Uniswap, the world’s biggest decentralized exchange (DEX) in terms of volumes, has joined forces with payment solution provider MoonPay to enable crypto purchases using credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers.
According to a blog post, the service will be available in 160+ countries through the Uniswap web app with initial support for DAI, ETH, MATIC, USDC, USDT, WBTC, and WETH, based on the region.
“DEXs are the safest way to trade digital assets compared to their centralized counterparts. However, a major barrier to DeFi adoption has been the onboarding experience, compelling users to store their CEXs for convenience, despite the risks,” wrote the company.
“This is an important step towards making DeFi & self-custody more accessible to all users.”
Since DEXs provide self-custodial wallets, permissionless and immutable protocols, a transparent public ledger, and built-in user protections, they are considered safer than their centralized counterparts.
With this arrangement Uniswap believes they will likely resolve the long-standing issue of fiat support in DEXs, enabling a convenient way for new users to access crypto.
Even though the terms and specific details on the rollout dates were not disclosed, the move would directly pit Uniswap against the centralized exchanges, which have dominated the space primarily because the ease of use.
Notably, centralized exchanges have been recently criticized for abusing their dominant position. For instance, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, stopped supporting USDC in favor of its own stablecoin BUSD in Sept. Similarly, earlier this month, Coinbase removed conversion fees for users who wished to convert their crypto to its co-owned stablecoin USDC.
Uniswap, being a decentralized protocol, has mostly operated under the ethos of Web3. Yet, it had to bear the brunt when the DEX announced on Nov. 17 that it would collect certain off-chain data such as device type, browser version, etc.
