Speend opens USDT on five networks covering 97%

Speend has enabled Tether (USDT) on five blockchains that together hold roughly 97% of the token’s circulating supply, according to DeFiLlama data from Aug. 26, 2026. DeFiLlama shows total USDT balances of $183.17 billion, with $91.47 billion on Tron (49.9%), $73.50 billion on Ethereum (40.1%), $9.18 billion on BNB Smart Chain (5.0%), $2.84 billion on Solana (1.6%) and $0.81 billion on Polygon (0.4%).

Measured transfer costs from public RPC endpoints on Aug. 26, 2026 show Polygon transfers under $0.001, BNB Smart Chain around $0.002, Ethereum about $0.007 at the observed gas price, Solana roughly $0.0005 per transfer plus a one-time ~$0.20 account rent, and TRC-20 transfers on Tron about $0.41 for a sender without staked energy. Tron’s fee model uses a fixed energy parameter that keeps costs high for senders who have not staked TRX; staked accounts can pay much less.

A gateway that opens multiple networks lets customers use the chain where they hold USDT. Merchants should confirm whether providers pass blockchain fees through at cost or add a markup, because marked-up fees appear on settlement reports but not always on public price pages.

Speend’s published terms list a 0.5% base fee for mono-currency settlement, with network fees charged at blockchain cost and no markup. Auto-conversion into a different withdrawal currency is a separate 1% fee. There is no setup fee or monthly fee, volume tiers reduce the base rate, and no minimum turnover is required. Business verification is quoted at one to three business days after documents are received, technical integration at 24 hours, and a coin is activated within the business day after verification clears.

The company uses multi-party computation (MPC) wallets for custody and places treasury funds into cold storage. Incoming transactions are screened on-chain and flagged funds are rejected automatically. Speend offers a sandbox environment mirroring production and states a 99.95% availability service-level goal. Integration options include a WooCommerce plugin, a REST API and hosted invoices or payment links that require no coding. For subscription billing, the platform supports wallet-signed recurring authorisations that customers can revoke; failed charges retry at 24, 72 and 168 hours before merchant-configured grace or downgrade flows.

Other payment platforms offer different features and regulatory positions. CoinGate, based in Lithuania, holds a MiCA CASP authorisation from December 2025 and a Bank of Lithuania payment institution licence, publishes flat percentage fees, supports about 70 assets and offers SEPA settlement in euros, dollars and pounds. NOWPayments operates non-custodially with more than 350 assets and fast self-serve onboarding but uses third-party rails for fiat settlement and does not hold MiCA or payment institution authorisations. B2BINPAY focuses on enterprise clients with volume-banded pricing and white-label checkouts, charges onboarding fees and does not support U.S. operations. BitPay operates as a U.S. money services business with tiered pricing, accounting integrations and mass payouts, while offering narrower stablecoin coverage and stricter acceptable-use rules.

Merchants should request a list of the networks a provider opens for USDT rather than a simple coin count, ask in writing whether network fees are passed through or marked up, and confirm the provider’s process for funds sent on a network the merchant has not enabled. Recovery of such funds depends on whether the provider controls an address on that chain; if it does not, funds are often unrecoverable. Confirmation times vary by chain: under a second on Solana, 5–15 seconds on BNB Smart Chain and Polygon, under 30 seconds on Tron, and one to three minutes on Ethereum. Tron and Ethereum together account for about 90% of circulating USDT.