Zota (Zotapay) review: products, technology, pricing (2026)

Zota, which traded as Zotapay until a rebrand announced on 21 December 2023, is a payment technology provider that links online merchants in developed markets with local payment methods and payment institutions in emerging markets. It does this through a proprietary gateway called Metagate and a customisable hosted cashier page.

Its published industry list includes forex, CFD and spread betting firms as well as casino, lottery and sports betting operators, which is why the company is often mentioned in broker and gaming payment discussions. A cashier, in this context, is the hosted page where a customer chooses how to deposit; our guide to what a payment cashier is explains the idea.

At a glance

How the platform works

Zota describes itself as a marketplace for payments: merchants integrate once and Zota supplies access to alternative and local payment methods, with settlement in local currencies. The About page frames this as "one application, one integration", where new markets, methods or currencies are added without a new build.

The developer pages describe three integration routes. The first is a hosted PCI-compliant payment page, the cashier, which detects the customer's country and shows relevant methods in local currency and language. The second is a server-to-server model for merchants that are themselves validated for PCI compliance. The third is a set of plugins for WooCommerce, Magento and PrestaShop. In a typical cashier flow the customer picks a method and is redirected to their bank to approve. Zota's order types include sales (deposits), payouts, reversals (refunds) and chargebacks.

Metagate itself is presented as a gateway that runs the cashier, API integration and payouts through a portal. Zota states that its checkout complies with PCI DSS and ISO 27001, and it lists PCI certification (2021) and ISO 27001 (2020) in its company history. The pages do not explain how transactions are routed between providers, so it is better read as a gateway plus aggregator than as a full orchestration layer; our guide on cashier versus payment orchestration draws the distinction.

Products

Payment methods and smart cashier

Zota says it works with more than 1,000 payment institutions globally, holds balances in over 50 currencies and operates in 150+ countries, adding 15+ countries a year (About page, 3 Nov 2026). It reports a 30% increase in users engaging with its smart cashier and a 70% increase in approval ratio, without describing the baseline or period, so these are best treated as marketing figures. Regions listed include Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, China, Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, the CIS and Europe.

Payouts

Zota's payout product covers bank accounts, e-wallets and mobile wallets, and refunds to the card used for the original deposit. Merchants can upload batch files through a Payout Manager or send real-time payout requests by API. Full, partial and multiple refunds are handled through Metagate. The payout page gives no country list, fee or timing.

Fraud prevention

According to Zota's fraud page, risk filters are personalised by region, processing history and protection needs, and transactions are checked against blacklists and open-source negative databases. Authentication options listed include time-based one-time passwords, SMS and push OTPs, 3D Secure and address verification. A dedicated risk team handles disputes. Our 3D Secure explainer covers the card step.

Crypto processing

A February 2024 article (updated July 2024) describes accepting fifteen digital currencies at checkout with automatic conversion into the merchant's chosen fiat currency. The company history page lists a crypto processing solution called MetaBlocks, launched in 2024.

Developer experience and integrations

Zota runs a developers portal with API documentation, a request form for API access, a signature generator for testing request signing and a transaction report tool. It offers a RESTful HTTP API with a Deposit API and a Payout API, both with real-time event updates, plus SDKs and open-source e-commerce plugins. The portal pages reviewed do not mention a sandbox, so prospective integrators may want to ask about test environments. Authentication details are also not described on the introduction page.

Payment methods, currencies and coverage

The industries page lists supported sectors including travel, e-commerce, digital goods, financial services (forex, CFDs, commodities trading, spread betting, gold and insurance, among others), retail and games (casino, lottery, eGames and sports betting). It also lists prohibited sectors, including binary options and money exchange in financial services, among others. Zota's pages do not list individual payment methods in the sections reviewed. Readers interested in merchants in these sectors can see our guide to high-risk merchant accounts.

Pricing model

Zota does not publish pricing on the pages reviewed, and none of the product pages give fees or settlement timings (as of 3 November 2026).

Recent launches

Zota's own history page is the main dated source and the company blog posts reviewed were published earlier. Dated items listed there are:

The page also lists planned items for 2026 and 2027, including banking infrastructure, a Visa acquiring licence and agent-based payment solutions. These are stated plans, not announced launches.

Regulation in brief

Zota's history page states that the company holds a Hong Kong money service operator licence (listed under 2020), an authorised electronic money institution licence from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (2022) and a Singapore licence under the Payment Services Act (2025). The About page itself makes no licence statement, so these are company-stated and worth verifying on the FCA Financial Services Register and the relevant regulators' lists, as described in our guide to checking a licence. See Zota's history page.

Who it tends to suit

Zota may suit merchants in sectors such as forex, gaming or digital goods that want local-method acceptance and payouts in emerging markets through one integration. Brokers and gaming operators comparing cashier-style providers can look at Praxis, BridgerPay and Corefy. Anyone considering CFD or forex services themselves should be aware that these products carry a high risk of losing money; this page covers the payment technology only. The gateways hub lists related profiles.