Analyzing the Comprehensive Strategy of Exchange’s “Super App”: What Other Entry Points Exist for Cryptocurrency Payment Startups?

05/16/2025

After the Crypto Market Surge, Exchanges Shift Focus to Payments and Financial Card Consumption

The crypto market has stagnated following the retreat of the hype, with exchanges (CEXs) turning to longer-tail, more stable financial scenarios of “payments and financial card consumption,” hoping to become the next growth engine. As giants like Binance and OKX simultaneously enter the payment market, a war over “user control” has officially begun. However, facing intense competition and regulatory barriers, how should crypto payment innovators find their breakthrough?

Giant Strategies: A Comprehensive Analysis of Four Exchanges’ Payment Ecosystems

Venture capital partner @YettaSing recently tweeted an analysis of how exchanges are capturing every financial behavior of users, from financial card payments to on-chain red packets, actively transforming and evolving into more flexible and stable cash flow crypto companies:

Offshore CEXs are seeing speculation is drying up at the margin, so they’re squeezing LTV out of every financial moment & capital flow. Did a quick breakdown of each one’s strategy so that crypto consumer founders, esp who are working on “the last mile” or “mass adoption” can… — YettaS (@YettaSing) May 16, 2025

Offshore CEXs are facing a situation where marginal speculative behavior is drying up, prompting them to maximize value (LTV) from every financial operation and capital flow.

He emphasizes that despite the distance to the widespread adoption of crypto payments, entrepreneurs still have ways to break through.

Crypto.com: An Early Pioneer in Payments

Crypto.com partnered with Visa in 2021 and again with Mastercard in 2024, becoming one of the few exchanges that bet on payments early. Attracting a large user base with up to 8% cashback on $CRO card transactions, it successfully diverted traffic to its trading business. During the Dogecoin frenzy, the platform attracted a massive influx of users through a “smooth deposit channel,” causing its $SHIB holdings to account for nearly 20% of the exchange.

(Trump Media and Crypto.com join forces to create the America First ETF, CRO surged 15% without reservations.)

Binance: Transforming Every Path into Its Own

Although Binance had acquired the startup payment company Swipe long ago, it has shifted to building its own payment channel, “Binance Pay,” which focuses on zero-fee transfers and integrates POS expansion with Alchemy Pay and ShopNEXT to increase application scenarios. Coupled with fee reductions on settlement and holding fees on the BNB Chain, Binance’s strategy remains consistent: “Do everything ourselves, and then tax every transaction.”

OKX: An Experimental Ground for the On-Chain Super App

OKX places the “Pay” button alongside Trade and Wallet on its main interface, incorporating features like red packets and USDT social transfers, carving a payment path reminiscent of WeChat. Moving forward, it plans to streamline settlement logic through XLayer, in conjunction with Mastercard and Stripe’s financial card services, targeting “social payments” application scenarios.

(Star: OKX Pay officially launched! Zero fees support for USDC and USDT, reportedly in contact with payment providers like Mastercard.)

Bybit: Entering Brazil to Build a DeFi Yield Bank

Bybit has launched payment services in Brazil, leveraging large offline events like Tomorrowland and offering substantial rewards to attract new users. Its larger ambition is “Mantle Banking,” packaging mETH and fBTC as yield tools to create a model of “fiat in → DeFi earning → physical payments.”

Is Crypto Payment Hard to Popularize? Don’t Fight on the Wrong Battlefield

To promote the popularization of crypto payments, entrepreneurs may need to recognize a fact: “Traditional payments are good enough; users have no reason to switch to crypto.” It is challenging to persuade an Apple Pay user to switch to a complicated on-chain wallet that requires understanding, KYC, gas payments, and dealing with foreign exchange losses in fiat settlements. This is why most CEXs are turning to financial cards with cashback features or binding social red packets: they know that in the face of this motivational void, they must create a “must-use” reason.

Breakthrough Path: Five “Marginal Scenarios” Entrepreneurs Should Target

@YettaSing shared some application scenarios emphasizing that even if they are not mainstream, they are areas overlooked or poorly handled by traditional finance:

Micro Cross-Border Payments and Creator Economy: Platforms like YouTube or OnlyFans have high commission fees, and international transfers can take days. In this regard, crypto payments can directly transfer USDC to creators, reward via NFTs, or serve as instant rewards within social applications: the intermediary-free and instant nature allows even $1 crypto donations to reach creators directly, or even direct on-chain profit sharing.
Free Settlements in High-Friction Areas: Freelancers in regions like Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa struggle to receive international payments; crypto allows instant transfers without bank audits, with low friction and high flexibility.
In-Game Economies and Social Currencies: Web3 games or social applications with built-in tokens can directly become payment mediums, solving the challenges of centralized point conversion and integrating task rewards with micro-transaction scenarios.
Disaster Relief and Privacy Needs: Crypto payments can facilitate trustless fund distribution in disaster scenarios such as earthquakes and wars; or provide anonymous and secure transfer options in high-surveillance areas.
Digital Asset Ownership for the Unbanked: Hundreds of millions globally still lack bank accounts; crypto wallets can serve as their first “financial identity,” especially highly practical for migrant workers and refugee communities.

Crypto Payments Don’t Need to Compete with Apple Pay

The author believes that crypto payments have never been competitors with mainstream finance; rather, they are explorers of marginal scenarios that the existing system cannot or is unwilling to address. Finding the right scenarios is a smarter way to survive than attempting to popularize. As @YettaSing stated: “What you should do is ‘try to explore marginal demands,’ just like early SoFi, Chime, and LendingHome, targeting pain points and breaking through from the margins.”

As CEXs fill the main paths, the real opportunities for crypto startups may actually lie in the “financial gaps” that they disdain or cannot attend to.

Risk Warning

Investing in cryptocurrencies carries a high level of risk; their prices can be extremely volatile, and you may lose your entire principal. Please carefully assess the risks.