In late 2023, a MetaMask user in Mumbai gained the ability to fund a self-custody wallet by tapping a UPI button on their phone. The plumbing behind that tap was built by Onramp Money, a Bengaluru-based fiat gateway that Consensys picked as its India onramp partner [Consensys, 2026]. For a country where UPI handles billions of monthly transactions but where direct crypto purchases have long meant friction with bank rails, that integration is the kind of distribution win most early-stage Web3 infrastructure companies spend years chasing.
Onramp Money, founded in 2022 by Prashant Singh and Gaurav Dahake, sells what is effectively a non-custodial fiat-to-crypto pipe [PRNewswire, 2026]. Users in 75-plus countries can buy, sell, and swap more than 480 tokens using local payment methods including UPI in India, PIX in Brazil, and SEPA across the eurozone [Onramp.money]. The same stack is sold to businesses as a compliant onramp, offramp, and swap layer, with merchants settling in either crypto or fiat [Onramp.money]. Gaurav Dahake serves as CEO [LinkedIn], and the company is based in Bengaluru [Inc42, 2026].
The wedge is emerging-market currencies that the larger Western onramps have historically treated as edge cases. Messari's profile lists INR, TRY, MXN, and AED among supported fiats [Messari], a corridor mix that maps almost exactly to where retail crypto demand has been growing fastest. Onramp's pitch to integrators is that those rails work day one, with KYC and compliance handled.
The bet
Onramp is not trying to be a consumer exchange. It is trying to be the fiat layer underneath everyone else's wallet, exchange, or dApp. The Consensys deal put it inside MetaMask for Indian users [The Block]. A separate integration with Bybit handles crypto-to-fiat conversions in AED [LinkedIn, 2026]. The BSV Association announced an Onramp integration to expand BSV access across Asia, MENA, and Latin America [PRNewswire]. Each of those is a B2B2C relationship: the end user sees the partner's brand, while Onramp moves the money.
That is a different business than Transak, MoonPay, or Ramp, even though those names sit in the same competitive set. The differentiation rests on local payment-method depth in markets where the incumbents lean on cards, and on a willingness to support a longer tail of tokens (480-plus, across 20-plus chains, per aggregator Onramper [Onramper, 2026]) than most regulated Western onramps will touch.
Why it could be big
The Algorand Foundation took a strategic position in May 2023 alongside a partnership to expand Onramp's footprint in India [Algorand.co, 2026]. A seed round followed in March 2024, with the amount undisclosed [Crunchbase]. Neither check size is public, but the investor signal matters: Algorand's foundation does not typically write checks into infrastructure it does not intend to route volume through.
Supported tokens | 480 | count
Supported countries | 75 | count
Supported chains | 20 | count
The macro tailwind is real. UPI processed more than 16 billion transactions in a single month in 2024 according to NPCI data widely reported in Indian press, and India remains one of the largest retail crypto markets by user count despite a punishing tax regime. A compliant rail that connects that user base to self-custody wallets is a structurally valuable piece of infrastructure, regardless of which token cycle is in fashion. The same logic applies in Turkey, Mexico, and the UAE, where local fiat rails have historically been the bottleneck rather than user demand.
The team and traction
Dahake, the CEO, previously built crypto-adjacent products in the Indian market, and co-founder Prashant Singh rounds out the founding pair. Public traction signals are concentrated on the partnership side:
- MetaMask. Consensys chose Onramp as its UPI onramp for Indian users [Consensys, 2026].
- Bybit. Onramp handles crypto-to-AED offramps for Bybit [LinkedIn, 2026].
- Algorand. The Algorand Foundation is both an investor and an India expansion partner [Algorand.co, 2026].
- BSV Association. Onramp provides Asia, MENA, and LatAm onramp services for the BSV Association [PRNewswire].
The company's LinkedIn presence lists more than 5,000 followers under a banner referencing Token2049, the Singapore conference circuit where most Asia-focused Web3 deals get done [LinkedIn].
The honest counterfactual
Bears will say India's regulatory posture toward crypto has been the harshest of any major economy outside China, with a 30 percent capital-gains tax and a 1 percent TDS on every transaction that has pushed volumes offshore. A fiat onramp whose flagship corridor is INR is exposed to any tightening of those rules, and the RBI has not been shy about pressuring banks that service crypto flows. The competitive set, Transak, MoonPay, and Ramp, is also better capitalized and has had years to build out compliance teams.
Bulls answer that Onramp's structural answer is that it is not betting on India alone. The same compliance and integration work supports PIX in Brazil, SEPA in Europe, and AED rails in the Gulf. Being the partner of choice for MetaMask in India is a defensible position because Consensys is unlikely to swap out a working integration on a whim, and the BSV and Bybit deals show the model is replicating across geographies. The non-custodial design [PRNewswire, 2026] also reduces the regulatory surface area compared to running an exchange.
What to watch
The next twelve months should clarify two things. First, whether Onramp converts its partnership wins into disclosed transaction volume, the metric that determines whether this is a real infrastructure business or a collection of logos. Second, whether a priced Series A materializes, the 2024 seed was undisclosed [Crunchbase], and the partnership cadence suggests the company will need growth capital to keep pace with compliance build-out across new corridors. Watch for a Latin America push on the back of the BSV deal, and watch for whether the MetaMask integration expands beyond India to other UPI-equivalent rails.