Coinbase Onboard adds Apple Pay support

Coinbase has added Apple Pay support to its Onramp payment feature for third-party apps, making it easier for iPhone owners to buy cryptocurrency from their devices.

Coinbase Onramp is a tool for app developers that helps them enable users to buy cryptocurrencies rapidly. It is now supporting Apple Pay as a payment method for Coinbase Onramp, when used for fiat-to-crypto purchases.

For developers, Coinbase Onramp is intended as a way to simplify the process of users turning fiat currencies like dollars into cryptocurrencies. Typically, this is a lengthy process, which can require users to bounce between multiple apps, and deal with know-your-customer (KYC) identity verification.

As explained by Coinbase, this friction is minimized with the Apple Pay integration, with Coinbase Onramp handling a lot of the work for developers. To end users, this results in a low-friction purchase process, which Coinbase claims can take as little as 30 seconds to complete.

The change is likely to be beneficial to developers, as it opens up a simplified purchasing process to over 60 million US users of Apple Pay. Furthermore, on-ramping of users using US dollars is also free.

Developers who have an app that already uses Coinbase Onramp will not need to make any changes, as it will automatically start showing Apple Pay as an option when a user attempts a purchase.

This is not the first time Coinbase has worked with Apple Pay. In July 2021, it added support for Apple Pay to its own app, so users could buy cryptocurrency using debit cards.

Monday's announcement effectively rolls out the same sort of support to third-party apps that take advantage of Coinbase Onramp for transactions.

Cryptocurrencies have had a tough year on iPhone, with Apple pulling nine apps using it from the App Store in India following a regulatory crackdown. Apple was also sued over instant transfer fees and an alleged distrust in cryptocurrency, but that was dismissed by the judge over several flaws.

In September, an attempted revival of "Flappy Bird" was severely tainted by the introduction of cryptocurrency elements. By November, it was reported Apple and A24 were working on a film adaptation about the FTX crypto scandal, with a script set to be written by Lena Dunham.