My user has multiple onramps available. I should automatically point them towards the one that offers the lowest fees.

On the surface, this is a great decision. It makes perfect sense to want to provide your users with the lowest fees, as it results in more crypto received.

In practice, though? The transactions fail the majority of the time. And, even when they do succeed, the fees aren’t what you think. 

What’s up with onramp fees?

The top providers offer some very attractive percentages when it comes to their fees. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find out that these figures only refer to the onramp’s cut. 

In other words, there are other costs involved. Our recent report identified the culprits as conversion rates, bid-ask spreads and network fees. 

These aren’t negligible, either: when we conducted a $200 USD → BTC swap on six different onramps, the crypto received varied by over 10% from solution to solution.

In short: price quotes are getting spoofed across the board. If lowering fees is your utmost priority, benchmark based on the crypto your users receive.

The critical flaw in fee-based routing

Let’s assume that fee-based routing does work as intended, and that it consistently matches your users with the cheapest onramp. 

There’s still an excellent chance that this onramp isn’t actually able to complete the transaction. Owing to a range of factors, a given onramp is a poor fit for the majority of users. For instance, some solutions might be optimized only to cater to a limited European audience, while others may only be appropriate for a handful of Asian countries.

Even then, that’s a gross oversimplification. Transaction success hinges on over 70 factors, ranging from user location to their desired currency pair. With so much happening under the hood, transaction failure is basically a coin flip away when you don’t optimize your routing practices.

A strategy based on finding the lowest fees alone fails to take these factors into account — which is why you should consider the alternatives.

Which onramp routing strategy is best?

No method reigns supreme, though a handful stand out. In all cases, the more onramps available, the more effective your routing efforts can be:

• It means more options to point your users towards

• It means more sources to learn from and improve on the data collected

We advise that players in this space aim to aggregate at least 10-15 onramps. That way, you’ll have ample global coverage and plenty of fallback options should a single onramp go offline.

With that in mind, here are our top picks, based on over two years of onramping insights. 

Success-based routing

This logic does what it says on the tin: it routes your users towards the onramp most likely to ensure transaction success. 

Our engine does so by learning from previous transactions and matching users with onramps that have been successful for historical users matching their profile.

Return-user routing

Success-based routing is fantastic out of the box, but you’ll soon want to stack more precise routing rules on top of it to really push for high success rates.

Return-user routing doesn’t just make an informed decision based on industry-wide data. It actually recognizes the user if they’ve completed a transaction previously, and recommends the onramp they used.

Low-KYC routing 

Know Your Customer regulations are in place for good reason — but the flows designed to identify users can be cumbersome and, often, needlessly complex.

With low-KYC routing, users are matched with the route that requires as little verification as possible for their desired transaction. This method is particularly effective, as KYC complications majorly impact success rates.

Route smarter with Onramper

Since our inception, we’ve made it our mission to create an onramping machine living up to the promise of the crypto revolution. That means a consistent fiat → crypto experience for all users, regardless of their location.

Time and again, success-based routing (paired with other logic) delivers phenomenal results for our clients and their users. Whether you’re just starting out and prefer a fully managed solution, or you’ve already got an in-house aggregator and want to expand your offering, our suite has you covered.

→ Download our latest success rate case study