Most writing about crypto payments is about wallets and chains. Very little is about the boring part that actually eats an exchanger's margin: getting rubles from a customer and turning them into USDT without a human in the loop.
I work at Buhgalter (buhgalter.app), a payment processing service. Our largest group of clients are exchange offices, and here is what we learned from them.
The manual loop
A typical small exchanger used to work like this. The customer sends rubles to a card. An operator checks the bank app, matches the screenshot, recalculates the rate, sends USDT. Every step is a place for errors and disputes, and the rate keeps moving while the operator looks for the transfer.
What the automated version looks like
The exchanger's site creates a payment request through our API the moment the customer clicks. The customer pays via SBP (Russia's instant payment system), a QR code or a card number transfer. The USDT/RUB rate is locked when the payment is created, and the balance is credited in USDT by default. Auto-withdrawal then sends funds to a USDT wallet on TRC-20.
For exchangers that need to know who is paying, there is a payment method with identity confirmation: the payer shows a passport and a selfie with it, a staff member reviews it once per payment. This cuts the number of disputed transfers a lot. And the crypto that comes out is clean.
Money side
We charge only for successful payments. Expired or cancelled requests cost nothing. The bigger the ticket, the lower the rate, and for serious volumes we build individual and VIP terms. Refunds, full or partial, carry no platform fee.
The human side
Every merchant gets a personal manager on Telegram. That sounds like a perk until you run a business where a stuck payment at 2 a.m. means a lost client. We try to meet people halfway, whether they are a large exchanger, a VPN service selling access through a bot, or a creator selling a course.
If you run something similar and want to compare notes, I am happy to talk in the comments.
Alena Kotenkova, Buhgalter team
https://buhgalter.app
Top comments (0)