With Integrated Off-Ramps, We Can Finally Say Goodbye To Long Crypto Cash-Out Delays

The post With Integrated Off-Ramps, We Can Finally Say Goodbye To Long Crypto Cash-Out Delays appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News

Cryptocurrency has a reputation for being a bit too technical, especially for someone who’s never used digital assets before. And it’s fair to say that for a number of years, that reputation was well-deserved, as even something as innocuous as buying and selling Bitcoin could be an extremely cumbersome task. 

Back in the early days, the only real way to buy and sell cryptocurrency was to go through an exchange platform of ill repute, such as Mt. Gox or BitcoinMarket.com. These platforms emerged as the primary gateways to crypto, acting as trading venues where people could deposit fiat currency to credit their account, and then start buying and selling various different tokens to their hearts’ content. 

But doing this wasn’t easy, for these platforms were notoriously difficult to use, with their hard to understand user interfaces and limited payment options making them inaccessible to those with limited technical skills. And until more reputable platforms like Binance and Coinbase emerged, they were also downright risky. Because many exchanges were unregulated, you could never be sure that your funds were entirely safe when buying and selling crypto. And although depositing funds was usually fast, users would often face endless delays when it came to cashing out any profits. 

The Calamity Of Old-Skool Crypto Cash-outs

The challenge of crypto cash-outs in particular stems from the fact that many banks were not particularly enthusiastic about being associated with dodgy crypto exchanges. Not only are these platforms viewed as risky, but cryptocurrencies themselves are also viewed as a haven for cybercriminals, scammers and other suspicious types looking to launder the proceeds of their illicit activities. 

As highly regulated platforms with a duty to protect their customers, banks often felt compelled to carefully scrutinize any transactions involving cryptocurrency, leading to transfers being frozen for days on end, and sometimes even rejected. Moreover, many banks took the safer option of refusing to deal with crypto exchange platforms at all, prohibiting their users from cashing out their digital assets altogether. 

This sad state of affairs meant that crypto users became accustomed to long delays when trying to cash out into fiat. The most common challenges with crypto cash-outs were the lengthy processing times, with most exchanges taking several business days to transfer user’s funds to their bank accounts, causing major frustration for consumers who were used to seamless and instantaneous transactions. 

Cashing out also came at a very high cost, with substantial fees being charged on each withdrawal as a result of multiple intermediaries taking their cut. Another major source of ire was the limited payment and payout options available. With many banks rejecting crypto payments altogether, users in some countries would often find themselves having to open a new bank account just to be able to access digital assets. 

In a nutshell, cashing out of crypto was an arduous, time consuming and extremely complex process, leading to lots of frustration as users waited nervously, hoping their funds would arrive. These issues would discourage users from cashing out very often, and in some cases it’s likely that people avoided buying and selling crypto altogether. 

Moving Beyond Exchanges With On-Ramps

Crypto is, of course, meant to overcome all of these problems associated with banks, but the paradox is that it can only do this if the traditional financial system plays nicely with it. After all, the vast majority of the world’s money and value remains ensconced within traditional financial systems. This capital needs a reliable “bridge” to the crypto world, so users are given the confidence to transition to this newer system of money. 

Fortunately, the days when crypto users had to rely on dodgy exchange platforms are now firmly rooted in history, for a new kind of gateway has emerged. They’ve come to be known as crypto “on-ramps” and “off-ramps”, and they’re increasingly being integrated directly with user’s wallets, bypassing the exchange platforms altogether. 

The most popular crypto on-ramps provide much simpler user interfaces than what we’ve become accustomed to with crypto exchanges. Rather than confusing users with dozens of crypto price charts and lists of hundreds of obscure tokens, most crypto on- and off-ramps look more like modern banking apps, with sleek drop-down menus and clear instructions making them easy for anyone to navigate. 

These on-ramps are much more focused on fiat integration than traditional exchange platforms, and have put a lot of effort into being regulatory compliant, so banks have the confidence to engage with them. As a result, they can offer a much more rapid and straightforward cash-in and cash-out experience than even the most trusted exchange. 

Crypto-To-Fiat Made Easy

One of the best examples of this is the cash-out experience in Venga’s Web3 superapp, which recently debuted a Venga Euro Accounts feature to enable instantaneous crypto-to-euro and euro-to-crypto transactions for any user. 

Venga is one of Europe’s fastest-growing crypto wallets, focused on making Web3 a much more consumer-friendly place. It provides a clean and simple UI for users to view their digital asset holdings at a glance, an integrated swap mechanism for exchanging one crypto for another, plus staking and other DeFi features for users to explore opportunities for investing their crypto. 

One of its standout features is its seamless on- and off-ramps, enabled by Venga Euro Accounts. Crucially, the app supports SEPA Instant Bank Transfers, allowing users to deposit euros from hundreds of European bank accounts into their Venga wallet in seconds. It means they can instantly access the fiat they transfer to their wallet, and set about buying crypto straight away, without needing to wait for the funds to be cleared. 

When it comes to cashing out, the experience is just the same. Users can swap their crypto for euros instantly, directly within the app, and then select their named European IBAN to instantly withdraw those fiat funds into their linked bank account. Because the user is sending their funds to themself, and they’ve already been pre-approved, it means Venga can do this instantly, without any delays. So the days of frozen transfers, possible hold ups and rejected transactions are truly a thing of the past. Users just move their funds into and out of crypto in seconds, without any hold ups. 

There are other examples of seamless crypto on- and off-ramps too. For instance, Transak’s integration with Visa Direct is a gamechanger, enabling users to convert crypto funds held in more than 350 popular digital wallets to the local currency of more than 145 countries. According to Transak, it can transfer funds to the average user’s bank account in less than 30 minutes. Maybe not instant, but it’s fast.

In both cases, another notable benefit is that these services enable consumers to maintain full custody of their crypto, with no need to temporarily move their funds to a centralized exchange platform for the purposes of cashing out. So they’re much lower risk.

Similar services exist that cater strictly to Web3 businesses, enabling DeFi applications and blockchain games to offer an instant cash-out experience to their users. One of the most popular is Yellow Card’s Payment API, which can be integrated within any dApp. It supports multiple payment and payout options, including bank transfers and mobile payment platforms such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. All developers have to do is integrate the API by pasting a few lines of code, and they’ll be able to support the entire onboarding and offboarding process for crypto users directly within their dApps, further simplifying the crypto journey. 

Crypto Moves Into Cruise Control

These innovations are being driven by the desire for greater speed, more efficiency and increased accessibility among crypto users. As the crypto industry matures, the clunky exchange platforms and their notoriously slow and inefficient fiat gateways simply don’t cut it anymore. In a world where people are used to their transactions being settled on the spot, crypto has no choice but to catch up.  

Crypto itself is built for this brave new world, promising speedy transactions along with the benefits of decentralization and a level of inclusiveness not seen in traditional finance. But the arduously slow and complex process of cashing out has seriously undermined these benefits. 

But with smoother crypto cash-outs now at our fingertips, that’s no longer the case. Crypto users can finally switch into cruise control, with the ability to move their funds exactly where they need them to be at any given moment.