Adyen is the acquirer behind some of the largest brands on the planet — and it's priced, contracted and onboarded accordingly. Malum gives you a Stripe-or-better checkout experience with crypto payouts, no chargeback exposure, and no enterprise sales cycle.
Adyen is the right choice when you're an enterprise with omnichannel POS, regulated treasury and a multi-month integration runway. Malum is the right choice when you want to take real payments today, settle in crypto, and never absorb a chargeback — without a contracted minimum or a procurement cycle.
Adyen is excellent at what it does. The trade-off is that it's built for a specific kind of merchant — and "small enough to not need a sales call" isn't it.
Adyen's onboarding starts with a sales process, a minimum volume commitment and an enterprise contract. Malum lets you create an account and accept a real payment the same day.
Adyen settles fiat to a registered business bank on a payout schedule. Malum settles to the wallet you control, in the crypto you nominate, within minutes — 24/7, no banking calendar.
Adyen is a regulated card acquirer, which means chargeback liability rests on the merchant the same way it does on any other acquirer. Malum's card-to-crypto pipeline removes that liability from your books.
| Feature | Malum | Adyen |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding | Self-serve, minutes | Sales-led, KYB review, contracted, weeks |
| Minimum volume / commit | None | Contracted minimums; typically aimed at high-volume merchants |
| Payout currency | Crypto — USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH + 30 more | Fiat to a registered business bank account |
| Payout speed | Minutes, 24/7 | Payout schedule, weekdays, banking cut-offs |
| Chargeback liability | Absorbed by Malum once crypto has settled | Full merchant chargeback exposure + dispute fees |
| Pricing model | Flat published merchant discount, all-in | Interchange++ with per-method processing fee + platform fee |
| Payment methods | Cards, Apple/Google Pay, SEPA, iDEAL, Bancontact, EPS, Faster Payments, Interac, bank transfer, crypto — 70+ | Cards, Apple/Google Pay, regional APMs, POS, BNPL (very broad) |
| High-risk verticals | Supported (digital goods, gaming, software, content, services) | Restricted by acquirer policy |
| Merchant of Record | Yes — MoR option for tax + compliance | No — Adyen is a PSP/acquirer, not an MoR |
| Hosted storefront | Built-in storefront with products, reviews, custom domain | Adyen is pure payments; storefront is your responsibility |
| Crypto checkout | Native — BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC + 30 more | No native crypto support |
| Reserves / holds | None — funds leave the platform on settlement | Rolling reserves common on certain verticals |
| Support | Telegram, email, live chat — humans, no tier gate | Dedicated account manager on enterprise tier |
Adyen's product is calibrated for large, multi-channel merchants: global retail, marketplace platforms, omnichannel POS, regulated treasury. That's a great fit for Uber, Spotify and McDonald's. It's a less natural fit for a founder who wants to ship a checkout this week.
Malum's model assumes you want to be live today, not in Q3. Self-serve onboarding, no contracted minimum, no sales call to take the first payment.
Adyen holds the balance as fiat in an Adyen-controlled settlement account until your payout schedule fires. That balance is what an issuing bank reverses against if a dispute lands later — which can happen up to 120 days after the original transaction on the card side.
Malum's settlement leaves the platform: as soon as a card transaction clears, the proceeds are converted to the crypto you nominated and shipped to your wallet. Disputes hitting the card rail afterwards are absorbed by Malum, not deducted from your balance.
Adyen prices on interchange++: the underlying interchange fee, plus the network fee, plus an Adyen processing fee — different per region, per card type, per method, plus a per-transaction platform fee. It's transparent at enterprise scale but hostile to small-volume modelling.
Malum publishes a single flat merchant discount. You know exactly what you'll keep before you switch the integration on.
Adyen's acquirer status comes with the same vertical limits as any other regulated acquirer — gaming, certain content categories, IPTV, top-ups, parts of financial services and others sit outside what Adyen will underwrite at standard terms.
Malum's settled-crypto model means risk doesn't accumulate as merchant balance, which lets Malum support a broader vertical policy without per-merchant custom underwriting.
Adyen is intentionally a pure payments layer — you bring the storefront, the order management, the tax engine, the receipt generation, the customer support workflow. That's the right shape for a large company with an existing engineering team. It's overhead for everyone else.
Malum bundles the payments layer with hosted storefront, products, reviews, custom domains, payment links, subscriptions, MoR option, refunds UI, payout queue, team workspaces and plugin integrations — so smaller teams don't have to build (or buy) the surrounding nine systems.
Spin up a Malum account, drop the embed on your site, and take your first chargeback-free, crypto-settled payment today.
Comparisons are based on publicly available information from each provider's website and product documentation at the time of writing and are provided for informational purposes only. Trademarks and brand names are the property of their respective owners; their use here is purely descriptive and does not imply endorsement, affiliation, or partnership. Pricing, fees, payout times, supported regions and product features change frequently — always verify directly with each provider before making a decision.