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OrcaRail is Born: Open, Multi-Chain Crypto Payment Rails

· 4 min read
OrcaRail
OrcaRail
Crypto payment rails for web2 apps

January 1, 2026 — Today, we are thrilled to announce the launch of OrcaRail.

Built with the assistance of AI and driven by a singular conviction: crypto payments must be open, transparent, and accessible across all chains. For too long, merchants and developers have been forced to choose between complex, unmaintained open-source tools or expensive, closed-ecosystem payment gateways that lock you in and charge high fees.

We built OrcaRail to break that paradigm. OrcaRail is a multichain payment platform that bridges Web2 business logic and Web3 settlement — hosted with simple per-transaction pricing and a generous free tier, or self-hosted Open source soon for full sovereignty.

The Philosophy: A Transparent Public Good​

We believe the financial rails of the internet should be a public good. Hosted OrcaRail is $0.10 per completed transaction, with your first 1,000 transactions free, so we can run reliable infrastructure while staying approachable for builders. Self-hosted OrcaRail Open source soon is free: deploy the open-source stack on your own hardware and pay only what your infrastructure costs.

Individual payment quotes can still include optional line items you control — for example a configurable support fee (percentage) and commission on API keys — plus bridge fees when routing across tokens or networks. Those are documented in our Fees & limits guides; they are separate from the hosted platform per-transaction price.

By staying open source and letting the community improve the product, we aim for non-custodial, high-performance rails with less counterparty risk than closed gateways — transparent by design.

If builders use hosted OrcaRail, self-host Open source soon, or mix both, together we can push back on opaque, high-fee payment silos. The future of commerce should be open and inspectable.

The Developer Experience: Familiar payment primitives​

If you know how to integrate traditional Web2 payment processors, you already know how to use OrcaRail. We designed our architecture to give you predictable states, auditable flows, and retry-safe webhooks.

  • Stablecoin-First: Price your goods in fiat (USD/EUR) and settle instantly in USDC or USDT. Eliminate volatility risk for your business while offering customers a seamless checkout experience.
  • Drop-In Checkout: Use our hosted payment links, embeddable widgets, and WalletConnect-ready interfaces to provide a clean UX.
  • Webhooks & Idempotency: Keep your database perfectly synced with on-chain reality. Our system provides reliable events for succeeded, processing, and canceled states, complete with automated retries.
  • Node.js SDK & REST API: Build once, connect everywhere. 
    npm install @orcarail/node

Multi-Chain and Multi-Token Native​

Web3 is fragmented, but your payment gateway shouldn't be. You get one integration that works seamlessly across networks.

Currently, OrcaRail supports EVM-compatible chains out of the box. But we are not stopping there—all Relay-supported chains are actively on the way. Our smart routing technology automatically helps select the fastest or lowest-fee network for each specific payment, ensuring your customers never abandon a cart due to exorbitant gas fees.

Dynamic Withdrawals: Built for SaaS & Marketplaces​

Modern internet businesses are complex. Whether you are running a SaaS platform, a multi-vendor marketplace, or a creator economy app, routing funds manually is a nightmare. OrcaRail solves this natively:

  • Per-Payment Routing: Pass a withdrawal_address when creating a payment intent. When the customer pays, funds are automatically routed directly to that specific vendor's wallet.
  • Default Fallbacks: For simpler setups, omit the address and let funds settle into your global account default.
  • Split Commissions: Running a platform? Set a commission percentage on your API keys. You earn your platform cut on every transaction, visibly calculated at checkout, and automatically sent to your own withdrawal address.

What's Next on the Roadmap?​

This is just day one. As we scale, our commitment to an open ecosystem only deepens:

  1. Expanding Chain Support: Rapidly rolling out support for non-EVM chains via Relay integration.
  2. Self-Hosted Open source soon: Deploy the open-source stack on your own infrastructure for sovereignty and privacy — no per-transaction software fee from us.
  3. Advanced Compliance Tools: Optional metadata fields and integrations for seamless KYT/KYC workflows.

Try It: Feel the Difference​

We invite you to experience how easy crypto payments can be.

  • 🚀 Start Building — Create an account, generate an API key, and make your first payment link in under two minutes.
  • 🎮 Try the Live Demo — Test the complete end-to-end flow from intent creation to webhook confirmation.
  • 📖 Read the Documentation — Explore our API reference, SDK guides, and architectural overviews.

The future should be open and transparent. Let's build it together.

OrcaRail App · GitHub · X/Twitter