what's CipherPay?

CipherPay is a non-custodial payment gateway for Zcash (ZEC), allowing merchants to accept fully private cryptocurrency payments on websites, apps, stores, or in-person setups. Users connect a read-only Unified Full Viewing Key (UFVK) to enable CipherPay to scan the Zcash blockchain via trial decryption, automatically detecting shielded transactions, matching payments to invoices, handling underpayments with slippage tolerance, and triggering webhooks for order fulfillment. Integrations include REST API, hosted checkouts with QR codes, JavaScript widgets, and plugins for Shopify and WooCommerce, with setup in minutes and no need to run a node. Privacy is core: all transactions use Zcash shielded pools, hiding sender, receiver, amount, and metadata on-chain, while CipherPay accesses only payment details via the viewing key without spending ability or buyer PII storage. It supports x402 protocol for programmatic verification by AI agents, enabling private machine-to-machine payments. Open-source Rust backend allows self-hosting for maximum control, with a 1% fee on processed payments and future ZEC-based subscriptions.

CipherPay launched private, non-custodial Zcash payment infrastructure for merchants.