01
Keep your wallet
There's no deposit address to fund and no platform wallet. You connect the payout wallet you already control — Settle never has its keys.
Non-custodial payments
Non-custodial crypto payments
Your customer's payment goes directly from their wallet to yours. Settle provides the checkout and verifies the transfer on-chain — and never holds, moves, or controls the money.
HOW IT WORKS
Three steps.
No custody.
Everything runs on your wallet. Settle is the checkout, the verification, and the record-keeping — never the money.
02
Share a checkout
Payment links, invoices, product pages, and storefronts are hosted for you. Customers pay from their own wallet, no account needed.
03
Hold every payment
Transfers settle directly into your wallet on the blockchain. There is no Settle balance, no payout queue, and nothing to withdraw.
Custodial vs non-custodial, in plain terms
Most crypto payment processors are custodial: your customer pays the processor, the processor credits you an internal balance, and you withdraw when the processor pays out. Your money sits in their treasury, subject to their payout schedule, their hold policies, and their risk decisions. If they freeze payouts, your money freezes with them.
A non-custodial model removes that middle step entirely. The payment is a blockchain transfer from your customer's wallet to your wallet — Settle never takes possession of it. We generate the checkout, match the transfer to the right order, verify it on-chain, and keep your records straight. The money itself moves exactly once, peer to wallet.
The difference shows up in the failure modes. A custodial platform's worst day — a hack, a freeze, an insolvency — can strand merchant balances. Settle's architecture has no merchant balances to strand: the worst a platform incident can do is delay the records, not the money, because the money was never ours to lose.
What it means for you, concretely
No payout schedule. A verified payment is in your wallet immediately — visible in your own wallet app, on the block explorer for your network, and in your Settle dashboard with its full verification timeline. You don't wait for a settlement batch or a bank day.
No platform risk on your funds. We can't freeze a payment, delay a payout, or impose a rolling reserve, because we never touch the money — there is nothing for us to hold. Your exposure is exactly what blockchain always was: the network, and your own wallet security.
Your keys stay yours. Settle never asks for a private key or seed phrase — that's a hard line. If anyone ever asks you for your keys while claiming to be us, it isn't us.
Checkout without an account
Because no funds are held, there are no custody-style checks for your customers to pass. A customer opens your checkout and pays from a wallet — that's the only requirement. Merchants can collect an email for receipts, offer it optionally, or allow fully anonymous checkouts; that choice is per product or link.
To be clear about what that is and isn't: it means the payment flow doesn't require an account on our platform, and Settle doesn't run verification checks on payers because it never holds funds. It is not a promise of anonymity — blockchain transfers are public by design, and as a merchant you remain responsible for your own legal obligations, including any that apply to what you sell and where. Settle is a tool for receiving payments you're entitled to receive.
The honest limits of non-custodial payments
Non-custodial means you own the outcomes as well as the money. Double-check the payout wallet you configure — a transfer to a wrong address is unrecoverable, by anyone. On-chain payments are final: there are no chargebacks to contest, and refunds are a transfer you choose to send from your own wallet (Settle verifies and records them when you do).
And a non-custodial platform cannot do some things custodial ones can: it can't pull renewals from a customer's wallet, so subscriptions run on renewal links the customer approves each cycle. It can't convert your USDC to fiat into your bank — what lands in your wallet is what you received. We think that's the right trade: control over convenience, with nothing hidden behind a balance you can't reach.
GOOD QUESTIONS
Frequently
asked.
What does non-custodial actually mean?
It means the platform never holds your money. Payments are blockchain transfers directly from your customer's wallet to the payout wallet you configure. Settle generates the checkout and verifies the transfer on-chain — the funds never pass through us.
Do my customers need to pass verification (KYC) to pay?
No. Settle never holds funds, so it doesn't run custody-style verification on payers — checkout needs only a wallet. Merchants remain responsible for their own legal obligations for what they sell.
How do I get my money out?
There's nothing to get out — the money was never in. Payments settle straight into your own wallet, so you use it exactly as you would any wallet balance: hold it, send it, or move it wherever you like, whenever you like.
Can Settle freeze or reverse a payment?
No. We never hold funds, so there's nothing for us to freeze, and on-chain transfers can't be reversed by anyone. That also means no chargebacks — refund decisions belong to you.
What happens to my payments if Settle goes down?
Your money isn't affected — it's in your wallet, not on our platform. Payments already settled are on the blockchain regardless of our status. Our status page probes settlement detection on every network in real time.
Do you ever ask for my private key or seed phrase?
Never. Settle connects to wallet addresses you configure, not to keys. Any message asking for your keys or seed phrase is not from us — don't share it, whatever the reason given.
KEEP READING
The checkout is ready. Your wallet is waiting. Say the price. Share the link. Set your own terms. Keep the whole payment. From first customer to a real business.