How does Swop make money? The 0.5% fee, explained

Swop's only published revenue mechanism is a checkout fee: SwopPay, the payment feature built into the Swop app, charges a flat 0.5% fee on transactions processed through it. That's the one number Swop has made public about how it earns money. Anything else you might read about Swop's business model — swap fees, pricing on other features — hasn't been confirmed publicly, so treat it as unverified until Swop states it.

The one fee that's public

SwopPay is the part of the Swop app that turns a Swop handle or a SmartSite into something that can take payment. A seller lists a product or accepts a payment request, a buyer pays for it, and Swop keeps 0.5% of that transaction. That's the entirety of what's confirmed: a flat rate on checkout, not a subscription, not a percentage of a user's total balance, and not a fee for using the wallet itself.

It's a small number as payment fees go, but the honest answer to "how does Swop make money" today is that this is the only mechanism with a public figure attached to it. Everything below either explains what that fee touches, or says plainly where the public record stops.

Two payment rails, one published rate

SwopPay checkout actually covers two different ways of getting paid, and they work differently under the hood even though the same 0.5% figure is what's published.

• Card payments. Swop accepts card payments, and Tap to Pay is live on Android (iOS Tap to Pay is not live yet — dev distribution only). Card-rail verification runs through Stripe: Stripe holds the identity documents, and Swop keeps only a revocable record of the decision, not the evidence behind it. Card proceeds never touch a Swop wallet — Stripe holds the fiat balance and pays the merchant's bank directly.
• Crypto and x402 payments. These are never identity-gated — a seller is payable in USDC the moment they list a product, with no merchant verification step. Every SmartSite is an x402 storefront, so a product a user adds is automatically payable by AI agents in USDC over the x402 protocol, with payout going directly on-chain to the seller. Only the card rail requires the verification step described above.

And it applies identically across both: SwopPay checkout charges a 0.5% fee, and the rate is the same on the card rail and the crypto rail. One number, not a headline rate with a quieter one behind it.

Where that fee goes, and what else is priced

Two further pieces of the picture are now public, and both are mechanisms rather than rates on new things.

A referrer earns half of the swap fees generated by the people they refer, for 12 months after that person signs up. Two details matter for reading that correctly. It is a share of swap fees, not of the checkout fee — a different mechanism from the 0.5% above. And it is a share of what Swop collects, not a surcharge: a referred user pays exactly what an unreferred one pays, and Swop keeps half of what it would otherwise have kept. Referral programmes are usually funded by charging somebody more. This one is funded out of Swop’s own share.

Referral rewards are paid in SWOP: the fees collected are used to buy SWOP, which is credited to the referrer. That describes how the payout is routed, and nothing more should be read into it.

Swop’s AI agent runs on credits denominated in the SWOP utility token — users pay for agent actions in SWOP. That is a pricing mechanism, not an investment claim: the agent is a metered product and SWOP is the unit it is metered in. We are not going to dress that up as anything more than it is.

Why a transaction fee, not a subscription or a spread

Payment products generally make money one of a few ways: a recurring subscription, a spread between what a buyer pays and a seller receives, or a per-transaction fee charged openly at checkout. Swop's design rules out two of those almost by construction.

Swop is fully self-custodial — keys are generated and held on your device, Swop never holds them. A platform that never holds a customer's funds has nothing to earn a spread or float on, because there's no balance sitting in a company-controlled account in the first place. And transactions on Swop are gas-sponsored — you don't need to hold SOL or ETH to transact. Swop covers the network fee: a cost Swop absorbs, not a charge passed through to you and not a margin quietly taken on top.

That leaves a fee that's charged in the open, at the moment value changes hands, as the lever that's actually compatible with those two commitments. It's a narrower business model than a custodial exchange has available to it, which is part of why there's only one number to report here rather than several.

What isn't public yet

In the interest of not overstating what's confirmed: Swop has a built-in swap — you get a quote and sign inside the app, without sending funds to an exchange or connecting to a separate site — and it routes Solana swaps through Jupiter and EVM swaps through LiFi. Whether Swop charges anything on top of that routing, and if so how much, has not been made public.

Perpetual futures and prediction markets have a clearer answer than that: Swop does not charge a fee on perps or prediction markets today. Not an undisclosed rate — no rate. Whether it stays that way is a separate question, and it is something Swop is actively looking at, so read it as true of today rather than a permanent commitment. Current pricing belongs on Swop’s support site rather than in a blog post that will age.

FAQ

What exactly is the 0.5% fee charged on?

SwopPay checkout charges a 0.5% fee. SwopPay is the payment feature built into the Swop app — a seller lists something, a buyer pays for it, and Swop takes 0.5% of that transaction. It's the only revenue mechanism Swop has published a number for.

Is the 0.5% fee the same whether someone pays by card or in crypto?

Yes. SwopPay checkout charges a 0.5% fee, and the rate is the same on the card rail and the crypto rail — one number, not a headline rate with a quieter one behind it.

Does Swop charge a fee on in-app token swaps?

Swop has a built-in swap — you get a quote and sign inside the app — but no swap fee amount has been made public. Don't assume a number here until Swop states one.

Does Swop make money by holding user funds or marking up gas fees?

Structurally, no. Swop is fully self-custodial — keys are generated and held on your device, Swop never holds them — so there are no user funds sitting in a Swop-controlled account to earn a spread on. And transactions are gas-sponsored, meaning Swop covers the network fee rather than charging you for it. Neither leaves room to be a revenue source the way they can be for custodial platforms.