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Crypto wallets used to have a relatively simple job of helping users store, send, and receive digital assets.
Today, wallets increasingly resemble financial platforms. Users can buy crypto, swap tokens, stake assets, spend stablecoins, and cash out, often without leaving the wallet.
So, how do wallets actually make money from an on-ramp?
Depending on how the commercial agreement is structured, a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp can become a direct source of transaction revenue while also increasing the amount of money users bring into the wallet.
Also Read: Why Wallets Are Now Becoming Banks (And How Stablecoins Enable That)
Wallets earn a partner fee, which is a percentage charged on the transaction amount and paid to the wallet rather than to the provider. You set it, and it is added on top of the provider's own fee.
With Transak the mechanics are as follows:
What a user actually receives depends on four variables. Knowing which ones you control is the difference between pricing deliberately and guessing.
To calculate the total amount of cryptocurrency, C, for the specified amount of fiat currency, F, we calculate the total fees, deduct them from the fiat amount then convert the remainder to cryptocurrency at the market rate. The formula for this is as follows: C = (F - (F x P% + F x T% + N)) x R
Also Read: Whitelabel API vs Widget: Which Crypto On-Ramp Integration Should Your Wallet Choose?
Our documentation works through a real example. A £1,000 GBP bank transfer with a 1% partner fee, a 0.99% Transak fee, and a £0.59 network fee produces £20.49 in total fees, leaving £979.51 to convert.
Your share of that is £10.
Scaled across plausible monthly volumes, at a few fee levels:
| Monthly on-ramp volume | 0.5% fee | 1% fee | 2% fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| £100,000 | £500 | £1,000 | £2,000 |
| £500,000 | £2,500 | £5,000 | £10,000 |
| £2,000,000 | £10,000 | £20,000 | £40,000 |
| £10,000,000 | £50,000 | £100,000 | £200,000 |
The provider fee is set by how the user pays, so your effective economics shift with your payment mix rather than with your pricing.
A wallet whose users mostly buy small amounts on cards runs different economics to one whose users transfer £1,000 at a time, even with an identical partner fee.
Worth knowing before you model the cash flow rather than after.
Since settlement is monthly and in stablecoins.
The economics of wallets change when users can bring money into them easily.
A wallet with no fiat connectivity depends largely on users who already own crypto.
A wallet with integrated on-ramps can acquire users directly from the traditional financial system, fund their accounts, and introduce them to the rest of its financial products.
Through a partner fee, which is a percentage the wallet sets on the transaction amount and receives from the on-ramp provider. With Transak it is configurable up to 5% on top of the baseline fee and settles monthly in USDC or USDT.
An additional percentage charged on an on-ramp transaction that goes to the integrating partner rather than the provider. The wallet configures the rate itself, and it is added to the provider's fee to produce the total the user pays.
With Transak, up to 5% on top of the baseline fee. The practical ceiling is lower than the technical one, because the fee is visible in the total the user pays and high totals push users to buy elsewhere.
At a 1% partner fee, a £1,000 purchase earns £10. Revenue scales with volume rather than with rate, so a wallet processing £500,000 a month at 1% earns roughly £5,000, before considering the downstream value of a funded user.
With Transak, automated partner payouts are processed between the 4th and 7th of each month, in USDC or USDT, on a network the partner nominates. Payout details are configured once with the Transak team.
It affects margin rather than the partner fee directly. The provider's fee is set by payment method, with card processing costing more than bank transfer, so the total a user pays differs even when your fee percentage stays the same.
Rarely. The fee is added to what users pay, and above a certain point it changes their decision. If funded users generate downstream revenue through swaps, spending or retention, a lower fee that converts more users usually earns more overall.
Direct fee revenue at low volume is modest. The stronger case for a smaller wallet is retention, because a user who cannot fund inside your product usually completes the purchase elsewhere and starts their relationship with that platform instead.
Also Read: What Is a Crypto Off-Ramp? Convert Crypto to Cash
Yes. Selling crypto back to fiat is the same commercial structure in reverse, and wallets that only integrate the buying side leave the exit journey, and its revenue, to someone else.