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Crypto Gateway Liability Caps 2026: $100 to $50,000
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Crypto Gateway Liability Caps 2026: $100 to $50,000

We read the liability caps in 12 crypto payment gateway contracts in October 2026. Two publish a number worth suing for; two cap recovery at $100.

Brian OrmondUpdated October 28, 202614 min read

Key Takeaways

  • Two of twelve publish a liability figure worth suing for. Triple-A caps at the greater of six months' fees or USD 50,000; Confirmo caps an unauthorised transfer at the debited amount.
  • A fee-based cap is a fixed share of one month's volume: the window times the rate. B2BinPay works out at 0.75–1.5%, CoinGate 3%, Confirmo's general limb 9.6%, BitPay 12%.
  • Two unrelated gateways cap at the same number: USD 100. PassimPay and Blockonomics. PassimPay's clause also excludes direct damages.
  • Four state no cap at all, and that is worse than a small one. Cryptomus governs by "the laws of the country where the Company is registered" without naming it; Plisio names no entity and is dated 12 March 2019.
  • Only one clause in the twelve was written by a regulator. Confirmo is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland, so its transfer-liability section is Irish payment-services law: a 13-month claim window, the burden of proof on the gateway, EUR 50 on your share.

A gateway loses $40,000 of your settled balance to an intrusion on its side, or executes a payout you never authorised, and you read the contract for the first time. The crypto gateway liability clause is where you find out what your money was worth to them: for most of the twelve processors below it is the fees you paid them, and for two of them it is one hundred dollars. The industry's own due-diligence writing says merchants bear the loss "by default" and quotes no clause at all.

So we read the limitation-of-liability section of twelve hosted crypto payment gateways on 28 October 2026 and ran each cap against the fee rates in our own directory. The spread between the best and worst published cap is 500 times. Two gateways name no company you could sue, one governs its contract by the law of a country it declines to identify, and the strongest clause in the set belongs to the gateway that had no choice about it.

Last checked: October 2026. Every clause, cap, entity and date below was read from the provider's own published terms on 28 October 2026, and each document is linked at the end. Fee percentages are Payyd directory rates, verified 6 October 2026. This is a reading of published contracts, not legal advice, and a cap that is written down is not a cap a court would enforce.

The one number in the contract that is about you

Everything else in a gateway's terms describes what you must do. The cap is the only clause describing what happens when they fail, and it is the one merchants skip, because it sits twenty sections past the fee table in capital letters.

It bites in a narrow, expensive set of events: a payout you did not authorise, a balance lost to an intrusion on the gateway's side, an API reporting a payment as confirmed when it is not, a breach of the gateway's own systems. It does nothing about an AML hold, which is the gateway using a right the contract grants it, and nothing about crypto sent to a wrong address, which all twelve exclude and are right to.

Four shapes turn up, and the shape tells you more than the number: a multiple of the fees you have paid, a flat dollar figure, a statutory remedy, and silence.

Four cards counting the shape of the liability cap across twelve crypto gateway contracts read on 28 October 2026. A multiple of the fees you paid covers 5 gateways: Triple-A, OpenNode, BitPay, CoinGate and B2BinPay, with windows running 3 to 12 months. A flat dollar figure covers 2: PassimPay and Blockonomics, both USD 100. A statutory remedy covers 1: Confirmo's unauthorised-transfer limb, the debited amount under Irish payment-services law. Silence covers 4: NOWPayments, BlockBee, Cryptomus and Plisio, which state no cap at all
Four shapes turn up across the twelve. Triple-A adds a USD 50,000 floor and Confirmo's general limb is a 12-month fee multiple, so both are footed rather than counted twice.

What twelve gateways actually cap at

Here is every cap, with the entity that owes it and the law that governs the claim. The last columns matter as much as the first: a cap is a promise by a named company in a named forum, and three of these documents miss one or both.

Gateway Published cap on its liability Contracting entity Governing law Doc date
Triple-AGreater of 6 months' fees or USD 50,000Triple-A Technologies Pte. Ltd.Singapore20 Apr 2026
ConfirmoThe debited amount on an unauthorised transfer; 12 months' fees otherwiseConfirmo LimitedIreland2 Oct 2026
OpenNodeFees paid, preceding 12 monthsOpenNodeCalifornia, USA29 Aug 2024
BitPayFees earned, preceding 6 monthsBitPay, Inc. / BitPay B.V.Georgia, USA / Netherlands1 Apr 2026
CoinGateFees earned, last 3 monthsUAB "Decentralized"Lithuania6 Feb 2024
B2BinPayFees paid, 3 months, less costs already incurredB2BINPAY El Salvador S.A. de C.V.El Salvador26 Jun 2026
PassimPayUSD 100 flatNILESPAY FINANCE INC. (BC1516629)None stated11 May 2026
BlockonomicsUSD 100 flatOneByZero Tech Pte. Ltd.SingaporeNot shown
NOWPaymentsNo cap statedFD Transfers LLCSt Vincent and the Grenadines19 Oct 2026
BlockBeeNo cap stated; "reasonable … foreseeable" carve-inBlockbee Inc. (Panama)"Applicable Law", undefined2 Oct 2026
CryptomusNo cap stated; ten separate non-liability clausesNone namedCountry not named17 Aug 2026
PlisioNo cap; excludes direct damages tooNone namedNone stated; net-ARB arbitration12 Mar 2019
Limitation-of-liability clauses in twelve hosted crypto payment gateways, read 28 October 2026, ordered by what a merchant could recover.

Two things to notice before the arithmetic. The best two clauses belong to Triple-A and Confirmo, the two most heavily licensed companies in the set. And the oldest document, Plisio's, is about a website: it predates the question it now answers by years.

A fee cap is a percentage of one month's volume

"Capped at the fees you paid us in the last three months" sounds like a number until you notice it is a number you set, moving with your volume rather than with the loss. Do the multiplication and it collapses: a fee-based cap equals the window in months times the fee rate, as a share of one month's processed volume. Your size does not change that percentage.

Put our directory's verified rates through each window and this is what the clause promises. The last column takes a merchant settling $50,000 a month — a small shop, not an edge case.

Gateway Fee rate (Payyd directory) Cap window Cap as share of one month's volume Cap at $50,000/mo
Triple-A1% settlement fee6 months, or $50,000, whichever is greater100%$50,000
BitPay2% + $0.256 months12% plus the per-order cents$6,000+
Confirmo (general limb)0.8%12 months9.6%$4,800
CoinGate1%3 months3%$1,500
B2BinPay0.25–0.5% by volume3 months, less costs incurred0.75–1.5%, then reduced$375–750 or less
PassimPay3.5% (negotiable from 0.5%)Flat, no window0.2%$100
OpenNodeNot published12 months12 × its unpublished rateNot computable
What each published cap is worth, at Payyd directory fee rates and $50,000 a month in settled volume.

Three results fall out. B2BinPay's is the smallest cap in the fee-based group by a wide margin — the lowest rate in our directory times the shortest window, and then its clause subtracts "any processing or service costs already incurred", which no other gateway does. It is the only cap here that can be argued downwards after the event.

Second, the cap moves opposite to the price. PassimPay charges the highest headline rate in the group and offers the lowest ceiling; Confirmo charges 0.8% and offers a statutory remedy. Expensive does not mean insured.

Third, and the one that should change a shortlist: for every gateway there except Triple-A, the cap is a fraction of a single month's takings, while the exposure is the whole settled balance plus whatever is in flight. The cap is not sized to the risk. It is sized to the invoice.

Bar chart of each gateway's published liability cap converted to US dollars at 50,000 dollars of monthly settled volume. Triple-A 50,000 dollars, BitPay 6,000 dollars or more, Confirmo general limb 4,800 dollars, CoinGate 1,500 dollars, B2BinPay 375 to 750 dollars, PassimPay 100 dollars. OpenNode is not charted because its rate is unpublished, and Blockonomics caps at the same 100 dollars flat as PassimPay
The same contracts on one basis: what the cap is worth on a single month of volume. Best to worst is 500 times.
Table showing each fee-based cap as a share of one month's volume. Triple-A 1 percent settlement fee over 6 months or 50,000 dollars whichever is greater, 100 percent. BitPay 2 percent plus 25 cents over 6 months, 12 percent plus the per-order cents. Confirmo general limb 0.8 percent over 12 months, 9.6 percent. CoinGate 1 percent over 3 months, 3 percent. B2BinPay 0.25 to 0.5 percent by volume over 3 months less costs incurred, 0.75 to 1.5 percent then reduced. PassimPay 3.5 percent flat with no window, 0.2 percent. OpenNode rate not published over 12 months, 12 times its unpublished rate
The window times the rate is the whole calculation. Only Triple-A's floor breaks out of it.

The two hundred-dollar ceilings

PassimPay and Blockonomics have nothing to do with each other — a British Columbia company and a Singapore company, different products, different custody models — and they arrived at the same figure. "IN NO EVENT SHALL OUR LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL DAMAGES EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS", says PassimPay's section 09. Blockonomics' terms, under OneByZero Tech Pte. Ltd., cap total liability at the same "ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100.00)".

One hundred dollars is the shape of a consumer software licence, not a payments contract: the clause was drafted for an app and then pointed at money. Blockonomics has the better argument for it, because its terms also say it "DOES NOT HOLD YOUR DIGITAL TOKENS OR DIGITAL ASSETS" — a non-custodial processor never has your balance to lose, so the cap covers software faults, not funds.

PassimPay cannot make that argument. Its section 02.02 describes crypto custody, and the same section 09 that caps at $100 adds that it "is not responsible for, and cannot assist with recovery of, a loss of Digital Assets" where the service is compromised.

The rarer defect, and it is PassimPay's. Almost every gateway excludes indirect damages — lost profit, lost data, business interruption — which is ordinary commercial drafting. PassimPay's clause opens by excluding "ANY DIRECT DAMAGES OR ANY LOST PROFITS, REVENUE OR DATA". Excluding direct loss aims at the thing itself: the money. Only Plisio does the same, and Plisio's document is from 2019.
Screenshot of the PassimPay Terms of Service page, last updated 11.05.2026, naming NILESPAY FINANCE INC. incorporated under the laws of Canada at 300-3665 Kingsway, Vancouver, with company number BC1516629 and FINTRAC MSB registration C100000852. The page sidebar lists a Limitation of Liability section
PassimPay's own terms name the contracting entity and its company number, and date the document to 11 May 2026.

Triple-A's cap is a floor, not a ceiling

Clause 14.3 of Triple-A's general terms is the only one in the set built as a "greater of": aggregate liability is capped at the higher of the fees the merchant paid in the preceding six months or "USD 50,000 (fifty thousand US dollars)". Every other fee-based clause is a pure multiple, so it shrinks towards nothing for a small merchant. Triple-A's cannot go below $50,000 however little you spend, which inverts the pattern: it is the only cap in the twelve that protects a small merchant more than a large one.

Clause 14.4 then carves fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation and wilful misconduct out of the cap entirely, so the $50,000 is a floor on ordinary claims and no limit on the bad ones. Four gateways have a version of that carve-out; B2BinPay's also names gross negligence.

Triple-A is also clearest about what it does not promise. Its Monetary Authority of Singapore notice says plainly that "this does not mean that you will be able to recover all the money you paid to Triple-A if Triple-A's business fails". A $50,000 cap and an insolvency warning are the same honesty applied twice.

The clause a regulator wrote

Confirmo's general cap is unremarkable: 12 months' fees, clause 15.5, the same furniture as everyone else. Then section 16 begins, titled "Liability – Unauthorised or incorrectly initiated/executed transfer", and the document stops sounding like a vendor agreement. The remedy there is not fees. Under 16.3 Confirmo must credit your balance "in an amount equivalent to the debited amount", and 16.7 limits its liability for that subsection to "the debited amount in the affected transfer".

That is not generosity. Confirmo Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland — the footer of every page of its terms says so — so Irish payment-services law applies, and section 16 is that law copied into the contract, almost line for line against the European Union (Payment Services) Regulations 2018.

Confirmo clause What it says Irish regulation it tracks (S.I. 6/2018)
16.1Notify "no later than 13 months after the time the transfer was debited"Reg. 95(1) — "no later than 13 months after the debit date"
16.2"We bear the burden to demonstrate that the transfer was authenticated, accurately recorded, and not affected by a technical failure of our systems"Reg. 96(1) — burden on the provider to prove the transaction was "authenticated, accurately recorded, entered in the accounts and not affected by a technical breakdown"
16.3 / 16.7Credit the balance with "the debited amount"; liability limited to that amountReg. 97(1)(a) — "refund the payer the amount of the unauthorised payment transaction immediately", and by end of the next business day at the latest
16.4"you are liable for losses resulting from the misappropriation of your security credentials up to EUR 50"; nothing after notification unless you acted fraudulentlyReg. 98(1) and 98(6) — payer bears losses "up to a maximum of €50", and none after notification except on fraud
Confirmo's transfer-liability section against the Irish payment services regulations it implements, read 28 October 2026.

One difference runs the gateway's way. Reg. 97(1)(a) sets a deadline — the refund is due by "the end of the business day immediately following" notification. Confirmo's 16.3 says "without undue delay" and names no day. The remedy is the statutory one; the clock is not. Confirmo also adds a duty the regulation does not: 16.6 requires you to verify material state changes through the API before releasing goods, and failure to do so "may reduce or exclude any recovery".

Screenshot of the Irish Statute Book page for S.I. No. 6 of 2018, the European Union (Payment Services) Regulations 2018, produced by the Office of the Attorney General, showing the citation and commencement text and the note that the Regulations give effect to Directive (EU) 2015/2366
The instrument behind Confirmo's clause. Its section 16 tracks Regulations 95 to 98 of S.I. 6/2018 almost line for line.

Why no cap is worse than a small cap

Four of the twelve state no monetary cap: NOWPayments, BlockBee, Cryptomus and Plisio. That looks merchant-friendly. In practice it is the weakest position in the table, because a claim needs three things and the cap is one. You also need a company to sue and a court to sue in.

Gateway Who you would be suing Where Excluded instead of capped
NOWPaymentsFD Transfers LLCCourts where it is domiciled — St Vincent and the Grenadines — after 30 days' noticeFive named scenarios, including unauthorised access without 2FA
BlockBeeBlockbee Inc., PanamaMediation then "binding arbitration"; no seat, no governing lawMalware, denial-of-service, blockchain irreversibility, "external causes"
Cryptomus"the Platform" — no company named anywhere"the laws of the country where the Company is registered", country unnamed, after 90 daysTen clauses, including "loss of funds due to technical failures, hacking, or fraud"
PlisioNo entity namedArbitration under net-ARB.com rules; no governing law"any direct or indirect damages, or any other damages of any kind"
The four gateways with no stated cap, and what stands in a claim's way instead. Read 28 October 2026.

Cryptomus shows why the absent cap is not a gift. Its terms, last updated 17 August 2026, contain no cap and no company name, and clause 16.1 governs by "the laws of the country where the Company is registered" — a choice of law whose referent appears nowhere in the document. An uncapped claim against an unnamed company under an unnamed law is not better than a $100 one. It is the same claim with the paperwork removed.

Plisio is the other end of the same problem. Its Terms of Use are dated 12 March 2019, apply by their own words "to your access to and use of the Plisio.net website", name no legal entity, and disclaim "any direct or indirect damages". Seven years of payment and crypto regulation have happened since, and none of it is in there. If what you want is no operator in the chain at all, BTCPay Server is self-hosted: nobody to cap anything, and every duty — keys, uptime, backups — yours.

Table of the four gateways that state no cap at all, with who you would be suing, where, and what is excluded instead. NOWPayments: FD Transfers LLC, courts where it is domiciled in St Vincent and the Grenadines after 30 days notice, five named scenarios including unauthorised access without 2FA. BlockBee: Blockbee Inc. Panama, mediation then binding arbitration with no seat and no governing law, excluding malware, denial-of-service, blockchain irreversibility and external causes. Cryptomus: the Platform with no company named anywhere, the laws of the country where the Company is registered with the country unnamed after 90 days, ten clauses including loss of funds due to technical failures, hacking or fraud. Plisio: no entity named, arbitration under net-ARB.com rules with no governing law, excluding any direct or indirect damages
No number, and in three of the four no company and no forum either. Plisio's document is dated 12 March 2019.

What the law hands back

A contractual cap is a starting position, not a verdict. The Irish regulations behind Confirmo's section 16 are the clearest worked example in the set, and reading them turns up two things no gateway advertises.

First, the statutory protections are mostly waivable for business customers, but not all of them. Reg. 85(1)(a) lets a provider and a payment service user who is "not a consumer" agree that named regulations "do not apply in whole or in part" — and the list includes Reg. 96, the burden of proof, and Reg. 98, the EUR 50 ceiling. Reg. 97, the duty to refund an unauthorised transaction, is not on that list. A merchant on an Irish-authorised provider keeps the refund right whatever the contract says. Confirmo waived neither of the two it could have.

Second, a threshold worth knowing if you are small. Reg. 85(2) says the Part "applies to a micro enterprise as it applies to a consumer", and Reg. 85(3) ties that to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC: staff headcount under 10, turnover or balance sheet at or below EUR 2 million. Below that line a merchant gets consumer treatment by operation of law.

The limit of that, stated plainly. None of it reaches an unregulated processor. Reg. 97 binds authorised payment service providers, so it helps you against Confirmo and does nothing against a St Vincent or Panama entity whose contract you accepted. The protection follows the licence, not the product category — which is the whole argument for checking a gateway's regulatory status before its fee table.

Reg. 97(4) adds a sentence that cuts across every cap here: the refund duty "does not affect any other right that the payer concerned may have to obtain compensation (including damages)". A fee cap and a statutory remedy are not alternatives.

Five clauses to read before you integrate

Twenty minutes, and eight of the twelve answer on one page. Search the terms for "exceed". The cap is almost always in the next sentence, and if the word is absent, record that there is no cap rather than no limit.
  • Find the cap and convert it. Window times fee rate gives the cap as a share of one month's volume. Compare it to your largest settled balance; the gap is yours to carry.
  • Check whether it excludes direct damages. Indirect-loss exclusions are standard; excluding direct loss aims at the money. PassimPay's and Plisio's do.
  • Name the counterparty. If the terms state no registered company, there is nobody to serve. Cryptomus and Plisio both fail this; naming an entity, even in St Vincent, puts a gateway ahead.
  • Find the governing law and forum. "Applicable Law", undefined, is BlockBee's answer; "the country where the Company is registered" is Cryptomus'. Both mean the forum gets chosen after the dispute starts, by them.
  • Check the licence, then the clause. A regulated payment institution carries duties its contract cannot remove, which is why Confirmo's and Triple-A's are strongest. Our gateway comparison lists custody model beside fees.

Twelve documents, and two answer the question a merchant actually has: if you lose my money, what do you owe me? Read your gateway's answer before the integration, because on the day you need it you will not be reading.

Related Articles

Ten of twelve gateways cap what your money is worth to them at a fraction of one month's fees.

We track fees, custody, KYC and settlement for every processor in the directory. Confirmo's transfer liability is a regulator's clause rather than its own; Triple-A publishes the only cap with a floor; BTCPay Server puts no operator in the chain.

Compare Crypto Payment Gateways →

Affiliate disclosure: Payyd earns a commission if you sign up to some providers linked on this page. It changes none of the clauses, caps or figures reported here, all of which come from the providers' own published documents and are linked below.

FAQ

Is a crypto payment gateway liable if it loses your funds?

Only up to its published cap, and for ten of the twelve we read that cap is a fraction of the fees you have paid. BitPay limits liability to the fees it earned in the preceding six months, CoinGate to three, OpenNode to twelve; PassimPay and Blockonomics cap at USD 100 flat. The exceptions are Triple-A, which cannot go below USD 50,000, and Confirmo, which must credit back the debited amount of an unauthorised transfer because Irish law requires it.

Which crypto payment gateway has the strongest liability clause?

Triple-A on the number, Confirmo on the remedy. Triple-A's clause 14.3 caps at the greater of six months' fees or USD 50,000, the only cap that cannot shrink below a fixed floor. Confirmo's section 16 gives back the debited amount of an unauthorised transfer, puts the burden of proof on itself, and limits your share of a credential loss to EUR 50. Both are heavily licensed firms, which is the reason rather than a coincidence.

What does "no liability cap" mean in a gateway's terms?

Usually less than a small cap. NOWPayments, BlockBee, Cryptomus and Plisio state no ceiling, but NOWPayments is sued in St Vincent and the Grenadines, BlockBee names no governing law, and Cryptomus and Plisio name no company. An uncapped claim still needs a defendant and a forum.

Can a crypto gateway disclaim liability for direct losses?

Two of the twelve try. PassimPay's section 09 excludes "ANY DIRECT DAMAGES OR ANY LOST PROFITS, REVENUE OR DATA", and Plisio's disclaimer covers "any direct or indirect damages, or any other damages of any kind". Both also note that some jurisdictions do not allow those limitations, which is the drafter conceding the point.

Does EU law override a crypto gateway's liability cap?

For an authorised payment institution, partly. Under the Irish regulations implementing the EU payment services directive, Reg. 97 requires the provider to refund the amount of an unauthorised payment transaction, and Reg. 85(1)(a) does not allow that duty to be contracted away even with a business customer — while the burden of proof and the EUR 50 ceiling can be. Reg. 97(4) also preserves any other right to compensation. None of it applies to a gateway holding no EU payment licence.

Do small merchants get more protection than large ones?

Under EU payment-services law, yes: the Irish regulations treat a micro enterprise as a consumer, and Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC defines that as fewer than 10 staff with turnover or balance sheet at or below EUR 2 million. In the contracts the opposite holds: a fee-based cap scales down with your volume, so a small merchant on BitPay or CoinGate has the smallest ceiling and the same exposure.

Sources

Clauses read and quoted 28 October 2026; fee rates from the Payyd directory, verified 6 October 2026:

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Crypto Gateway Liability Caps 2026: $100 to $50,000 | Payyd