How to accept USDT and USDC payments from business customers

The short answer

Put the amount, token, network, address and your invoice number on the invoice, and confirm the payment on the blockchain yourself before treating it as paid. Refund only to an address the customer confirms in writing. For every payment, keep a record that ties the customer, their wallet, the transaction hash and your invoice together: your accountant, your bank and your payment provider can all ask for it.

What to put on the invoice

A stablecoin payment carries less information than a bank transfer, so the invoice has to do more of the work.

The reference needs a plan. The standard ERC-20 token transfer function has only two fields, the recipient and the amount, so a standard token payment on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum or Polygon arrives with no reference field. Ask the customer to email the transaction hash with the invoice number when they pay. Solana transfers can carry a memo, which Solana's payment docs suggest using for invoice numbers.

For help choosing which networks to offer, see which network to use for USDT and USDC payments.

Confirming the payment arrived

Three checks, in order:

1. Right token. Open the transaction on a block explorer for the invoiced network and check the token's contract address. Solana's payment docs warn that anyone can create a token called "USDC", so check the address, not the name; Circle publishes the official USDC contract address for each network.
2. Right amount, to the right address. Compare it with the invoice. If the customer paid from an exchange, its withdrawal fee may have come out of the amount, which is why the invoice says who pays fees.
3. Final. Wait until the transfer can't be undone. That's about 15 minutes on Ethereum, according to ethereum.org, and usually about a minute on Tron, according to its developer docs. Solana's payment docs suggest waiting for "finalized" status for high-value payments. Anza says Alpenglow, live on Solana mainnet since 21 October 2026, is designed to bring finality down to about 150 milliseconds; that is a target, and no measured mainnet figure had been published by 22 October 2026.

Don't ship goods on a screenshot or a "sent" message. Solana's guidance for merchants is to verify payments by querying the blockchain yourself, not by trusting a checkout page, and the same applies on any network.

Underpayments, overpayments and refunds

Agree the rules in your terms before the first payment:

• Underpayment. Ask for a top-up of the difference, in the same token on the same network, quoting the invoice number. Keep the invoice open until it arrives.
• Overpayment. Refund the difference or hold it as a credit against the next invoice, and record which one you chose.
• Refunds. Send them in the token and on the network the customer paid with, to an address they confirm in writing. Don't assume the sending address is theirs: a payment withdrawn from an exchange may come from an address the exchange controls.
• Fees. A refund costs a network fee. Say in your terms who bears it.

There are no chargebacks. Tether's terms say "Tether Token transactions are not reversible," and Circle's say it "does not have the ability to reverse or recall any transaction once initiated." The same is true for you: a refund sent to the wrong address won't come back. If it happens, see what to do if you send USDT or USDC to the wrong network.

Records for accounting and AML

For each payment, keep:

• The invoice, and the customer's legal name as it appears on your contract
• The sending wallet address and network
• The transaction hash, date and time
• The token, the amount received and its value in your reporting currency on that date
• Any conversion to fiat, with the rate and fees
• Correspondence about refunds, top-ups or a change of paying wallet

Treat a payment from a wallet or company you didn't invoice with care: ask the customer why, in writing, before you accept it, and keep the answer with the payment record. Wallet screening matters too, because Tether and Circle can freeze tokens at an address. Tether said in April 2026 that it had frozen more than $4.4 billion in total.

For tax, the IRS treats digital assets, including stablecoins, as property, not currency, for US tax purposes. Other tax authorities take their own view. Ask your accountant how to book stablecoin receipts and balances before the first payment lands.

The Travel Rule, as general information. The FATF applies its payment transparency standard, Recommendation 16, to virtual assets. Under it, virtual asset service providers must obtain, hold and transmit "specific originator and beneficiary information immediately and securely" when they transfer virtual assets. By June 2025, the FATF said 99 jurisdictions had passed or were passing Travel Rule legislation, and it has called on countries to apply risk mitigation measures to transactions with unhosted, or self-hosted, wallets. In its July 2026 update, the FATF said jurisdictions had continued to make progress in implementing its standards, including the Travel Rule, and listed the misuse of stablecoins among emerging and increasing risks. Whether the Travel Rule applies to your company depends on your role and jurisdiction, so check with your compliance adviser. In practice, if a customer pays from an exchange, that exchange may send their details to your provider, and if they pay from a self-hosted wallet, your provider may ask you who owns it.

Converting to your operating currency

You can hold the stablecoin or convert it. Converting on receipt fixes the value in your operating currency; holding until you pay lets you convert only what each payment needs. If you receive USDT and would rather hold USDC, or the reverse, you can swap between them. See our pages on converting USDT to USD, USDC to USD, USDT to EUR and USDC to GBP.

Some customers will still want to pay by bank transfer, so it helps to put both options on the invoice.

How this works with Align

Your customers can pay by bank transfer into your company's named USD, EUR or GBP accounts, with your company shown as the account holder, and the money lands in your Align balance as USDC or USDT. Align's docs class payments from customers as third-party payments, which it processes only through virtual accounts. US ACH and wire details are switched on at your request, after a second review by Align's US banking partner, which can decline or set limits.

If you want to accept USDC or USDT directly from your customers, ask Align first, before you put a wallet address on an invoice.

From your balance, you can convert and pay out in USD, EUR, GBP or AED, or send USDC and USDT to wallets. Align doesn't onboard companies based in the UAE; AED accounts are for companies outside the UAE. Pricing is quoted on request: contact us.

Sources

• Ethereum Improvement Proposals, ERC-20 token standard
• Solana, Payment verification tools and Alpenglow (updated October 2026); Anza, Alpenglow is live on Solana (21 October 2026)
• Ethereum.org, Single slot finality
• Tron developer docs, Consensus
• Circle, USDC contract addresses, USDC terms (updated 15 October 2026) and Native USDC on Polygon PoS
• Tether, Terms of service (updated 26 February 2026) and Freeze of more than $344 million in coordination with OFAC (23 April 2026)
• FATF, Targeted update on virtual assets and VASPs (26 June 2025) and full report
• FATF, Seventh targeted update on virtual assets and VASPs (16 July 2026)
• FATF, Virtual assets
• IRS, Digital assets (reviewed September 2026)
• Align docs, 1st party and 3rd party payments