Fiat-to-crypto onramp aggregators are gaining traction as the go-to solution for platforms that want to reduce integration time and provide a more seamless onboarding experience for their customers.

As they grow in popularity, however, so do the myths surrounding their performance, pricing and general effectiveness. 

In this article, we’ll debunk the most common ones we’ve seen.

1. Aggregators result in higher fees for end users

By definition, this is false.

When using a single onramp, platforms lock their customers into restrictive fee regimes – where they’re at the mercy of whatever conversion rates, network fees and other costs the onramp chooses to leverage. The ‘fixed fee’ quoted by your onramp provider doesn’t account for these.

An aggregator, on the other hand, gives your customers much more flexibility. Based on their payment method, fiat currency and desired crypto, it can calculate (in real time) which onramp is most competitive on fees.

What’s more, an aggregator can typically negotiate lower rates than a single platform ever could: as Onramper generates high volumes and a good negotiating position with partners, we can ensure that no fees are added on top of the onramp’s.

In short: aggregation almost always secures lower fees for your customers.

2. Aggregators create compliance and security risk

What if one of the aggregator’s supported onramps suffers a security breach or fails to meet an acceptable level of regulatory compliance?

This is a valid concern. Inevitably, some onramps will be less secure and less compliant than others. In a worst-case scenario, you could be facilitating a transaction for bad actors via your platform.

But this isn’t an aggregator problem: it’s an onramp one. And a competent aggregator won’t add onramps without performing extensive due diligence beforehand — just as you wouldn’t. Even then, most integrations will allow you to enable/disable onramps based on your own risk model.

In the event of an unforeseeable security breach, onramp failure, or onramp default, an aggregator is actually beneficial: it won’t leave you stuck with a broken onboarding solution. At any given moment, your customers have several fallback options ready to go.

3. Aggregators are more difficult to integrate

Incredibly wrong. However, it’s something we’ve heard before, so it’s worth addressing.

One of the strongest value propositions for aggregators is their ease of integration. Instead of integrating, maintaining and juggling several onramps, businesses like yours can free up massive amounts of time and resources with a single solution.

Setup time varies. But, with Onramper, you can harness the power of a vast ecosystem of onramps with just eight lines of code (yes, really). If that’s not easy enough, you can rest assured that you’ll never need to troubleshoot or maintain onramps again — we handle all of that so you can focus on what you do best.

4. Aggregators offer an inferior user experience than an onramp

Not necessarily. At its core, an aggregator is a matching engine that automatically points your customers towards the correct onramp. 

Since it usually taps into onramps’ APIs, an aggregator rarely requires the user to take a different course of action than if they were buying via a regular onramping widget. 

At worst, some performance friction could arise if the matching engine was slow. But that’s not an issue for the top aggregators. Our own dynamic transaction routing system crunches over 70 factors to near-instantly connect customers with their perfect onramp.

On the surface, this process is so seamless that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a regular, single onramping widget. 

If anything, Onramper’s aggregator actually improves the user experience: low-KYC routing offers up the solution with minimal KYC required, and returning-user routing directs users to onramps they’ve previously used successfully.

5. Aggregators lack transparency

It may be true for some, but not for all. And certainly not for Onramper.

In fact, on the fee front, our stack is far more transparent than a single onramp’s. Instead of selecting a route based on quotes provided by onramps, we select it based on the amount of crypto received. In short, this ensures that users always get the best bang for their buck — without getting stung by the hidden costs that single onramps usually incur. 

As for general transparency around onramping data? We make sure our customers have unmatched oversight, across the entire ecosystem, of how well each onramp is performing (thanks to the Onramper Terminal).

6. Aggregators don't work if you already have an onramping partner

Again, it may be true for some. But, personally, we love it when our customers come to us with established relationships. In fact, we’ve optimized the platform for it.

With Onramper, you can directly import your existing API keys. Via the Onramper Terminal, you can even compare their rates against ones from your new suite of onramps — ensuring that, no matter what, your users will always get the best rates.

Making the switch from a single onramp to an aggregator can be daunting. But it doesn't have to be. In just eight lines of code, you can integrate Onramper to immediately start boosting your success rates. Here's how.