TLDR: Crypto is global but payments are local. The fiat-to-crypto onramp experience for most wallets and dApps is poor with extremely high costs, hidden fees and low transaction success rates. Poor onramp conversion due to lack of payment methods or KYC using local IDs leads to up to 70% loss of customers. Web3Auth, a leading Wallet-as-a-Service (WAAS) provider is partnering with Pokoapp.xyz to provide its onramp aggregator to more than 10M monthly active wallets.
Through our partnership with Poko, Web3Auth wants to remove technical barriers to digital ownership and make web3 accessible to all of our users. We aim to provide a one-stop-shop for all onramps, ensuring the lowest net price for users; high coverage of tokens, protocols, and payment methods; and a smoother journey into web3 for those who have struggled to onramp successfully. In this body, we’ll delve deeper into the benefits of our collaboration and how it will revolutionize the web3 wallet experience.
Onramping for wallets — low transaction success rates, high costs, and poor local payment coverage
Fiat-to-crypto onramping is critical in making web3 accessible but is not without challenges. Card-based fiat onramping suffers from high costs and failure rates. Transaction success rates for many onramps are less than 30%, costs are opaque and high, and local payment options are often unavailable.
When someone tries to use their credit or debit card to buy cryptocurrencies, they often face high transaction fees that could add up quickly, making the process expensive. But expensive costs for purchasing crypto don’t mean the users will receive what they’re paying for. In emerging markets where card penetration rates are lower than 30%, onramping through Visa and Mastercard rails results in at least 70% transaction failure rates.
Credit card adoption and usage rates in Latin America, India, and Southeast Asia regions are low. A few reasons leading to those consequences are the region’s cash-based culture, reliance on alternative payment methods (APMs), lack of digital infrastructure, high fees for card payments, limited local merchant acceptance, and local regulatory restrictions around payments using cards. However, global onramp providers tend to standardize the card payment methods across countries. This makes it frustrating for users who are more familiar with transacting through bank transfer or scanning QR codes from their e-wallets (i.e. GrabPay, Momo).
Overall, these challenges have been limiting the accessibility and adoption of web3 to people in certain regions. Our partnership with Poko will change this for our 9M+ monthly active wallets.
Changing in-wallet onramping experience for our 9M+ wallet users
Both Web3Auth and Poko share the goal of improving the wallet experience to make web3 accessible to everyone. Web3Auth has mainstreamed a simple, non-custodial authentication infrastructure that enables web3 wallets and applications to provide seamless social logins for the end-users. Pokoapp.xyz (“Poko”) empowers web3 dApps, wallets, and games with bank-like superpowers. Its Onramp Aggregator connects high-performing local onramps, local payment methods and local Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures to wallets with global users. This enables more than 70% of customers failing to onramp successfully to have a smoother journey into web3.
One integration for all onramps
Web3Auth and Poko work together to remove technical barriers to digital ownership. Instead of testing and integrating 20+ onramps to cover key web3 markets well, Web3Auth works with Poko to enable its enterprise customers to turn on any or all onramps with the push of a button. Multiple onramps prevent business disruption if certain onramps become unavailable.
Every time lowest price provision to users
Web3Auth focuses on enabling simple and secure access to digital assets. Part of that would inevitably mean integrating with a few different onramp partners. However, onramping costs are often opaque, expensive, and dynamic. By ensuring users always get the lowest net price among all available onramps for their currency, token, and payment method, users can often save up to 60% in onramp costs. This encourages users to onramp on their wallet, instead of searching for alternative onramps to get a better rate.
High coverage of tokens, protocols, and payment methods
Web3Auth and Poko share the vision of an accessible web3 for all users. By incorporating global, regional, and especially local onramps, we are able to bring the widest coverage of tokens, protocols, and payment methods. We also help tokens connect with onramps to increase coverage.
Future roadmap
By offering an aggregator for all onramps, the lowest net price for users, and high coverage of payment methods, we are making it easier than ever for users to access digital assets. Our collaboration is a step forward in our shared vision of an accessible web3 for all users. Web3Auth continues to build cutting-edge wallet capabilities while Poko continues to build other payment solutions to connect web3 dApps and wallets to fiat payment rails. We are excited about the future of web3 and the role our partnership will play in making it more attainable for everyone.
