Payments Giants Undercutting Zero Hash

The real threat is not that incumbents copy Zero Hash’s APIs, it is that they can make crypto infrastructure a cheap add on inside products customers already use. Zero Hash monetizes on a roughly 0.146% take rate on partner volume, while Stripe has already pushed into merchant USDC payments and payouts, Visa has moved USDC settlement onto its own network, and Coinbase has turned its exchange liquidity into business payments rails. That makes price competition much harder to avoid when buyers can get crypto features from their existing provider.

• Stripe has the clearest bundling advantage. A merchant or platform already using Stripe for card acceptance, payouts, billing, and treasury can switch on stablecoin features without adding a new vendor. After closing its $1.1B Bridge acquisition in February 2025, Stripe expanded further into stablecoin powered accounts and money movement.
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• Visa’s edge is balance sheet light distribution at network scale. Once Visa supports USDC settlement directly for issuers and acquirers, a bank or card program can access onchain settlement through an existing network relationship instead of paying a specialist infrastructure layer to sit in the middle.
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• Coinbase comes from the other side, with liquidity, wallets, custody, and a huge installed crypto user base. Its Coinbase Business product adds payment links, global payouts, and instant USDC settlement on top of Coinbase Crypto as a Service, which lets it spread infrastructure costs across trading, custody, and payments.
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The market is heading toward crypto infrastructure being bundled into broader payments and financial stacks. That pushes specialists like Zero Hash to win where incumbents are less complete, in multi product orchestration, compliance abstraction, and serving fintechs that want neutral infrastructure instead of being pulled into Stripe, Visa, or Coinbase’s ecosystem.