USDT vs USDC: which stablecoin should your business accept?

USDT (issued by Tether) and USDC (issued by Circle) are the two dollar stablecoins most customers already hold. For a merchant the question is not which one is "better" in general, but which one your customers can send on the network they use, and what happens to the money after it arrives. This post compares the two from that angle, using what easyway accepts today.

What is the same

For pricing, nothing differs. easyway values every stablecoin at exactly 1 USD, so a $250 invoice asks for 250 USDT or 250 USDC, whichever the customer picks, and your balance shows the same 250 afterwards. The 0.5% processing fee is the same for both, and so are the confirmations on a given network, because confirmations depend on the network, not on the token.

Where each one can be paid

The real difference is availability. USDT is accepted on more networks than USDC; on TRON and TON only USDT is accepted. This is the current table, with the asset id you would pass to the API and the confirmations needed before a payment counts:

If many of your customers pay from exchanges that withdraw USDT on TRON, USDC alone would turn them away. If your customers mostly hold USDC in their wallets, USDT alone does the same in reverse. The per-coin pages go deeper: USDT on TRON, USDT on BNB Smart Chain and USDC on all its networks.

Same name, different token

Both coins have lookalikes, and a lookalike sent to your address is not credited. On Polygon and Avalanche only Circle's native USDC counts, not the older bridged USDC.e; on Avalanche the same goes for Tether's native USDT versus the bridged USDT.e. On Polygon many wallets now show Tether's token as "USDT0" — it is the same contract and it is accepted. The checkout shows a short note about this on those networks, so the customer can check before sending.

What changes after the payment

Each coin on each network is a separate balance. USDC on Solana stays USDC on Solana: there is no automatic swap between USDT and USDC, or between networks. When you withdraw, you send that balance to one of your whitelisted wallets on the same network, and pay that network's withdrawal fee (listed on the pricing page). Until you withdraw, easyway holds the balance for you. So if your accountant or your exchange only takes one of the two, accepting both means one extra conversion step on your side.

One more difference that sits with the issuers, not with the gateway: both Tether and Circle can block a specific address from moving their token. Each issuer does this under its own published policy, so each stablecoin carries its issuer's rules as well as its peg. Spreading balances over two issuers, and withdrawing on a schedule, keeps that exposure small.

So which one?

For most merchants: accept both, on the networks your customers use, and let the customer choose at checkout. One invoice can offer several coins at once with allowed_assets, for example "allowed_assets": ["USDT_BEP20", "USDC_BEP20"]. Accept only one when your own books or your off-ramp require it — and then expect a few customers to ask for the other. If you want to keep price swings out entirely, the post on avoiding crypto volatility explains the other settings, and the USDT TRC-20 guide shows a complete integration you can adapt to any asset id in the table above.