The future of crypto payments won't include on-ramps or bridges, Fun CEO says

The Age of On-Ramps is Dead

Alex Fine, CEO of Fun, a payments infrastructure company, believes that standalone crypto on-ramps and bridges will eventually disappear as platforms adopt unified payment infrastructure. According to Fine, users care about accessing applications, not converting fiat to crypto, making invisible payment flows the future of Web3. This shift mirrors traditional Web2 payments, where consumers rarely think about the infrastructure processing their transactions.

Fine pointed out that the current crypto payments ecosystem remains unnecessarily fragmented, with developers forced to stitch together different card processors, banking partners, crypto assets, blockchains, and bridges to create funding experiences. Instead of relying on individual payment rails, platforms should optimize around the end goal of getting users funded as quickly and seamlessly as possible, he says.

The company, which powers withdrawals for Polymarket and deposits into Aave's largest vaults, said it processes more than $3 billion in monthly volume. Fun is one of the companies building the infrastructure that enables deposits, withdrawals, and settlement behind the scenes. The firm has raised more than $75 million to date.

From Payment Rails to Funding Flows

Fine argued that today's crypto payments ecosystem remains unnecessarily fragmented, with developers forced to stitch together different card processors, banking partners, crypto assets, blockchains, and bridges to create funding experiences. Instead of relying on individual payment rails, platforms should optimize around the end goal of getting users funded as quickly and seamlessly as possible, he says.

In Web2, payments are highly fungible, Fine said. In Web3, they're much more complex because every payment method behaves differently. Teams keep rebuilding the same infrastructure over and over again instead of building unified optimized funding flows.

The Evolution of Payments

Fine pointed to signs that standalone on-ramp providers and bridge interfaces are already losing prominence as more applications integrate payments directly into their own products. Rather than sending users to external services, platforms are increasingly embedding native payment experiences, allowing customers to reuse saved payment credentials and complete transactions in a single click.

The evolution also extends to fraud and risk management, Fine said. Instead of applying identical checks to every transaction, payment systems should adapt based on a user's history and behavior. Longstanding customers with significant balances, for example, should face a different experience than first-time users, allowing platforms to maximize funding while managing risk more efficiently.