Flexa

Almost every gateway in this directory solves the same problem: putting a crypto button on a web checkout. Flexa solves a different one. It is a point-of-sale network, and it is the reason a handful of large American chains quietly accept digital currency at the till.

How it works from either side

The customer opens a Flexa-enabled wallet app, picks the merchant, and scans. Settlement takes about a second, which is the only figure that matters when there are people behind you in the queue.

The merchant sees a terminal feature. It configures a payout mix — all dollars, or a split like 90% dollars and 10% bitcoin — and Flexa converts on receipt. No crypto on the balance sheet unless the merchant asks for it.

Eight stablecoins, and a conspicuous absence

Flexa’s published table is unusually good: every asset with its symbol, its supported networks and its issuer. The stablecoins are USDC, Dai, EURC, Gemini dollar, Pax Dollar, Celo Dollar, Frax and mUSD, plus the yen-denominated GYEN.

There is no Tether. For a network positioning itself on breadth — roughly a hundred currencies — omitting the largest stablecoin by supply is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight, and it is the single most useful thing to know before walking into a Flexa merchant with USDT in your wallet. You will not be able to spend it.

USDC is the best-covered asset here, settling on Ethereum, Avalanche and Solana.

The wallet app decides what you see

This is the detail that makes Flexa merchants “payment availability may vary” rather than verified in this directory, and Flexa states it plainly:

Many wallet apps support only a subset of the currencies listed below. As a result, although your Flexa Payments integration enables all of these supported currencies, the choice of payment currencies shown to your customer will often be restricted by their choice of app.

So the merchant does not control which stablecoins you can pay with, and neither, really, does Flexa. Your wallet does. Two people in the same queue at the same shop can be offered different lists.

Discoverability is the real problem

Both Flexa merchants in this directory — Chipotle and Sheetz — say nothing about digital currency on their own websites. We checked their homepages, help pages and payment pages. Nothing.

That is not unusual for a terminal capability, and it is understandable from a marketing point of view. It also means there is no way for a customer to find out that a shop takes stablecoins except by opening a Flexa-enabled wallet and looking, or by reading a directory like this one. It is the clearest example we have of acceptance existing without anyone being told about it.