How Orbiter enables crypto subscription payments for developers with Loop

Orbiter is a static site hosting platform that makes self-hosting easier than ever, preventing vendor lock-in for developers who want complete control over their infrastructure, instead of paying a company like GoDaddy, Bluehost, or AWS to host their site. The platform provides seamless deployment and hosting solutions specifically designed for developers who value independence and technical flexibility.

To better serve their customer base, Orbiter integrated Loop Crypto to enable their customers to pay for subscriptions in crypto and stablecoins. This integration allows Orbiter to accept recurring payments in crypto and stablecoins while maintaining its existing billing infrastructure through Stripe. This makes billing management seamless for Orbiter while maximizing payment options for customers.

Why crypto and stablecoin payments

For SaaS companies providing technology services, accepting crypto and stablecoin payments isn't just about staying current with trends—it's about accessing a rapidly growing market and serving customers where they are. The numbers tell a compelling story about the massive opportunity in crypto payments.

The global stablecoin ecosystem has scaled rapidly. There are now hundreds of millions of stablecoin and crypto holders globally, and each month, there are tens of millions active wallets sending funds (see chart below). This represents a significant addressable market for any SaaS business. The total value locked in stablecoins has surpassed $250 billion and continues growing at a rate of 2x year-over-year, demonstrating the sustained adoption of these digital payment rails.

Source: Allium and Visa Stablecoin dashboard

This growth isn't limited to any single region. Loop's historical transaction data shows the global nature of crypto adoption, with payments spanning Europe (38%), Asia (33%), and North America (18%). For technology companies looking to expand globally, this geographic distribution aligns perfectly with where many developers and tech workers are located.

For SaaS companies specifically, stablecoins offer several operational advantages. They enable 24/7 settlement without waiting for traditional banking hours and reduce cross-border payment friction. When customers want to pay in crypto, having that option available can be the difference between closing a sale and losing a prospect to a competitor.

Why Orbiter chose Loop

Orbiter's decision to offer crypto and stablecoin payments was driven by two primary factors that aligned perfectly with their business strategy and customer base.

1) Ideal customer profile (ICP) is global developers

The first major factor was Orbiter's realization that their ideal customer profile centers around developers. As Justin Hunter explained in a LinkedIn post:

"As a static site hosting platform...we could serve developers and/or non-technical creators. But for a bootstrapped side project, we could not possibly serve both well. Fortunately, the first month in business made the decision easier. All of our paying customers are developers. Most of all our customers are developers. Steve and I know developers best."

This focus on developers made crypto payments especially valuable because developers are spread around the globe and often prefer to transact in stablecoins. The developer community has been at the forefront of crypto adoption, both professionally and personally. Many developers working in web3 receive compensation in crypto, participate in DAOs, and generally maintain more of their wealth on-chain compared to other professional groups.

For international developers, especially, stablecoins provide a superior payment experience compared to traditional international wire transfers or credit card payments that may incur foreign transaction fees. 

2) Serving crypto-native early adopters

Orbiter's founders, Steve and Justin, strategically used Farcaster as their launch platform for Orbiter, which connected them directly with crypto-native users from day one. Farcaster users are deeply embedded in the crypto ecosystem and tend to hold significant wealth on-chain. These users aren't just interested in crypto as an investment—they actively want to use their tokens to support and engage with the broader web3 ecosystem.

For Orbiter, enabling crypto payments wasn't just a nice-to-have feature—it was essential for serving their core community of early adopters. From there, Orbiter could expand to serving a broader set of global developers who also benefit from a stablecoin payment option.

Implementing Loop

The technical implementation of Loop into Orbiter's payment infrastructure proved remarkably straightforward, demonstrating how modern crypto payment solutions can integrate seamlessly with existing business systems.

Orbiter was able to create a Loop account and directly link it to their existing Stripe instance with minimal configuration required. This integration architecture was crucial because it allowed all customer data to sync to Stripe regardless of whether customers paid with traditional payment methods or crypto. From Orbiter's perspective, they maintained a single source of truth for all billing information, customer relationships, and subscription management.

The Loop-Stripe integration meant that Orbiter could continue using Stripe as their primary billing system while leveraging Loop's specialized infrastructure to handle automated recurring payments in crypto and stablecoins. This approach eliminated the need to manage multiple billing systems or create separate workflows for crypto customers versus traditional customers.

For the customer experience, the integration is seamless. Users can choose to pay with crypto directly through Orbiter's existing checkout flow, with Loop handling all the complexities of blockchain transactions, wallet connections, and crypto-to-USD conversion in the background. The recurring payment automation means that once a customer authorizes their subscription, payments continue automatically without requiring them to manually send transactions each billing cycle.

What's next

Orbiter continues pushing forward with their mission to make self-hosting easier than ever while preventing vendor lock-in for developers. The team is consistently shipping new features that give developers more control and flexibility over their hosting infrastructure.

As Justin Hunter noted in one of their recent blog posts: "Orbiter is for everyone because everyone is a developer now." To learn more about Orbiter, you can head to their website.

For companies ready to get started accepting crypto and stablecoins for subscriptions, head to Loop's get-started page. You can start testing in our sandbox environment right away.