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.

[wozzek23]

Me as a budget user I obviously prefer a stable coin and a network that has a cheap fee only. That stable coin would be is USDT and I think the current network where fees are cheap for USDT is BEP-20, since this is the one that my boss uses now but before, we are using TRC20 network.

Maybe the fees for it have risen now, same as on what I heard on some users but now that I am allowed to use just one custodial wallet, I can still accept whatever stable coin or network my boss uses because the current wallet I am using, already has a built in swap feature and then it already supports fiat that I can use immediately. So there is no need for me to have another native coin just to transfer or convert the stable coin I received.

[Balmain]

I would usually choose TRC20 it has become a habit, and I generally use this network because it is fast and cheap, I haven't really looked at the others. ERC20 transaction fees are high, so I prefer it less, and aside from that, I haven't really needed other networks. Still, it is nice to know that there are plenty of options available.

[Jostle]

I will go with USDC (e.g. I avoid USDT, and tron chain), and typically go for BNB Chain if I could. Otherwise, Ethereum.

I don't mind waiting for a bit as well.

[TastyChillySauce00]

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?

Where the funds already sit matters most because you definitely don't want to bridge because it's just inconvenient, second factor is what network the merchant accept because not all network is accepted sometime and fee also matters too because I can pay with my stablecoin and only need to pay not even a cent for gas in L2 networks, but the if the merchant don't support it, additional fee is okay.

I never used TRC20 or tron related because the blockchain, how it works, and the blockchain explorer feels very unfamiliar compared to ERC20 and BEP20, even Solana is better.

[Nightwatchmare]

If i am to pay an online merchant, and the online merchant provides its own designated blockchain and address to receive payment with and there is no option to request for the blockchain you would love to pay with, i will go with the blockchain the online merchant provided. But if there is an option to pay with any blockchain of my choice, then i will choose to pay with USDT on BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) because it has a fee of 0.01 USDT, and of all the blockchain that support USDT deposit and withdraw, BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) has the lowest withdrawal fee.

[Roseline492]

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.

Since Op is talking about stablecoins of those network I don't think ERC20 has a higher fee because if you compare what most exchanges charge you on Trc20 stablecoin you will know that ERC20 stablecoin is better because currently we have exchange with the fees of $0.8 for ERC20 Usdt while in Trc20 Usdt is $1.3 so actually you can see the difference they have when withdrawing through their stablecoins but however you could only consider trc20 when you are withdrawing the main coin being Trx because that's when you will only see the fees being lower than ETH coin. As for the speed transaction, op doesn't have to worry about that because I think all the stablecoins are very fast when it comes to confirmation.

[satscraper]

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 have a few cryptocards that require topping them up with either USDT or USDC, but unfortunately not all of them allow selection of blockchain. One is stick toPolygon, another to ERC20 or TRC20. Tron is the last thing I would choose because of relatively high fees compared with other chains. My favorite is Polygon because fast and cost effective transactions in one flacon.

[o48o]

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.

You might want to check SPL. At least i am totally fanboy now. Sol is accepted nearly everywhere, it's basically free and with jupiter wallet, you can even send tokens without gas. And by that i mean, if you don't have any SOL, jupiter covers network fees for you, by swapping a tiny amount of those tokens to SOL. And that's like fraction of ¢1 tops.

By the way, it's funny how Tron was supposed to be THE network for free transfers and every developer out there warned that it won't scale well.

[pooya87]

It varies depending on the market and why you are using these centralized stablecoins.

For example the only time I've ever used stablecoins was to transfer funds between exchanges and to sell bitcoin P2P (sell bitcoin to stablecoin and sell stablecoin to the other peer) so it depended on what stablecoin they were accepting and in my case it was USDT on Tron network and at the time the fee was pretty low, lower than other options so that's what I used.

Other than that, they are both centralized and they are both equally risky because of that.

[ultrloa]

It varies depending on the market and why you are using these centralized stablecoins.

For example the only time I've ever used stablecoins was to transfer funds between exchanges and to sell bitcoin P2P (sell bitcoin to stablecoin and sell stablecoin to the other peer) so it depended on what stablecoin they were accepting and in my case it was USDT on Tron network and at the time the fee was pretty low, lower than other options so that's what I used.

Other than that, they are both centralized and they are both equally risky because of that.

Yeah right, because each market or platform accepts different stable coins, some accept USDT and the other one accepts USDC.

So better check what coin does the platform they want to deal on accepts, because that one is convenient for them to use.

But those stablecoins mentioned are common used for transfer and other things, since as said they are stable and can be move depends on the network they like to use. But well people need to know that those centralized coins posses risk. Because both of them can block their funds and it could possibly happen anytime.