USDT/USDC payments: how do you choose the network?

[NiceNIC.COM]

One stablecoin, several networks: ERC20, TRC20, BEP20, Solana, Polygon and others. Fees, confirmation speed and merchant, wallet and exchange support differ between them.

When paying an online merchant, what decides your choice first: the network, the fee, or where your funds already sit?

[asriloni]

As active user of stable coin, and i'm using it everyday in my life. I'd pick all of L2 combined Solana/Sui network for stable coin transaction.





As you can see from picture above if all of L2 are costing you almost nothing to send stable coin. However, the only thing that i don't like is that sometimes, there is a validation needed to ensure L2 transaction to be fully delivered which forced you to wait around 15 - 30 minutes for merchanit to validate it, yet some L2 such as BEP20 or CChain avax don't need validation because the trustability of blockchain.

So my best choices are BEP20, CChain, Sol and SUI for stable coin transactions due to the fast network when sending, and instant delivery without needed L1 validation.

note:withdrawal fees taken from OKX, different exchange may charge you different fees.

[Odusko]

One stablecoin, several networks: ERC20, TRC20, BEP20, Solana, Polygon and others. Fees, confirmation speed and merchant, wallet and exchange support differ between them.

When paying an online merchant, what decides your choice first: the network, the fee, or where your funds already sit?

Sometimes the sender will just have no choice but to work with the receivers choice of network, because not all chains give give same wallet addresses to receive USDT or USDC, except for binance bybit who makes use of 1 wallet for multiple chains although not all but most, if you send funds to the wrong wallet because you consider your own sending fees, transactions speeds and the rest on the network your payment won't drop at the receiver end.
This is the reason you see whenever someone want to receive USDT or other stable coins they send their wallet address along side with the network to the sender.

[Oshosondy]

One stablecoin, several networks: ERC20, TRC20, BEP20, Solana, Polygon and others. Fees, confirmation speed and merchant, wallet and exchange support differ between them.

When paying an online merchant, what decides your choice first: the network, the fee, or where your funds already sit?

If I am making the money on a noncustodial wallet, I will prefer to use the network that I have the stable coins and that is if I have stable coin on the network listed among the payment methods.

But if I am trading and I earn some stable coins and I have to pay, I will prefer the network allowed that has the cheapest fee. In this case, I will prefer Plasma, Aptos network or Mantle network.

[libert19]

One stablecoin, several networks: ERC20, TRC20, BEP20, Solana, Polygon and others. Fees, confirmation speed and merchant, wallet and exchange support differ between them.

When paying an online merchant, what decides your choice first: the network, the fee, or where your funds already sit?

I am lazy. First thing would be where my funds sit, and second would be fees. Unless fees are significant enough to get my lazy bum up, I would directly transfer from wherever the funds sit and my funds will never sit on the Tron network, I have used it in past and I'd rate it worst.

Also, mind explaining difference between, 'network' and 'where your funds already sit'? I mean, aren't they same thing!?

[m2017]

One stablecoin, several networks: ERC20, TRC20, BEP20, Solana, Polygon and others. Fees, confirmation speed and merchant, wallet and exchange support differ between them.

When paying an online merchant, what decides your choice first: the network, the fee, or where your funds already sit?

ERC20 - I’ve probably used it a couple of times. The fees are high, so I’m not using it at the moment.

TRC20 - The transaction fees are very high; the last time, it came to about $3. That seems to have been the only time I used this network. I see no point in overpaying. I don't think I'll ever use this network again. I'm extremely disappointed by the excessively high commission ($3 - is that really normal?!).

BEP20 - Near-zero fees, instant transaction confirmation, and the widespread adoption of this standard - all of this makes this network my favorite.

I am not familiar with (or do not use) the other networks. I can't be bothered to experiment when there is already a "working" standard that meets my requirements.

[Abu-Naim]

One stablecoin, several networks: ERC20, TRC20, BEP20, Solana, Polygon and others. Fees, confirmation speed and merchant, wallet and exchange support differ between them.

When paying an online merchant, what decides your choice first: the network, the fee, or where your funds already sit?

Every factor should be considered especially the fee. ERC20 is usually expensive from time being, people avoid it because of high transaction fee, except if it is compulsory to use the network, one can avoid it for any other available network.
Secondly, you will look from the wallet you are sending to it will determine which network to be used, but it also depend on your exchange, if the network withdrawal is not available, you have to chose the available network and not the cheap one.
Almost all the networks are fast depending on your internet connection, make you choice using any factors.