Buying crypto with fiat currency, especially the first time, can be a lengthy process, going back and forth with exchanges and enduring long KYC (know-your-customer) checks. The Apple Pay integration is supposed to make that process quicker, because the service is widely used among consumers, included by default on the tech giant’s devices.
Introduced in 2014, Apple Pay has now roughly 500 million active users, and in the U.S. it holds over 90% of the market share for contactless payments.
“What on-ramp products do, in general, is they allow you to bring fiat into crypto. And historically, this has been a painful process,” said Nemil Dalal, the head of Coinbase’s developer platform, in an interview with CoinDesk. “With Onramp, the idea is that in a matter of seconds, with a familiar wallet experience that 60 million Americans are already used to using Apple Pay, you can hook up your bank account, move money on-chain, and then go do whatever you want.”
According to Dalal, you can already buy crypto on Uniswap via Coinbase Onramp. A draft blog post from Coinbase mentions Moonshot, an app for buying memecoins like dogwifhat and Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER, that now takes cash deposits through Apple Pay.
Apple pay already has some KYC checks in place as it is connected to a user’s bank account. The Onramp team at Coinbase is therefore relying on Apple for some of their previous KYC procedures.
As part of the integration, users who buy the USDC stablecoin with Apple Pay through Coinbase Onramp will not have to pay any transaction fees.
Read more: Ledger, Coinbase Pay Integrate to Give Users Direct Access to Buy, Sell Crypto