Ethereum is the network that everyone else benchmarks against. It's where the deepest crypto liquidity sits, where stablecoin issuers anchor their reserves, and where most enterprise-grade integrations begin. MixPay routes Ethereum mainnet end-to-end, so the asset that holds the rest of the market together is also the one your business can take in at the till.
What "Ethereum mainnet support" actually means here
A lot of payment processors use "we support Ethereum" loosely. To be specific: with MixPay, your customers can pay in ETH on Ethereum mainnet, and in any of the major ERC-20 tokens routed by MixPay — including USDT, USDC, USD1, and the long tail of payment-relevant ERC-20 assets. The customer's wallet does not need to know what you receive; the chain stays Ethereum mainnet, and you settle in whichever stablecoin you've selected.
That distinction matters because the L2 rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) are separate networks with different gas economics. MixPay supports those too, but Ethereum mainnet remains the baseline — the one to default to when a customer's wallet doesn't bridge.
Why merchants still default to Ethereum mainnet
Despite higher gas, three reasons keep mainnet on the menu:
- Liquidity depth. ETH and ERC-20 stablecoins on Ethereum mainnet have the tightest spreads of any chain. When MixPay's quote engine prices the conversion, mainnet quotes are typically the strongest reference.
- Wallet defaults. Most software wallets — MetaMask first among them — open on Ethereum mainnet. For a customer paying for the first time, mainnet is the path of least resistance.
- B2B counterparty preference. Larger transactions, especially across enterprise, default to mainnet because settlement finality and audit-trail expectations are most established there.
How MixPay handles Ethereum payments
The merchant-side flow is the same as every other chain MixPay routes. The customer chooses ETH or an ERC-20 token at checkout. MixPay watches the chain for confirmation, applies the live FX between the paid asset and your settlement asset, and credits your account. You see one ledger entry — the gross amount, denominated in your settlement currency.
Specifically:
- No merchant fees at the MixPay layer. The customer pays gas; you don't.
- Real-time conversion from ETH or any ERC-20 to your chosen stablecoin.
- One settlement balance that aggregates Ethereum mainnet, L2s, and every other routed network.
- Standard wallet support — MetaMask, Binance Pay, OKX, Gate Pay, KuCoin Pay, hardware wallets via WalletConnect.
For developer integrations, the REST API treats Ethereum mainnet as one of many network parameters; nothing chain-specific leaks into your application code.
When Ethereum mainnet is the right call
Mainnet is the right default in three scenarios:
- High-value transactions where a few extra dollars of gas are immaterial against ticket size, and counterparties want the strongest finality reference.
- Cross-platform compatibility — when you don't know which wallet your customer will use, mainnet is the lowest-common-denominator that doesn't require bridging.
- B2B invoicing where the buyer's accounting team prefers a single, well-known chain identifier on their reconciliation report.
For everyday consumer checkouts where speed and gas matter, MixPay will continue to surface L2 options alongside mainnet — see Layer 2 payment support on Arbitrum and Optimism, the Base L2, and Polygon PoS for the three rollups that handle the bulk of cheap-gas ETH-flavoured traffic. The pricing page shows how the chain choice surfaces at the till. But mainnet is the foundation, and it has been routable through MixPay since day one.