“When evaluating a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp, three things matter” — Q&A with Uphold

cointelegraph.com:

Although the crypto market is growing and evolving, and market players boast various clever payment solutions, there is still ample room for improvement toward broader Web3 adoption. Until last year, decentralized finance (DeFi) constituted a relatively small part of the business world, with many Web3 companies now integrating crypto rails into their business models. Today, the DeFi sector holds over 14,000 decentralized applications (DApps), 51 chains and over 28,000 NFT collections, according to DappRadar. This number doesn’t even consider the companies that gravitate around this ecosystem and have financial operations in crypto to support native Web3 companies.

Since traditional banks are in the business of minimizing risks to avoid sanctions and crypto is volatile, they sometimes refuse to open accounts to Web3 companies. At the same time, the latter requires financial solutions beyond those that financial institutions are able to provide.

To address this problem, Uphold, a digital multi-asset platform, developed its new financial tool Topper, which can help take care of payment transactions and offers a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp. In this interview, Robin O’Connell, CEO of enterprise at Uphold, shared more details about Uphold’s solutions for Web3 companies and discussed the challenges that hinder the adoption of Web3 payments.

Cointelegraph: Uphold offers its consumers a full range of financial products and services — can you tell us what you provide to businesses?

Robin O’Connell: One of the great things about the Uphold platform is that the core components can be “mixed and matched” to serve consumers, businesses and institutional partners. On the business side, we offer everything from simple business accounts for