate’s support team is highly responsive and helps resolve the issue quickly. Overall, crypto payments have become a routine and low-maintenance part of our finance operations,” he says.

A differentiator in the market

The partnership also became a differentiator. In the joint announcement from Squaretalk and CoinGate, the companies highlighted that Squaretalk is the only CCaaS, CPaaS, and UCaaS provider partnered with a MiCA-licensed crypto payment processor, an exclusive collaboration that reflects both companies’ commitment to innovation and regulatory compliance.

“We see this as both a trust signal and a market differentiator. Partnering with a MiCA-licensed crypto payment provider strengthens our positioning by showing that innovation and compliance can coexist. From a commercial perspective, this helps us stand out, particularly in conversations with fintech, SaaS, and globally distributed businesses,” Isaac says.

Most companies treat compliance as a cost. Squaretalk chose to turn it into a line in the pitch.

From a wishlist to a live feature

Every real partnership has a wishlist. When we last spoke with Squaretalk, one item sat at the top of theirs. They wanted to stop generating a fresh address for every client top-up and instead give each client a single address they could save once and reuse.

“Dedicated payment addresses would allow us to assign a unique address to each client, making account top-ups much faster and more convenient. That removes friction and simplifies the payment experience considerably,” Isaac says.

Underneath that sat a deeper version of the same ask. For a subscription business, the friction that really stings is a new invoice, a new address, and a manual step on every single deposit.

“For subscription-based businesses like ours, the real breakthrough would be a solution that enables fully automated recurring payments without requiring manual approval for every transaction,” he adds.

Both point at the same problem, and we have now built the answer. 

Payment channels are live. Each client gets a permanent blockchain address they save once and deposit to whenever they want. Every deposit is detected, attributed to the right client, and settled automatically, in the original crypto or converted to euros, dollars, or pounds. No fresh invoice, no new address, no expiry, no manual matching.

That is what a partnership actually looks like. A client tells you exactly where the friction is, and you go build the thing that removes it.

Advice to SaaS leaders, a year later

In our first case study with Squaretalk, the company shared its vision of leading the shift toward modern, compliant crypto payments rather than waiting for the market to catch up. A year later, we asked Isaac whether that perspective had changed and what advice he would give to SaaS leaders still considering crypto payments.

“A year ago, crypto payments still felt more like an innovation play. Today, they’re becoming part of modern global payment infrastructure. My advice would be to focus on the operational benefits rather than the hype. With the right partner, instant fiat conversion, and a compliance-first setup, integrating crypto payments is far more straightforward than many businesses expect,” he says.

The ecosystem grew up around the decision. Regulation, reporting, compliance tooling, all of it is more mature than it was twelve months ago. The companies treating crypto as a competitive advantage are no longer the brave ones. They are just early.

A year on

A year ago, Squaretalk accepting crypto was a forward-looking bet. Today it is a regulated, automated, and growing part of how an international software company receives payments. Clients increasingly prefer paying in crypto, and a MiCA-licensed payment partner has added the regulatory foundation that enterprise adoption needs.

None of that required a leap of faith. It required a compliance-first setup, instant fiat conversion, and a partner that grew up at the same time the technology did.

Thinking it might be time to offer crypto payments to your own clients? Start with us. You can also explore how we help businesses accept crypto, or read the rest of our case studies first.

FAQ

Does a MiCA license actually matter to merchants?

For regulated industries, yes. A MiCA-licensed processor operates inside a recognized European framework, which makes KYC/AML, transaction traceability, and audit readiness easier to defend. For Squaretalk, it made conversations with enterprise and regulated clients noticeably smoother.

Why stablecoins instead of Bitcoin for business payments?

Both have a place. In the first half of 2026, USDC edged ahead of Bitcoin as the most-used payment asset on CoinGate. For invoices, many businesses prefer stablecoins because the amount that arrives matches the amount billed, and a compliant option like USDC fits cleanly into regulated workflows.

Can you accept recurring crypto payments today?

Yes. With payment channels, each client gets a permanent address they can top up whenever they need to, with attribution and settlement handled automatically. There is no fresh invoice or new address for every deposit. However, alternatively you can also recurring billing service and send invoices to customers via direct link or email, on schedule via API or dashboard.