When it comes to fiat on-ramping, UX is king. And while the UX of ramps providers certainly leave a lot to be desired - UI bugs, mediocre card conversion, clunky Know-Your-Customer processors - there’s also a lot that’s in control of the wallets that integrate these services.

Currency localization

Imagine going to a webstore where products are denominated in the wrong currency. You’ll think “this isn’t for me” and leave. 

Yet across the top cryptocurrency wallets, it is common for fiat currencies to not be localized. In fact, in most of the top 10 wallets in the space, I had to manually try and find a way to change the fiat currency. 

Some will argue that lack of localization of fiat currencies exists for privacy reasons. But users looking to buy crypto with fiat have to go through Know-Your-Customer (KYC) anyway, which includes filling in their physical address - and often even uploading their passport.

Of course, whether a ramp provider’s services can even be used depends on both fiat currency and country support, so providing a list of ramp options without localisation just results in sending users down dead paths. 

Default amounts

In a number of wallets - including leading wallets like MetaMask and Phantom - the default amount displayed is 0. Have you ever wanted to buy $0 worth of cryptocurrency? Probably not.

So how should we think about default amounts?

In my view, the best way to approach default amounts is to use a round number that is higher than the median purchase. 

This median changes from country to country, as the average transaction amount in Nigeria, for example, will be lower than in the United States. Therefore, the median should be determined on a country-by-country basis. 

The amount displayed should adjust depending on the fiat currency, as at the time of writing every dollar is worth 1577 Nigerian Naira (not a very round number).

Payment method choice 

Ask people from the Netherlands, India, Nigeria, the United States and the Philippines which payment methods they want to use to buy crypto, and each will give an entirely different answer. 

Yet, the majority of the top cryptocurrency wallets do not support most of the payment methods that will be mentioned.

Other wallets have created flows with ramp providers that support many APMs, without creating a “payment method” selector. This results in the user not being able to compare the difference in price between payment methods. 

In addition, any onramp provider that has more than 10 payment methods will be able to tell you how this quickly results in integrations becoming outdated, with the list of payment methods displayed to the user not reflecting what is actually supported (see below).

]Display integrations like Bitget / gate.io / Zerion / Old cakewallet flow]

Payment method localization

For those wallets that do have a range of local payment methods enabled, credit cards are often selected as the default option, despite cards having notoriously bad conversion rates when it comes to buying cryptocurrencies. 

Needless to say, it is important to localise payment methods and recommend the best payment methods to users (so important, in fact, that I’ve dedicated a separate article about it here). 

Closing thoughts

It is time for us to build flows users enjoy. Next week I will cover on-ramp selection in part 2 of this series. 

I invite everyone - client or not - to have OnRamper analyze your app. We’ll do a free analysis to identify the good, the bad, and the ugly. Schedule a call via the link above and reply with: "Please analyze my current setup."