The results

• Boosted success rates: by integrating Onramper and unlocking truly global coverage, Cake Wallet slashed its onramping dropouts.
• Less dev time wasted: goodbye to maintenance pains. Onramper handles everything so Cake Wallet can remain focused on its mission.
• Seamless integration: the Onramper widget’s deep customization options mean that it can perfectly mirror the Cake Wallet brand.

“The implementation phase was incredibly simple. Post-integration, we can rest easy knowing that another team of developers is always making improvements.”

Meet Cake Labs

With over a quarter of a million users since 2018, Cake Wallet is the passport to the crypto ecosystem for users in every corner of the world.

Its creator, Cake Labs, has a mission that many of us can get behind: building helpful cryptocurrency software focused on everyday use and solving common problems.

Unsurprisingly, offering up a solution for converting fiat into cryptocurrency was high on their list of priorities.

Their stack wasn’t delivering…

The Cake Wallet team quickly learned that a single onramp wouldn’t cut it — for a number of reasons. Ultimately, they wanted simplicity, reliability, low fees and a range of payment methods to ensure their users could onboard into crypto faster.

They implemented two fiat-to-crypto solutions. But these weren’t nearly enough, and the team didn’t have the time or resources to scale up their in-house aggregation efforts.

… until they integrated Onramper

With just eight lines of code to integrate, our widget was live on Cake Wallet in no time. On the surface, not much seemed to change — the integration’s customizability meant that it could seamlessly blend into the various themes that Cake Wallet offers its users.

Under the hood, though, it packs a punch: our cutting-edge transaction routing engine connects buyers with their perfect solution (from a lineup of over 15 onramps).

“Onramp product offerings are evolving constantly. Having a partner entirely focused on the goal of building a consistently excellent customer onboarding experience is key to us. We would not devote the same level of consistent effort to this experience on our own.”‍

Want results like these for your business? Let's talk.

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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.

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Considering integrating an onramp into your Web3 or crypto platform? That’s a smart decision.

By doing so, you remove a lot of friction for your customers. Instead of sending them away to figure out how to buy crypto on their own, you can offer an easy portal to convert fiat — right on your website.

With so many onramping options on the market, you may be wondering which is right for you. The short answer? It depends.

The longer answer is what we’re about to discuss.

What is a fiat onramp?

Let’s get our definition clear first. Technically, an onramp is any solution that allows a user to swap fiat currency for cryptocurrency. These range from in-person, local trades to leading centralized exchanges like Binance or Coinbase.

For our purposes, we’re talking about integrated solutions: widgets that live on your website, which enable users to pay for crypto with cards, bank transfers or other payment methods.

What are the best onramping solutions?

In a sea of offerings, several stand out — usually due to some combination of robust security, smooth UI/UX, decent coverage, and a range of supported payment methods and fiat/cryptocurrencies.

In no particular order, some of the top onramps today include:

• MoonPay
• Transak
• UTORG
• Itez
• Coinify
• Wyre
• Mercuryo
• Binance Connect
• Banxa
• Onramp Money

That’s quite a list, isn’t it? Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Each one will vary slightly in the regions it covers, as well as its fees and supported input/output currencies.

Wondering what’s right for your dApp, exchange or wallet? Here’s what you should consider:

Your customers’ location

The worlds of crypto and web3 may be global, but if you’re only using one onramp, you’ll need to choose which regions to optimize for. Unfortunately, none of these providers can offer global coverage.

Because of the complexities of converting fiat into crypto, onramps need to be selective in which fiat currencies and payment methods they focus on.

If you’re dealing exclusively with European users, a fiat onramp that specializes in European payment methods and SEPA transactions makes sense: Transak, Coinify or Indacoin are good examples of these.

Finding that the bulk of your customers are attempting to onboard in the U.S. with their debit cards? Wyre may be the solution for you. It’s licensed at both the state and federal level, and doesn’t require KYC for transactions under $1,000.

If your traffic hails from Southeast Asia, Simplex or XanPool may be superior, due to their wide support for the region’s local payment methods.

The fees

Location concerns aside, the fee conversation can’t be avoided. And, frustratingly, it’s not as simple as comparing whatever each onramp offers as a percentage: even with the same advertised fee, your customers will receive different outputs.

Why? Because of the hidden costs — which include things like conversion rates, spreads and network fees.

Consider a customer that wants to buy $1,000 in BTC. There are two onramps available to them:

• Onramp A has a 2% fee and a conversion rate of $21,000/BTC
• Onramp B has a 3% fee and a conversion rate of $20,000/BTC

Without knowing the conversion rate, we’d assume that Onramp A has the better deal. But the customer would only receive 0.0467 BTC, versus the 0.0485 BTC they’d receive if they used Onramp B.

In reality, Onramp A is ~3.7% more expensive!

Above all, think about success rates

Just because it’s the best onramp for most customers doesn’t mean it’s the best solution for them. Inevitably, some are going to get left behind — and not for the reason you think.

When a user begins their transaction, the onramp takes into account many factors (where they’re located, how they’re trying to pay, what currencies they’re interested in). Through some obscure, on-the-fly process, it makes a snap decision as to whether the swap can be completed.

The gold standard for measuring an onramp’s effectiveness is through its success rates: usually expressed as a percentage, this tells us how many of its transactions are actually completed. Spoiler alert: less than half of them are.

Again, that’s down to the sheer number of variables that differ from user to user — which leaves a lot of room for things to go wrong. But a single onramp, in isolation, just doesn’t have the scope to account for such vast differences. At best, it can refine its offering to focus on a tiny segment.

Fifteen onramps are better than one

It’s a frustrating dilemma. For any given user, there’s a perfect onramp. But it won’t always be the one you’ve set up.

Integrating several onramps isn’t really a viable option: maintenance alone would eat up a significant portion of your dev resources. What’s more, without a ‘smart’ routing system, your users would still need to trial-and-error their way through the available options.

Fortunately, you don’t need to concern yourself with the technical overheads. That’s what fiat onramp aggregators are for. Onramper, for instance, immediately makes over fifteen onramps available to wallets, dApps, exchanges, and other businesses who need to ensure their users can get access to crypto.

At its core is an industry-leading, proprietary routing engine that takes into account over 70 factors for each user. In real time, it can automatically pair them with the onramp most likely to ensure success — all while fetching the best fees.

As for integration and maintenance? You don’t need to worry about that. Find out how easy getting started is here, or hop on a call with us to discuss how Onramper can turbocharge your success rates.

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14 years ago, a nine-page document was published on The Cryptography Mailing List.

Penned by a mysterious entity we know only as Satoshi Nakamoto, it outlined the blueprint for a digital currency that required no banks, no middlemen, nor any centralized entity.

This digital currency — Bitcoin — launched a month later. And in that moment, the spark that would ignite a financial revolution was created.

Now, few people haven’t heard of cryptocurrency. Depending on who you ask, Bitcoin's a speculative asset. A handy way to pay online. A store of value. Or even the foundation for a parallel economic system.

Of course, the industry is much bigger than Bitcoin today. Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and a whole slew of other protocols make up an industry which, at the time of this writing, boasts a market capitalization of over one trillion US dollars.

But entering this exciting new paradigm isn’t exactly easy. The mainstream still faces a glaring issue: accessibility. A lack of user-friendly bridges into the ecosystem leaves many on the sidelines, eagerly awaiting an easier path to the wonderful world of cryptocurrency.

Enter the fiat-to-crypto onramp.

What is a crypto onramp?

Your customers want to buy crypto. But all they’ve got is a bank balance denominated in USD, EUR, GBP or one of those other boring, old-school currencies.

💡 Fiat is Latin for “it shall be.” This refers to the fact that the currencies we use hold value because the issuing government says so.

Swapping fiat currency for another fiat currency is easily done — most banks will do it for you. To go fiat-to-crypto, though, you’ll need a third-party service that takes your money and exchanges it for your cryptocurrency of choice. This is what we call a crypto onramp, and they come in many forms:

Bitcoin ATMs

You’d be forgiven for mistaking these for regular cash machines. You can typically find them in public spots, and the premise is simple: you feed them cash (either physically or by card), and they send BTC to an address of your choosing.

Centralized exchanges

By far the most popular onramps. Here, you create an account, submit KYC information (identity documents, facial verification and proof of address) before getting access to the crypto markets.

Depending on the venue, you can fund your account with fiat currency via bank transfers, card payments, and more. Kraken, Binance and Coinbase are all examples of centralized exchanges.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges

A peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange is an online venue, too, but it doesn’t work like its centralized counterpart. Rather, it connects buyers and sellers directly.  One party posts a listing (“I’d like to buy/sell BTC at a price of [price] per coin for [payment method]”), and the other can choose to accept it.

P2P exchanges generally have a wider variety of payment methods — after all, it’s up to the user what they want to accept, be it cash, gift vouchers, PayPal or bank transfers.

LocalBitcoins is a popular player in this category.

Integrated fiat onramps

It doesn’t roll off the tongue like some of the others, but don’t let that throw you off: these are particularly valuable for crypto businesses that want to reduce the hurdles for first-time users.

Consider, for example, a decentralized application (dApp). Since they run on crypto, their users need to come prepared. To a new user, that can be a bit daunting. Do you really want to tell them to:

1. Sign up for a centralized exchange
2. Wait for KYC approval
3. Deposit fiat
4. Figure out how to buy the right crypto
5. Set up MetaMask
6. Withdraw their crypto
7. And, only after all that, finally start using your app?

A third-party solution can strip out most of the headache with an integrated widget. Once they land on your site/wallet/exchange, users can just choose their input currency (fiat), their output currency (crypto), and click a button to check out as they would on an e-commerce store.

The third-party may require some additional information from them, but they’ll get it directly via the widget — ensuring that customers don’t get sidetracked on some laborious quest to purchase crypto.

For examples of this, look to services like MoonPay, Transak or Coinify.

What’s the best onramp solution?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It depends on the user’s goal (are they buying once? Buying regularly? Trading dozens of pairs?), their country, and their tolerance for fees.

Cards on the table: we have a slight bias towards the integrated solution — particularly for businesses. It’s true of any wallet, app or platform: once you’ve captured a user’s interest, your number-one priority is to onboard them as seamlessly as possible.

In sending prospects away, even for a brief period, you risk losing them altogether. The right onramp, neatly available on your own website, can really make a difference if you implement it right.

But why choose just one?

Onramper aggregates nine different crypto onramp providers to match your users with the one that will best work for them.

For your users, it means higher transaction success rates (wherever they are) and a streamlined portal into the crypto world.

For you? It’s a headache-free, plug-and-play add-on that instantly delivers greater value to your customers.

Let us do the heavy lifting, so you can focus on what you do best.

Book a call with our experts to find out how Onramper can turbocharge your success rates.

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We’re thrilled to announce our recent partnership with premier DeFi platform Sushi — a decentralized exchange where users can trustlessly swap between hundreds of tokens across dozens of networks.

By integrating the Onramper widget, Sushi immediately expanded its global reach. With one simple integration, they’ve added nine onramps to turbocharge the success rates of users’ fiat-to-crypto transactions — all while making sure they get the best exchange rates.

For users, it means less of the dreaded transaction failed messages. Which is a lot more common than you think: as unveiled in our recent Global Crypto Onramp Report, up to 50% of fiat-to-crypto swaps fail, even after identity verification.

Now, Sushi taps into an intelligent router that takes into account over 70 factors to calculate which onramp is most likely to ensure success. Its customers can now spend less time onboarding into the crypto ecosystem, and more time exploring all it has to offer.

"We are excited to partner with Onramper to provide our users with a better onramping experience,” said Jared Grey, Sushi’s CEO. “This integration will help us to achieve our goal of becoming the leading decentralized exchange in the market and we chose Onramper for the stability of their infrastructure and their one-of-a-kind orchestration service."

We’re delighted to be the provider of choice for such an exciting Web3 project. As you may know, our stack is designed to work with a vast range of crypto platforms — ranging from cutting-edge DeFi protocols and wallets to leading exchanges like BitMex.

Want to find out how Onramper can work for you? Book a call with our experts today.

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You’re a provider of the cryptocurrency space’s most critical infrastructure.

Maybe you run a digital wallet or exchange. Maybe you’ve launched a cutting-edge Ethereum dApp that’s racking up volume. Or maybe you’re pushing the boundaries on the latest and greatest DeFi, NFT or metaverse platform.

Wherever you land, you’re here because you want to provide your users with an easy, no-nonsense portal into crypto — so you can get them using your product faster.

An integrated fiat-to-crypto onramp is a fantastic choice. It’ll allow you to focus your resources where they count, without the added headaches of building a whole new stack and getting the right licenses.

All onramps are not created equal, however. Here’s what you need to consider.

Success rates

It’s a well-kept secret among fiat onramps, but transaction failure is alarmingly high across the board. The factors that can get in the way of a seamless fiat-to-crypto swap are numerous, ranging from KYC failures to poor UX.

We’re not talking about a handful of isolated incidents, either. Our recent Global Crypto Onramp Report, in collaboration with CoinTelegraph, identified that most fiat-to-crypto transactions fail — 50% after KYC.

It’s worth discussing this glaring issue with prospective partners. Every hurdle your users face is costing you business.

Alternatively, you may want to consider using an onramp aggregator — which intelligently routes to the onramp with the highest likelihood of success in real-time.

Reach

The magic of crypto is that it brings together individuals from all across the globe. There’s just the small matter of individuals actually getting crypto in the first place.

It’s impossible to recommend an onramp that caters to all users. After all, your Canadian users have very different payment options available than your Cambodian ones. What may work for identity/proof-of-address verification for your users in Ireland may not even be possible for those in India.

If you do cater to a truly global audience, you need a solution that accounts for these geographic differences. Integrating multiple onramps is an option, but it also drastically increases the work required from you to maintain them or replace them in case of downtime.

Make sure you understand where your users are coming from — and which solution(s) are best suited to them. Or, just integrate an aggregator, which gives you the reach of multiple onramps through a single extension.

Fees

The elephant in every crypto room.

As if navigating success rates and reach wasn’t enough, you’ll also need to be mindful of the fees your prospective onramp charges. Which is tricky in itself, because even two services that offer the same upfront fee will differ in the amount of cryptocurrency they dispense, owing to different conversion rates, spreads, and blockchain network fees.

You want to give users the best bang for their buck. But you should also recognize that fees are second to success rate — what good is a fee if the user can’t complete a transaction?

Aggregation: the best of all worlds

Ultimately, the best onramp for your users is the one that works. And, realistically, you’re not going to get consistent success from a single onramp.

It can be frustrating. Somewhere out there, the perfect bridge from fiat to crypto exists for a particular user. But if they use the wrong one, they might just give up and leave your platform.

Nobody wants that. Which is why we built Onramper — a comprehensive solution that matches your user with their perfect bridge, based on over 70 different factors.

We partner with several of the industry’s top fiat-to-crypto onramps (including Banxa, BTC Direct, and Coinify) so you don’t have to. Through a single, powerful widget, you’ll enjoy better coverage, lower fees, and less time integrating and maintaining partial solutions.

Want to find out how Onramper can work for you? Book a call with our experts today.

Today, we’re undertaking our biggest step yet in the movement towards unlocking crypto’s potential for the masses. The new, updated Onramper widget offers better performance, improved documentation, and is built on a brand new architecture that is based on a modern microservice design framework. We’re also excited to introduce a new visual universe across the website and widget, which is a product of extensive research and will delight both end users as well as technical and product teams at leading wallets, DEXs and CEXs.

Buy crypto with the new widget

New Fiat-Crypto Onramping Widget

Our widget has undergone a technical and visual (more on that later) upgrade. First and foremost, it leverages a completely new and improved architecture under the hood, optimizing performance, scalability, and easier maintenance. For you, this means reliable service, a smoother user experience, and more frequent product improvements in the future. You focus on your business while we focus on onramps.

Today we support over 95 fiat and 240+ crypto currencies, offer 35 local payment methods in more than 190 countries and work with 9 major onramps. Ahead of launching the new widget, we’ve conducted a series of tests and kept the end users front and centre. The widget’s new UI improvements take this into account and will make it easier to present the range of services in one concise look, thereby simplifying the trading or swapping experience and increasing your success rates.

Lastly, we’ve introduced - and will continue to improve - new and more robust documentation. The developer experience is the bridge between the financial infrastructure and wider crypto adoption, and we want to make it as easy as possible for your technical team to integrate and troubleshoot Onramper.

Check out the new API docs

New Logo, New Website, and Fresh Approach to Onramping

We are also beyond thrilled to be introducing a new logo and new colors to the Onramper website, widget, and documentation. The central element of the 360° new look is the flick of a switch.

This element rests on our beliefs that consistency is the foundation of trust and that usability and intuitiveness for the developer and end user experience are worth obsessing over. With a process as easy as flicking a switch and one of a kind global reach, Onramper brings seamlessness and flexibility to crypto transactions as well as onramp management.

Logotype

Drawing from the toggle, the O-switch avatar is simple, strong and instantly recognisable on all digital surfaces. We’ve opted for lowercase letters to convey the ease of integration that underpins our product (less than one hour) and to signal that crypto infrastructure doesn’t have to be complicated. Lowercase notwithstanding, in our communication with you, we will continue to spell Onramper the old way.

Motion

The focus on what happens within the transaction and flexibility have to be present in all parts of the design, and motion graphics are no exception. We also use the design DNA from the circle shape of the O-switch in all graphic assets, from UI assets and 3D graphics to functional icons. The graphic pattern visualizes the Onramper universe with all of its possibilities – a grid of opportunities always in flux, an ever changing element that adapts to your needs.

Colour

There is no shortage of blue in the crypto or finance universe. Selecting green was not just about differentiation, but also about determination. Our determination to further support our message that crypto services can be trustworthy, fresh, and innovative. This is where green as a primary color paired with black and white (plus secondary tech blue) comes in.

What’s Next for Onramper

Unlocking the potential of crypto for the masses remains our pursuit, and we’re committed to it more than ever. In 2023, we will continue this journey in a way that is unique to Onramper by focusing on building the best and most comprehensive onramp aggregation platform.

First, we will further expand our global reach. In the coming days and weeks, we will announce a series of onramps that focus on serving different parts of the world. With 35 local payment methods in 180+ countries and growing, further increasing localized support in the Middle East, Asia and building redundancies in other places is essential to give your business an edge.

Second, we will continue improving transaction success rates so you can see your volumes grow. With our dynamic transaction routing engine, on average, we increased transaction authorization rates by 70%. Introducing advanced routing capabilities will help further push this number up while providing your users with the best rates.

Third, we will simplify the end user experience. A three step fiat-crypto onramping widget was the start. We will continue to invest in user research, and we believe that we can make this experience even faster. We’ve dissected each of the hurdles preventing users from having a smooth experience and will be introducing massive improvements to each of those throughout the year.

The new widget and look and feel are just the start, and we look forward to sharing more news, features, and announcements with you soon. Thank you for being part of our journey!

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