When a merchant checkout offers you four networks, it is asking a question that only affects you. The merchant receives the same amount regardless. The fee, the wait and the risk of an error are all on your side.
Here is how the realistic options compare.
The comparison
| Network | Typical fee | Speed | Finality | Merchant support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solana | Fraction of a cent | Sub-second | Fast, deterministic | Broad |
| Base | Under a cent | ~2 seconds | Fast in practice | Broad and growing |
| Polygon | Fraction of a cent | ~2 seconds | Fast in practice | Broad |
| Arbitrum | About a cent | Seconds | Fast in practice | Good |
| Tron | Low, resource-based | ~3 seconds | Fast | Very broad for USDT |
| Avalanche | A few cents | 1–2 seconds | Deterministic | Moderate |
| Ethereum | Cents to dollars | Minutes | Probabilistic | Universal |
| Stellar | Negligible | ~5 seconds | Deterministic | Narrow |
| XRP Ledger | Negligible | 3–5 seconds | Deterministic | Narrow |
How to choose in ten seconds
Paying with USDC? Use Base or Solana if offered. Polygon or Arbitrum otherwise. Ethereum mainnet only if it is the only option and the amount is large enough that a few dollars of gas is immaterial.
Paying with USDT? Tron if offered — it is where most USDT payment volume settles and merchant support is near-universal. Solana or Polygon otherwise.
Paying more than a few thousand dollars? The fee stops mattering. Choose on merchant support and your own familiarity instead, and consider a small test transfer first.
Why the fee difference is so large
A network fee is the price of blockspace, set by demand, and it is unrelated to the amount you are sending. A $10 transfer and a $10,000 transfer cost the same to include in a block.
On Ethereum mainnet, blockspace is scarce and competed for globally. On a layer 2, transactions are batched and the cost of settling back to Ethereum is spread across all of them. On Solana, high throughput means blockspace is abundant.
The practical consequence is proportional. A $3 fee on a $5,000 payment is 0.06%. On a $9 domain renewal it is a third of the purchase.
Finality, and why some checkouts feel slow
Finality is the point at which a transaction cannot be undone by a chain reorganisation.
On Ethereum and most probabilistic-finality chains, certainty accumulates with each block. A gateway therefore waits for a number of confirmations before releasing the order — a risk judgement, not a protocol rule. That wait is why some checkouts sit spinning for a minute.
On Solana, Avalanche, Stellar and the XRP Ledger, finality is deterministic and arrives in seconds. A gateway can act immediately with nothing to hedge against. Those checkouts feel instant because there is genuinely nothing to wait for.
The gas token requirement, per network
You cannot send a stablecoin without holding the network’s own token to pay the fee:
- Ethereum and its layer 2s — ETH, held on the specific network. Mainnet ETH does not pay for Base or Arbitrum transactions.
- Solana — SOL, plus a small one-time rent deposit the first time your wallet receives a token type.
- Polygon — POL.
- Tron — TRX, either staked for bandwidth and energy or spent as a fee.
- Stellar and XRP Ledger — a minimum account reserve in the native asset, plus trustlines for each issued currency you hold.
A few dollars of the native token covers a very large number of transactions on any of these.
Bridged versus native assets
On several chains, an older bridged version of a stablecoin circulates alongside the natively issued one — most visibly USDC.e on Polygon and some layer 2s. They are different tokens with different contract addresses.
Merchants and gateways generally want the native version. If your wallet shows two similar balances, check which the checkout expects before sending.
The recommendation, plainly
For most people, most of the time: hold USDC on Base or Solana, or USDT on Tron. Those three combinations cover the large majority of merchant support in this directory, settle in seconds, and cost effectively nothing.
Keep a small balance of the relevant gas token, read the network name at checkout, and the rest takes care of itself.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest network for stablecoin payments?
Does the merchant care which network I pay on?
What is transaction finality and why does it matter at checkout?
Read next
How stablecoin payments work
A plain explanation of the mechanics behind a stablecoin checkout, written for people who want to pay confidently rather than understand blockchains.
Where can you spend USDC?
USDC is the most widely accepted stablecoin at merchant checkouts. Here is what you can buy with it, which network to use, and what to check before you send.
Where can you spend USDT?
USDT is the most-held stablecoin in the world and widely accepted at merchant checkouts, particularly by platforms serving global markets. Here is where it works.
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