Network fees on BetaPay, explained simply
What network fees (gas) are, why every payment has one, and how BetaPay keeps them small on Plasma and shows you the exact fee before you pay.
If you've ever sent crypto, you've met gas: the network fee every blockchain charges to process a transaction. It's often the most confusing step for new users, mostly because it's hard to see what you'll pay until it's too late.
On BetaPay, every payment has a small network fee, you pay it yourself, and you see it before you approve. Here's how that works.
What is gas?
Every blockchain transaction uses a little computing power from the network. Gas is the fee you pay for it. It goes to the network, not to BetaPay, and it's paid in the network's own coin.
On many networks that creates three problems:
- Fees can be bigger than the payment itself
- The price changes with demand, so it's hard to predict
- You often can't tell the final cost until after you've sent
How BetaPay handles it
BetaPay doesn't pay anyone's gas, and it doesn't hide the fee. Instead, it keeps the fee small and makes it obvious:
- Low fees on Plasma. Payments travel on Plasma, a fast, low-cost network built for stablecoins, so the fee on a typical send is a small fraction of the payment.
- Paid by the sender, in XPL. The fee is paid in XPL, Plasma's own coin, from the sender's wallet. Keep a small XPL balance and you're set.
- Shown before you pay. The review screen shows the amount, the recipient and the network fee together. Nothing goes out until you approve.
From your side it looks like this:
- Enter a 10-digit number and an amount.
- Review the payment, including the network fee.
- Swipe to send. The payment settles in about a second.
No surprises: the fee you see is the fee you pay.
A quick example
Say you owe a friend $12 for lunch.
On a typical wallet: you paste a long address, enter $12, and only find out at the last step what the network will charge, which may have changed since you started.
On BetaPay: you type your friend's 10-digit number, check their name, enter $12 and see the small network fee right there on the review screen. You swipe, and your friend gets $12 about a second later.
Why not make it free?
Some apps advertise "zero fees" by quietly paying the network on your behalf, then limiting, changing or withdrawing that promise later. We'd rather be straight with you: every onchain payment has a real cost. BetaPay keeps that cost low by using Plasma and shows it to you up front, so you're always in control of what you spend.
Network fees, in one glossary
- Gas / network fee: the fee paid to a network for processing a transaction. On BetaPay, the sender pays it.
- XPL: Plasma's own coin, used to pay network fees on Plasma.
- Review screen: where you see the amount, recipient and fee before approving.
- Settlement: the moment a payment is final. On BetaPay it usually takes about a second.
What it doesn't change
Paying your own fee is part of being self-custody: BetaPay never holds your money. Your wallet is non-custodial, and only you can approve a payment. Learn more about how we keep your funds safe, or see how 10-digit numbers work.