Loop Crypto vs. Sphere
Introduction
Bitcoin was originally founded with a focus on enabling users to pay for goods and services with Bitcoin. Over the years, the company has experimented with a variety of crypto products and has slowly branched out to support additional chains. If you are looking to implement crypto or stablecoin payments and are assessing BitPay vs. Loop Crypto, this article is for you.
Read on to see why merchants that need a solution that helps them grow sales, integrates with their existing billing system, and scales with them select Loop Crypto over BitPay.
Why companies choose Loop
When evaluating crypto payment solutions, companies primarily choose Loop for these reasons:
Integrations - Loop is integrated directly into payment platforms like Stripe, Chargebee, Xero, QuickBooks, and OpenPay, meaning merchants have one system of record for all their payments and access to these powerful billing systems and their rich features and integrations.
All payment types: Loop supports all payment types: invoices, one-time purchases, subscriptions, and metered billing. It also offers a broad range of network and token support, allowing crypto to work for any business model.
Flexibility: Loop is flexible enough to build custom in-app billing experiences for merchants that want more control over their payment experience.
Track record: Loop has helped top companies process millions in payments across EVMs and Solana.
Integrations
Loop offers an unmatched suite of integrations that allows merchants to plug crypto and stablecoin payments into their existing billing systems. This includes integrations with platforms like Stripe, OpenPay, Chargebee, Xero, and QuickBooks. This is extremely valuable as it allows merchants to gain access to all of the functionality their existing billing systems offer, such as free trials, coupon codes, billing per unit, and many more features. There are no constraints on what functionality is available for those who pay in crypto vs. those paying in fiat.
In addition, Loop’s integration suite means merchants do not have to manage two separate billing systems. Setup is extremely straightforward, and there is no hassle of maintaining two systems, each with its own approach to product and pricing logic. Finally, using Loop’s integrations allows merchants to unlock visibility into all their transactions from one place. All payment data flows into one system, so merchants can track all open and closed invoices from one location.
All payment types
Businesses bill for many different types of payments, and their payment methods ought to support all of them. Loop enables crypto invoicing, one-time crypto payments, and crypto subscription payments without requiring locking up funds. Loop makes accepting crypto recurring payments effortless with native autopay. Autopay is critical for reducing churn ensuring merchants retain their customers. When an autopay solution is not in place, churn can be up to 2x higher!
Other solutions claim to enable recurring payments, but in reality, they require locking up funds in a smart contract, managing complicated streams of tokens, or sending repeated emails with payment links. Loop is designed to make crypto subscriptions and one-time payments as straightforward as charging a credit card or bank account. These complicated lock-ups and streams add significant friction to the checkout process and increase the risk of losing a sale. With Loop, the checkout experience simply collects a wallet authorization, and then Loop is able to charge (or “pull”) the funds at the specified time.
Flexibility
For merchants that want to own the entire payment experience end-to-end, Loop offers a flexible crypto payment API and configurable checkout components. Companies can be up and running with custom payment experiences within weeks, or even days, not months (check out our Helius case study to see how). The flexibility of Loop’s APIs means that Loop can accommodate any type of pricing model and checkout configuration. In addition, our pay component makes it simple to collect payment authorization from any wallet. This allows end customers to store payment methods, so companies can bill for recurring crypto payments or provide one-click checkouts.
Track record
Loop Crypto has a track record of working with top companies to enable their crypto and stablecoin payments. This includes working with large RPC providers like Helius and leading data analytics firms like Kaito processing millions on chain and saving teams thousands of hours. Check out our blog to see more relevant case studies about how teams in web3 and beyond have implemented Loop.
Where Loop excels against Sphere
If you are evaluating Loop specifically compared to Sphere, here are the reasons we see merchants ultimately choose Loop over Sphere.
1. Robust Stripe integration
One of the most powerful advantages of using Loop for crypto payments is that it integrates seamlessly into existing billing systems. This makes adding crypto payments simple and allows companies to have one source of truth for all of their product, pricing, and customer logic. The crypto payments solution is not siloed, requiring additional work.
One of Loop’s most popular integrations is Stripe. We offer the most robust Stripe integration on the market that fully allows for one-time and recurring crypto payment functionality to be plugged into your Stripe account. While Sphere offers a limited integration with Stripe, Loop has built a fully automated integration that syncs product and pricing logic from Stripe into Loop, allowing for the instant creation of crypto payment links tied to Stripe. Implementation is as simple as generating and passing a Stripe API key to Loop. If you’re already using Stripe for fiat payments, your existing webhook logic can be re-used. To learn more about our integration, you can read more in our documentation.
In addition to the Stripe integration, Loop integrates with other popular subscription management systems like Chargebee and OpenPay. These integrations allow merchants to handle fiat and crypto payments in the same platform.
2. Reliability and strong customer support
Reliability and transparency are key reasons we hear from our clients when it comes to why they selected Loop Crypto. Loop handles all of the complexity around on-chain payments so that merchants and other payment processors do not have to. This comprehensive on and off-chain infrastructure ensures that Loop is able to reliably process payments while also providing transparency when a customer misses a payment due to a low balance or insufficient authorization.
Loop offers a comprehensive set of dashboards that provide merchants with visibility into the state of their historical and upcoming payments. In addition, webhooks immediately notify merchants of activity related to a current, upcoming, or past due payment. On the customer side, Loop offers a full suite of email reminders and notifications out-of-the-box.
When it comes to support, the Loop Crypto team is hands-on with our clients from the beginning of implementation through go-live. Once clients are actively using Loop, we remain available to support and troubleshoot as needed. We stay close to our customers to receive ongoing feedback and ensure that our product roadmap reflects the needs of our clients.
3. Chain coverage
Sphere was founded with a focus on the Solana ecosystem and primarily focuses on that chain. While Solana is widely used, Sphere’s chain support is more limited when compared to other options like Loop Crypto. Loop is also available on Solana while supporting a broader range of chains, including any EVM chain (along with Tron) that companies need to receive payment on. Merchants need to meet their customers where they and where their funds sit. At Loop, we believe providing merchants with the broadest possible chain support is critical for achieving that.
Comparative analysis
For merchants and payment platforms, Loop offers the most flexible crypto and stablecoin payment platform. We support a range of payment use cases, including crypto subscription payments, crypto invoicing, and one-time crypto payments.
Relevant case studies
As you evaluate crypto payment providers, be sure to check out our case studies. We have worked with leading brands like Helius, Privy, Kaito, chainEDGE, and Pinata powering their checkout experiences. Many of these top companies selected Loop because of the robust Stripe integration noted above.
Our case study with Helius highlights the flexibility of Loop’s crypto payment APIs. In November 2024, Helius went live with Loop Crypto to facilitate crypto subscription payments for its customers on Solana. Helius was able to fully customize its sign-up experience and launched its own billing page with crypto payments natively embedded.
FAQ
How do I accept crypto payments for my business?
A crypto payment processor facilitates digital transactions between merchants and their customers enabling merchants to accept various forms of crypto payment. Merchants that accept crypto payments, especially recurring crypto payments, need to work through various complexities related to accepting payment on multiple networks, in multiple tokens, and from various types of wallets.
A payment processor, like Loop Crypto, handles this complexity and provides a crypto payments API and tooling that are easy to use. This allows for the secure and quick transfer of funds from the customer’s wallet to the merchant’s wallet. You can check out this article about payment processing in web3.
What is a crypto payment processor?
A crypto payment processor facilitates digital transactions between merchants and their customers enabling merchants to accept various forms of crypto payment. With Loop, we make it easy to accept stablecoins, ERC-20 tokens (tokens deployed within the Ethereum ecosystem and popular layer 2 networks), or SPL tokens (tokens deployed within the Solana ecosystem).
Merchants that accept crypto payments need to work through various complexities related to accepting payment on multiple networks, in multiple tokens, and from various types of wallets. Loop handles this complexity and provides APIs and tooling that are easy to use. This allows for the secure and quick transfer of funds from the customer’s wallet to the merchant’s wallet.
Can I accept crypto payments for subscriptions?
Yes! Loop works with recurring subscription payments. We work similar to credit cards - a customer authorizes their wallet to be charged, and each billing period the wallet is charged without the end customer having to take action.
How does Sphere work?
Sphere is a digital payments solution that allows merchants to accept and convert cryptocurrencies. The company offers a product suite that facilitates the transfer of different cryptocurrencies as well as allowing for the onramping and offramping of digital currencies. The company is known in particular for its focus on the Solana ecosystem.
