How to Accept Crypto Payments on Paid Memberships Pro (2026 Guide)

Yes, you can accept crypto payments on a Paid Memberships Pro site, and the most direct route is the Aurpay plugin for Paid Memberships Pro — one of Aurpay’s eight native e-commerce integrations. Members pay in BTC, Lightning, ETH, USDT, USDC, DAI, or BNB; funds settle straight to a wallet you control; the fee is a flat 0.8% per transaction with no contracts or banking details required.

One thing you should understand before you install anything: crypto cannot be charged like a card on file. There is no mechanism for a gateway to pull funds from a member’s wallet on a schedule, so Paid Memberships Pro treats crypto gateways the way it treats manual or offline payments. Each member pays for a fixed membership period, the level expires, and renewal is their responsibility. That trade-off is real, it is manageable with expiration dates and renewal reminders, and most guides on this topic never mention it.

Key takeaways:

• Paid Memberships Pro is a native Aurpay integration: install the plugin, paste your Public Key, and crypto appears as a payment option at checkout.
• Fees: 0.8% flat vs. Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 per card charge plus a 0.7% Billing fee on recurring volume. On a $29/month membership with 100 members, that is roughly $1,300 a year in savings.
• No involuntary churn from expired or declined cards — failed card payments account for roughly half of all subscription churn.
• The honest trade-off: no card-style auto-renew. Each period is paid upfront; you configure expiration dates and renewal reminder emails, and you can send Crypto Invoice payment links at renewal time.
• Non-custodial settlement: payments go directly to your wallet. Aurpay never holds your funds or your keys, and blockchain payments carry zero chargebacks.

Why crypto and membership sites fit together

Membership businesses sell access, often globally, and cards are a weak link in that model. A subscriber in Buenos Aires, Lagos, or Jakarta may have money and intent but no internationally usable credit card. Figures compiled by Coinlaw from World Bank Findex data put the unbanked population at 1.3 billion adults, around 21% of adults worldwide, and over 900 million of them own mobile phones. Meanwhile more than 430 million people held crypto as of January 2026. A crypto checkout option converts some slice of an audience your card gateway simply cannot reach.

The second fit is churn, specifically the involuntary kind. When a stored card expires, gets reissued after fraud, or hits a limit, the renewal charge fails and the member lapses without ever deciding to leave. Per SQ Magazine’s 2026 subscription economy data, failed payments drove an estimated $129 billion in lost subscription revenue in 2025, and involuntary churn accounts for roughly 50% of total subscription churn. That is a large leak in a market the same dataset values at $536.72 billion in 2025. A member who pays in crypto has no card to expire. When they renew, it is a deliberate act, which also makes your retention numbers honest.

Third: chargebacks. Membership and digital-content businesses are chargeback magnets because there is no shipment to prove delivery. Blockchain transactions are irreversible, so the “I never signed up for this” dispute category disappears entirely on crypto-paid memberships. Add privacy-conscious communities (newsletter alphas, trading groups, research collectives) where members actively prefer not to attach a card identity to a subscription, and the demand side of this decision is straightforward.

The renewal trade-off you must understand first

Here is the part most plugin pages skip. Card gateways store a payment method and pull the renewal charge automatically. Crypto wallets do not work that way: no gateway, Aurpay included, can debit a member’s wallet without the member signing a transaction. Paid Memberships Pro’s own renewal documentation is explicit that when no automatic billing gateway handles a level, you set an expiration date on the membership level and members renew by returning to checkout themselves.

In practice, a crypto-paid membership works like this: a member buys a one-month or one-year level, the level carries an expiration date, and PMP sends renewal reminder emails as the date approaches. The member clicks through, pays again in crypto, and the clock resets. It is the same model gyms, domain registrars, and annual associations have used for decades. It is just not silent.

You can tighten the renewal loop in three ways:

• Configure expiration dates on every crypto-payable level. Without an expiration, PMP has nothing to trigger renewal behavior from.
• Use PMP’s membership expiration reminder emails, which include a renewal link, and consider sending more than one (for example 7 days and 1 day before expiry).
• Send a payment link directly. Aurpay’s Crypto Invoice product delivers a payable link by email or SMS with the price locked at send time, so a renewal becomes one click and one wallet confirmation rather than a full checkout trip.

Should the renewal friction scare you off? Weigh it against your current involuntary churn. If failed card payments already cost you a steady percentage of members per cycle, a deliberate-renewal segment paying 0.8% in fees instead of an effective 4%+ is not obviously worse. It is a different churn profile, weighted toward members who actually chose to leave. Many operators run Stripe and crypto side by side and let members self-select, which PMP supports.

Which crypto gateways work with Paid Memberships Pro

PMP’s official gateway list covers Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, CCBill, Payfast, and manual payments. No crypto. Third-party plugins fill the gap, and they differ widely on fees, coins, custody, and maintenance:

Gateway	Fee	Coins	Custody	Notes
Aurpay	0.8% flat	BTC, Lightning, ETH, USDT (ERC-20/TRC-20), USDC, DAI, BNB	Non-custodial; direct to your wallet	Native PMP integration; plugin v2.0.0 updated May 2026, tested to WordPress 6.9.4; 22+ fiat display currencies
OxaPay	0.4%	Multiple coins	Merchant account balance	Cheapest headline rate; PMP plugin shows fewer than 10 active installs
Coinsnap	1% (1.25% without referrer code)	BTC + Lightning only	Self-custody	Solid if you only want Bitcoin; no stablecoins
CryptoPay (BeycanPress)	No gateway %, but core plugin costs $79–$149/year	Multi-chain	Peer-to-peer to your wallet	The free PMP add-on is non-functional without the paid core plugin, a cost the marketing pages don’t surface
GoURL	“From 0%”	BTC + legacy altcoins	Platform-mediated	Open source but dated; coin list includes defunct projects; limited maintenance signals

Two evaluation notes. First, the headline fee is not the total cost: a 0.4% gateway that holds your funds in a platform balance carries custodial risk that a flat 0.8% non-custodial gateway does not. The custodial vs. non-custodial comparison covers why that distinction matters more than 40 basis points. Second, check maintenance. A payment plugin that lags WordPress core releases is a liability on a site holding member data.

Setting up Aurpay on Paid Memberships Pro

The integration is a standard WordPress plugin install plus one key. Budget 15–20 minutes:

• 1. Install the plugin. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New and search for “Aurpay Crypto Payment for Paid Memberships Pro”, or download it from WordPress.org. Activate it. Paid Memberships Pro must already be active.
• 2. Create an Aurpay merchant account. Sign up at aurpay.net (no contracts or banking details required) and connect the wallet address where you want settlements to land.
• 3. Copy your Public Key from the Aurpay merchant dashboard.
• 4. Configure PMP payment settings. In Memberships → Settings → Payment Gateway & SSL, select Aurpay and paste the Public Key.
• 5. Choose tokens and levels. Select which coins to accept, and enable or disable the crypto option per membership level. This is useful if you want crypto on annual levels only, where renewal friction matters least.
• 6. Set expiration dates on crypto-payable levels and switch on PMP’s expiration reminder emails, per the renewal section above.
• 7. Run a test checkout. Buy a membership yourself with a small amount, confirm the order status updates in PMP, and verify the funds arrive in your wallet.

At checkout, members pick a coin, scan a QR code or pay from a browser wallet such as MetaMask, and the membership activates on chain confirmation. Prices can display in 22+ fiat currencies, so a member in Germany sees euros while you settle in crypto. If you also run a WooCommerce store alongside the membership site, the same merchant account covers both: Aurpay ships a separate official plugin for WooCommerce.

Fee math: what a 100-member site actually pays

Take a concrete case: 100 members at $29/month, $2,900 in monthly recurring billing.

On Stripe’s standard US pricing, each domestic card charge costs 2.9% + $0.30, and Stripe Billing adds 0.7% of recurring volume for the subscription tooling. That works out to $84.10 in percentage fees, $30.00 in per-transaction fees, and $20.30 in Billing fees: $134.40 per month, about $1,613 per year, an effective rate near 4.6%.

The same volume through Aurpay at 0.8% flat costs $23.20 per month, about $278 per year. The gap is roughly $1,334 annually at this size, and it scales linearly: a 1,000-member site at the same price point keeps about $13,300 more per year. The fixed $0.30 per charge is what punishes low-ticket subscriptions hardest: on a $29 charge it alone is over 1%. A flat percentage with no fixed per-transaction fee is structurally cheaper for membership pricing. The full gateway fee comparison runs these numbers across more providers and ticket sizes.

Be fair about the offset: not all 100 members will pay in crypto, and crypto-paid members renew manually. Treat crypto as a second rail that captures otherwise-lost international signups at one-fifth the processing cost, not as a wholesale Stripe replacement on day one.

Price in dollars, settle in stablecoins

If your membership is priced in USD, stablecoins are the practical settlement choice. A member who pays 29 USDC has paid you twenty-nine dollars; there is no exchange-rate exposure between checkout and whenever you spend or convert the funds. That matters for a business with recurring dollar-denominated pricing, and it is where the market has gone: stablecoins represented more than 50% of crypto payments processed globally in 2025.

Through the PMP integration you can accept USDT on both Ethereum (ERC-20) and Tron (TRC-20), plus USDC and DAI. The Tron rail is popular with members in emerging markets because network fees stay low. The guide to accepting USDT payments on ERC-20 and TRC-20 covers the network choice in detail. Keep BTC, Lightning, and ETH enabled too; communities skew toward particular assets, and Lightning in particular suits small monthly payments where on-chain Bitcoin fees would be disproportionate.

One boundary to plan around: Aurpay settles in crypto, not fiat. There is no automatic conversion to dollars in a bank account. You hold the stablecoins in your own wallet and convert on an exchange if and when you choose. For a stablecoin-denominated business that is often a feature, but it is your treasury decision to make.

FAQ

Does Paid Memberships Pro support automatic recurring crypto payments?

No, and no crypto gateway can honestly offer card-style auto-renew, because a wallet cannot be debited without the owner signing each transaction. PMP handles crypto like a manual gateway: you set expiration dates on levels and members renew at checkout. Renewal reminder emails and Crypto Invoice payment links keep that loop tight.

Which coins can members use to pay through Aurpay?

BTC, Bitcoin Lightning, ETH, BNB, DAI, USDT (ERC-20 and TRC-20), and USDC. You choose which coins to enable, and you can control the payment option per membership level.

What happens when a crypto-paid membership expires?

The member loses access on the expiration date unless they renew, exactly as with PMP’s manual payment gateway. Configure reminder emails ahead of expiry and, for high-value members, send a Crypto Invoice link so renewal is a single click and a wallet confirmation.

Can I run Stripe and a crypto gateway at the same time?

Yes. Many PMP operators keep Stripe as the default rail and offer crypto as an additional option, or enable crypto only on specific levels such as annual plans. Members who want auto-renew use cards; members who cannot or will not use cards pay in crypto.

Do my members need anything special to pay?

Just a crypto wallet with funds: MetaMask, Trust Wallet, or any wallet that can scan a QR code or send to an address. There is no account creation on Aurpay’s side for the payer. Checkout shows an amount and an address, the member pays, and the membership activates on confirmation.

Is the 0.8% fee really the total cost?

0.8% is Aurpay’s flat gateway fee, with no monthly charge, no fixed per-transaction fee, and no contract. Members pay their own blockchain network fee when sending, which is why offering TRC-20 stablecoins and Lightning, both low-fee rails, improves the payer experience.

Start accepting crypto for memberships

A membership site on Paid Memberships Pro can be taking crypto payments this afternoon: install the plugin, paste a Public Key, set expiration dates, and test a checkout. You get a 0.8% flat fee instead of an effective 4%+ card stack, zero chargebacks, members in markets your card processor cannot serve, and settlement straight to a wallet you control. The renewal model is manual — go in with eyes open and reminder emails on. Explore the Aurpay e-commerce integrations to create a merchant account, and if you are still mapping the basics, start with the merchant decision guide for crypto payments.