Standalone crypto on-ramp providers and external bridge websites are set to disappear, according to Fun chief executive Alex Fine, who said users care about what they can do inside an app rather than the mechanics of turning fiat into crypto.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Fine said digital asset applications are moving toward unified payment systems that make on-chain money movement nearly invisible to the user. Instead of forcing people through separate deposit, bridging and conversion steps, the next generation of crypto apps will build payments directly into the product experience and hide the complexity of the underlying blockchain stack.
Fine says the on-ramp era is ending
“The on-ramp era is going to completely die, and the era of external bridge websites will die too,” Fine told CoinDesk. “Nobody wants to use a bridge for the sake of using a bridge. They want to use the application.”
He framed the shift as closer to how payments work in Web2, where consumers rarely think about the infrastructure processing a transaction. In his view, payments should recede into the background rather than remain a visible step users must manage on their own.
Fun sits behind payment flows for Polymarket and Aave
Fun is a payment infrastructure company that builds backend technology linking traditional payment systems with blockchain networks. Rather than operating a consumer exchange or wallet, it offers APIs that let fintech and crypto applications embed deposits, withdrawals, settlement and checkout directly into their products, abstracting the complexity of moving money across fiat, stablecoins and blockchains.
Fine’s comments come as prediction markets including Polymarket and Kalshi, as well as tokenized stock platforms, continue to attract more users and trading activity. Those apps are increasingly visible, but the deposit, withdrawal and settlement rails behind them often remain out of sight.
Fun said it powers 100% of deposits and withdrawals on Polymarket and supports deposit inflows into Aave’s largest vault. The company also said it processes more than $3 billion in transaction volume each month and has raised more than $75 million so far.
From fragmented payment rails to a unified flow of funds
Fine said today’s crypto payments ecosystem remains unnecessarily fragmented. Development teams often have to stitch together separate card processors, banking partners, crypto assets, blockchains and bridges just to create a deposit flow.
His argument is that platforms should stop optimizing around individual payment rails and focus instead on the end goal: getting funds to users as quickly and as smoothly as possible.
“In Web2, payments are highly interchangeable,” Fine said. “In Web3, they are much more complex, because every payment method behaves differently. Teams keep rebuilding the same infrastructure over and over instead of building one unified, optimized flow of funds.”
That leaves a number of existing crypto payment businesses exposed to obsolescence, in his view. Companies built around fiat-to-crypto conversion or moving assets between chains are solving intermediary steps that users were never interested in to begin with.
“People do not care about converting fiat into crypto,” Fine said. “They care about taking action inside the app. Conversion is simply something that has to happen.”
Embedded payment experiences are replacing external handoffs
Fine said standalone on-ramp providers and bridge interfaces are already losing ground as more applications integrate payments directly into their own products. Instead of pushing users out to third-party services, platforms are increasingly embedding native payment experiences that let customers reuse stored payment credentials and complete transactions with a single click.
He said the same logic extends to fraud controls and risk management. Rather than applying the same checks to every transaction, payment systems should adapt based on a user’s history and behavior. A long-time customer with a large balance should not face the same flow as a first-time user, allowing platforms to manage risk while maximizing deposits.
Prediction markets are still early, Fine says
Beyond payments, Fine said prediction markets and tokenized stocks remain two of crypto’s most promising growth areas, and both are still early in their adoption curves.
He estimated that prediction markets today have reached only “about 10%” of their eventual potential. As liquidity expands, he expects markets to open up for a growing number of niche events, increasing their usefulness as hedging tools.
“As liquidity expands, you’ll see millions of possible event contracts,” Fine said. “That ultimately makes these platforms more valuable.”