Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain with ADA as its native coin. Cardano lets holders stake ADA directly from their own wallets, so a lot of its community is already used to self-custody, and paying from a wallet at checkout feels natural to them.
What makes ADA payments different?
Predictable fees. Cardano does not run a fee auction. The minimum fee is calculated with a fixed formula: a base amount of 155,381 lovelace plus 44 lovelace per byte of transaction data (1 ADA = 1,000,000 lovelace). Cardano's developer documentation puts a straightforward ADA transfer at about 0.17 to 0.20 ADA. OpenChainBench's September 2026 snapshot put the median Cardano transfer fee at a few US cents.
Steady block rhythm. Cardano uses 1-second slots, and on average one slot in twenty produces a block, so blocks arrive about every 20 seconds.
Minimum ADA per output. Every transaction output on Cardano must hold a minimum amount of ADA set by the protocol. In practice that rules out very small payments, which is rarely an issue for a store but worth knowing if you sell low-priced items.
Is Cardano a good fit for my store?
It suits merchants whose customers already live in the Cardano ecosystem: staking communities, education, open-source projects and collectibles. It is less useful as a main payment rail for a general audience, where Bitcoin and USDT are more familiar. Since enabling it costs nothing extra in Payfim, many stores add it once someone asks. Our guide to choosing coins helps with that call.
ADA's price moves with the market, so price your goods in fiat and let the quote lock the rate for 30 minutes.
Which wallet should I use to receive ADA?
A non-custodial Cardano wallet where you store the recovery phrase, or a hardware wallet paired with a Cardano wallet app. Cardano wallets typically show a new receiving address after each use. That is a privacy feature, not a requirement: all of those addresses belong to your wallet, and it is fine for Payfim to keep using the one you pasted.
How do I set up ADA in Payfim?
- Copy a receiving address from your wallet. Modern Shelley addresses start with
addr1and are long, often around 100 characters, for exampleaddr1q9…. Payfim also accepts legacy Byron addresses starting withAe2orDdzFF, butaddr1is the one to use. - Paste it into the Cardano row under Wallets & coins.
- Leave confirmations empty for the default of 5 blocks.
- Enable the coin, click Save wallets and Test.
Payfim reads Cardano transactions from the Koios community API on its keyless public tier. If you have many open ADA invoices, add an optional Koios key under Blockchain APIs → Koios key (Cardano). You can also point Koios URL at your own Koios instance.
As with other coins that share one address, each invoice gets a unique ADA amount with up to six decimals, and each on-chain transaction can only settle one invoice.
What does the customer see at checkout?
The customer lands on a payment page hosted on your own gateway domain, in your branding, with light and dark modes. For ADA it shows the exact amount, your addr1 address, copy buttons for both, and a countdown for the 30-minute rate lock.
One detail specific to Cardano: there is no widely used payment-link format for ADA, so the QR code on the page encodes the address only. After scanning, the customer types or pastes the amount. Encourage them to use the copy button for the amount, because the unique digits at the end are what tie the payment to their order.
Once the transaction is in a block, the page switches to confirming, and after 5 blocks it shows the payment as complete and returns the customer to your store.
Cardano-specific pitfalls
Paying with tokens
Cardano supports native tokens, and some wallets make it easy to send them. Payfim's Cardano option counts only the ADA delivered to your address. Tokens are ignored.
Copying a truncated address
Because addr1 addresses are long, some apps shorten them on screen. Always use the copy button in your wallet rather than retyping, and compare the first and last characters after pasting.
Sending from your own receiving address
Payfim ignores transactions in which your receiving address is also a sender, so moving funds within your own wallet never counts as a customer payment. The flip side: send test payments from a different address.
Exchange addresses
Do not use an exchange deposit address as your store address. It may change, and the exchange may not credit unusual amounts promptly.
Rounded amounts
A customer who rounds the amount down can end up more than 0.5% short, and the invoice will be marked underpaid. See handling underpayments.
Keep reading
For timing trade-offs across coins, read blockchain confirmations explained. Cardano is included in every Payfim module, including the Drupal Commerce gateway and the Shopware 6 plugin.
Sources
Third-party facts were checked on the date shown above. Prices and features of other services change - always confirm on their official pages.