Native USDC ships on every major chain. The choice is not about which is 'best' — it is about matching the chain to your operational profile.
Solana: ~$0.00025 per transfer, sub-second finality, ~1500 TPS theoretical, used by Phantom and Jupiter ecosystems. Pick when: high payout volume per merchant (10+ payouts/day), you do not need EVM tooling, your counterparties hold SOL-based wallets.
Base (Coinbase L2): ~$0.005 per transfer, 2-second blocks, Ethereum L2 with full EVM, native Coinbase off-ramp from balance to USD. Pick when: your customers are US-based crypto-native, you want frictionless USD off-ramp via Coinbase, you need EVM contract interaction.
Ethereum L1: $1–10 per transfer depending on gas, 12-second blocks, the canonical layer for institutional counterparties. Pick when: payout size is $10k+ (so the gas is rounding error), the recipient is a custodian (Fireblocks, BitGo) that prefers L1, you need maximum settlement assurance.
Polygon: ~$0.01 per transfer, 2-second blocks, EVM, large emerging-markets footprint. Pick when: your recipients are in LATAM, India or Southeast Asia where Polygon dominates wallet share.
You are not locked in. Each merchant picks a default chain in settings; per-payout overrides are supported via the API. We handle the bridging cost transparently.