It’s Time To Forget About ‘Banking The Unbanked’ And Focus On The Real Issue: Crypto’s High Barriers Of Entry

When talking about mass crypto adoption, the media often focus on utility for existing holders – fast cross-border transfers, high DeFi yields, easy borrowing, and so forth. However, they forget the major issue that can offset the advantages: the fiat-crypto barrier, which prevents crypto from solving real-world issues. Luckily, platforms like Exscudo already offer efficient solutions for a smooth fiat-crypto flow.

No, El Salvador will not bring on mass adoption

Mass adoption has become the Holy Grail of the blockchain industry– and every major piece of positive news is hailed as the ultimate sign of its arrival. Last year, we had El Salvador making Bitcoin legal tender, PayPal enabling BTC purchases, and celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Steve Aoki becoming NFT collectors. Also, the number of crypto holders worldwide has at least quadrupled to reach 300 million.

Blockchain enthusiasts name many reasons why the number of crypto users should skyrocket soon:

1. Crypto can be transferred in seconds to any country with minimal fees;
2. Decentralized banking services (such as liquidity mining and lending) are available in regions where traditional banks offer poor coverage (such as Africa);
3. More countries will follow El Salvador’s example, so their residents will enter crypto more or less automatically;
4. People will get disillusioned about USD and other fiat currencies because of high inflation and zero interest rates, and so on.

However, while a 100% increase in the number of crypto holders is definitely something to celebrate, 300 million is still just 1.5% of the 2.5 billion Visa cardholders. Real mass adoption implies far higher numbers – and actual use for everyday payments, not just investments. Leading payment apps and e-wallets could be a good benchmark: for example, Alipay with its 1.3 billion users.

What stops crypto from getting to those levels? According to the analysts at Exscudo, which provides crypto-fiat solutions for the B2C and B2B market, the real problem is the high barrier – in terms of both complexity and costs – that fiat users face when entering crypto.

The odyssey of a first-time crypto user

Put yourself in the shoes of someone buying cryptocurrency for the first time. On every step, you’ll encounter new complications:

1. Where to buy: you have to pick between exchanges, P2P services like LocalBitcoins, or exchangers and wallets like CoinBase and BitPanda.
2. How to buy: most platforms accept only credit cards but not e-wallets or regional payment systems.
3. Fees: the commission on buying crypto with a card can reach 8% and is often hidden in the exchange rate.
4. Choosing the currency: first-timers often buy Bitcoin or Ethereum – only to discover that the gas fees are very high, making them unsuitable for payments for goods and purchases.
5. Wallet: most wallets support some cryptocurrencies but not others: for example, MetaMask is good for Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, and BSC with all their tokens – but not for BTC or Solana.
6. Non-custodial vs. exchange wallet: storing all of one’s crypto in an exchange wallet may seem like a good solution, but you’ll soon find out that exchanges often block deposits and withdrawals for various assets. For example, Binance is notorious for blocking SOL withdrawals.
7. Low availability of crypto cards: being able to load your crypto balance onto a debit card is a very attractive idea, but most crypto cards are issued only to EU or US residents.

With so many barriers and hidden costs, it’s not surprising that regular fiat users often abandon the idea on the first try. What the industry needs right now is not romantic projects of ‘banking for the unbanked’ but practical, easy-to-use solutions that make the transition from fiat to crypto and back seamless. Here is a comment from an executive at Exscudo :

"The future of digital wallets is currency-agnostic. And I don’t just mean fiat or cryptocurrencies separately: you should be able to hold both in a single wallet, and you shouldn’t have to waste any time or money converting one into another. The wallets of the future will simply hold Money, and it will transform and self-convert as needed depending on where you are and what sort of transaction you need to do.

That’s what we have built: a wallet that you can top up in fiat or crypto, using any system you like, and where you can hold over 60 crypto and fiat currencies, converting them in seconds at the best market rates. The ultimate vision is to support all the money in the world – over 200 fiat currencies, thousands of crypto tokens, and hundreds of e-wallets and regional payment systems."

Groundbreaking solutions that smash the crypto-fiat divide

Indeed, what Exscudo has achieved in the 4.5 years since the ICO is impressive. The FinTap wallet already supports 10 ways to deposit and withdraw fiat, including MasterCard, SEPA transfers for European residents, and even PayPal. Apart from USD, EUR, and RUB, FinTap, features 50+ popular cryptocurrencies, all easily convertible into fiat.

Exscudo’s Exchange Core, built completely in-house, is integrated with multiple OTC brokers and liquidity providers and automatically finds the best conversion rate for over 600 currency swap pairs. This creates a very smooth flow from depositing fiat to buying the token one needs – with no hidden fees or delays.

Moreover, the wallet features a secure blockchain messenger with build-in money transfers. In fact, many users praise the messenger as the stand-out feature that separates FinTap from other crypto wallets.

On the B2B side of things, Exscudo offers MultiAcquiring, an all-in-one payment gateway for online and offline merchants. While there are many crypto payment providers in the market, Exscudo is one of the very few to support both crypto and fiat payments within the same gateway. Customers can choose any payment method they like (be it Bitcoin, card, or something else), and the merchant can decide how they prefer the payment to be credited; conversion happens automatically behind the scenes.

Just like with FinTap, MultiAcquiring will eventually support hundreds of ways to pay, becoming the first truly universal gateway. As put by an Exscudo representative, FinTap and MultiAcquring form ‘a seamless infrastructure for working with all forms of money that exist in the world’.

Exscudo already has its own blockchain, EON, which enables almost zero-fee transfers within the networks for all currencies. The next step in the company’s roadmap is the IDO of its new FTP token, planned for late Q1-Q2 2022.

By now it’s clear that the example of individual countries or companies, such as El Salvador or PayPal, will not bring on mass adoption. Fiat users need easy, low-cost tools to enter crypto - and wallet apps to manage fiat and cryptocurrencies within the same interface. With platforms like Exscudo, which break through the crypto-fiat divide to create a universal digital currency, this vision can finally become reality.