The Best Crypto Experience Is the One Users Never See

Half of all attempts to buy cryptocurrency fail. Not because of market volatility or technical glitches, but because we can’t get past the front door. Research from Cointelegraph and Onramper shows that fiat-to-crypto transactions fail 50 percent of the time globally, and in some regions, abandonment reaches 90 percent. We’ve spent a decade building shinier wallets and splashier exchanges, yet somehow made the simplest step—actually buying crypto—harder than ever. 

While crypto promises to deliver frictionless global money, traditional financial systems continue to push back. Banks like Nationwide block credit-card crypto purchases outright, and Barclays followed suit. Meanwhile, payment networks add their own hurdles: Visa’s 2025 rules require special tracking codes for crypto transactions, ensuring extra scrutiny. The irony? Pay-by-bank rails clear at 99 percent success rates, while card-based crypto purchases struggle below 92 percent for crypto. The solution is staring us in the face—we’re just looking the wrong way.

We’re still building exchanges for the wrong audience

Most big crypto exchanges still look and act like trading floors, because that’s what they are. They’re built for professional investors seeking price discovery, liquidity and leverage—but for someone who just wants digital dollars to send home or hedge against inflation? Not so much. Regulators have flagged that some platforms even let everyday users borrow up to 125 times their initial investment, a level of risk that demonstrates that these exchanges were designed more for speculation than for practical use. For everyday users, it’s immediately clear these products weren’t built with them in mind. The latest rally underscored the point: ordinary retail traders barely showed up, while institutional investors and ETFs drove most of the buying, and for good reason.

Fintechs integrate crypto by making it invisible

The most successful growth stories don’t come from exchanges at all, but from fintech platforms where crypto is just another feature. Revolut crossed 50 million customers and more than doubled pre-tax profits in 2024, citing the rebound in crypto trading as a tailwind. Cash App integrated Bitcoin seamlessly and booked $2.73 billion in Bitcoin revenue in the first quarter of 2024, with $80 million in gross profit. Brazil’s Nubank signed up a million crypto users in its first month back in 2022. Today, one in four first-time buyers chooses USDC, often through apps they already use daily. No new apps, no new accounts, no specialized knowledge required. 

Even the payment giants have joined in. PayPal rolled out “Checkout with Crypto” at millions of merchants and later launched the PYUSD stablecoin across its ecosystem. Stripe reintroduced crypto payments with a simple model: accept USDC, settle in dollars and pay a 1.5 percent fee. For merchants, the process is turnkey. Crypto becomes just another payment option at checkout, with settlement still arriving in fiat. 

KYC doesn’t have to be a conversion graveyard

So where does the 50 percent failure rate come from? Much of it occurs during onboarding, where users abandon the process due to extensive Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. Exchanges often require passport uploads, proof of address and even video selfies. For someone trying to buy $20 work of crypto, that experience can feel wildly disproportionate. 

Fintechs solved this by leveraging the KYC already completed for traditional bank accounts. Cash App didn’t need new forms when it integrated Bitcoin; its users were already verified. Revolut and Nubank did the same. By removing duplicative verification, they cut abandonment dramatically. The lesson is simple. Remove the friction, and abandonment plummets. Make KYC invisible, and adoption climbs.

The API-first layer is the real unlock

Policy and speculation will always be part of the story, but the long-term growth engine depends on utility. And that utility will be delivered through familiar financial interfaces. When onboarding, payments and trust are already solved, adoption is no longer a decision and adding crypto becomes just another button. Consumers don’t need to understand blockchain to want cheaper remittances or a stable digital currency. Just as no one thinks about card networks when they tap to pay, they shouldn’t have to think about blockchains when they move money.

The infrastructure nobody sees is the infrastructure everybody needs

Stripe processes more than $1 trillion annually without users ever seeing its interface. Plaid connects 8,000 banks to apps, yet most people have never heard of it. Crypto needs this same invisible backbone. Companies like Paybis are building the essential infrastructure: white-label on/off ramps that integrate seamlessly into existing apps, simplified KYC that removes friction without compromising compliance and API-driven payment processing that converts fiat to crypto instantly. 

Imagine a Brazilian grocery app enabling USDC remittances with a drop-in on-ramp or low-code checkout, or a European neobank offering Bitcoin savings via an API without running a single node. In those cases, adoption doesn’t require a user to “choose crypto” at all. It simply happens because the technology is built into the systems they already trust. The future of crypto isn’t a shinier exchange or a more speculative token. It’s infrastructure that is so seamless, you never notice it’s there—until it’s everywhere.