From isolation to integration: How financial firms are building the infrastructure for crypto’s real-world usability

In the early days, crypto was loud. Coins got pumped, communities rallied, and regulators scowled. For the most part, the industry thrived on adrenaline, driven by chart spikes, cultural memes, and the promise of a decentralized utopia.

But now the loud early years, marked by fringe experiments and speculative fever, are giving way to a deeper and a bit more consequential narrative: the slow weaving of crypto into the fabric of everyday finance. 

It’s a transformation that asks: How do you bring crypto out of its niche and make it accessible, compliant, and useful for people who don’t know what a private key is? 

The answer, it turns out, doesn’t come from radical disruption alone, but from pragmatic integration with the old world’s infrastructure.

Behind the scenes, fintech players are engineering crypto’s real-world utility, connecting wallets to debit cards, transforming stablecoins into commerce tools, and layering blockchain atop familiar financial products. 

Three companies, PayPal, Coinbase, and Green Dot, are each tackling this challenge from distinct angles. Through three short case studies around these firms, we explore how these players are scaling their crypto operations by integrating with traditional financial systems.

Case Study 1: PayPal – Programmable money, wrapped in familiarity

When PayPal enabled users to buy, hold, and sell crypto in 2020, many saw it as a PR move. But for PayPal, this move wasn’t about chasing trends; it was a deliberate effort to unpack the deeper utility of blockchain technology for PayPal’s everyday users, according to May Zabaneh, the company’s VP of Product. 

“The ability to send a payment over the blockchain in seconds at a fraction of the cost was simply incredible. We needed to explore it further and determine in what capacity we wanted to be involved. That’s when we realized that we wanted to bring this incredibly promising technology to our users,” she noted.

That vision has since evolved into something more tangible: the launch of PayPal USD (PYUSD), a stablecoin issued in partnership with Paxos, r alongside a consumer-facing wallet. Through partnerships with crypto wallets like MetaMask and integrations on Venmo, PYUSD can be used for instant, low-fee global payments.

What makes PYUSD different is that it’s designed to work within PayPal’s payments ecosystem, online merchants, P2P transactions, and off-ramp capabilities like PayPal debit cards. Customers can use crypto as a funding source when checking out with PayPal at supported merchants. The crypto is sold at the time of purchase, and the merchant receives fiat. “As with almost anything with payments, consumers and shoppers should be given the choice in how they want to pay,” said Zabaneh.

Stablecoins are not new, but PayPal’s approach was different. It didn’t seek to build the next crypto asset for traders; it aimed to create programmable money that moves with the ease of a PayPal balance. By anchoring PYUSD 1:1 to the US dollar and partnering with a regulated issuer, Paxos, PayPal positioned the coin to be trustworthy, fast, and compliant.

PayPal’s move stems from the fact that in the majority of transactions, people don’t want to fiddle with blockchain explorers or gas fees. They want money that works like money: fast, reliable, and usable everywhere. PayPal’s stablecoin embeds blockchain tech into a network already used by over 400 million users. It’s a classic ‘own the pipes’ move, offering a digital dollar that’s programmable, yet backed by the same regulatory assurances users expect.

The expansion of PYUSD from Ethereum to Solana, along with its integration into Venmo and PayPal wallets, aims to embed crypto into everyday payment experiences without requiring users to have deep technical knowledge of crypto.

Case Study 2: Coinbase – Institutionalizing the on-chain economy

While PayPal is pulling crypto into consumer finance, Coinbase is pushing traditional finance onto the blockchain.

Coinbase is moving beyond crypto exchange services into full-scale on-chain financial infrastructure, with its new Bitcoin-backed USDC loan product, marking a pivotal step in that direction. Users can now borrow against their Bitcoin without selling it, unlocking liquidity in under a minute.

Max Branzburg, VP of Institutional Products at Coinbase, described this shift in clear words in a recent Tearsheet Podcast episode: “We’re really trying to disrupt what the traditional financial system offers today, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re building on chain, and we think that the whole financial system is really moving on chain.” Coinbase is building the bridge, creating infrastructure like Base (its Layer 2 network), custodial wallets, and compliance tools that allow customers to interact with digital assets in a regulated way.

What makes this important is the underlying stack:

• Base: Coinbase’s own Layer 2 blockchain for fast, low-cost transactions
• Smart contract wallets: Abstracting complexity for smooth UX
• CB-BTC: A wrapped Bitcoin asset that enables Bitcoin to be used in Ethereum-compatible DeFi

The move is to enable companies, banks, and developers to access tokenized treasuries, USDC settlements, and other blockchain-native financial tools. 

The big picture – Reimagining the wallet as the new bank: Coinbase’s approach reimagines the role of the wallet, transforming it into a secure, smart hub where fiat and crypto work together fluidly.

Coinbase’s ‘onchain operating system’ unfolds this vision. Its Ethereum Layer 2 network, or Base, is designed to reduce friction with low fees and faster transactions. But the real innovation is in the wallet, equipped with human-readable usernames and smart contracts that enhance the security of users’ assets.

Of everything Coinbase is building on-chain, why focus on wallets? Because for crypto to truly scale, it can’t remain the domain of enthusiasts. It needs to be intuitive, integrated, and familiar enough for the average person to trust.

Coinbase goes further, layering fiat on-ramps, optional KYC, and lending products collateralized by tokenized Bitcoin and Ethereum. The focus is shifting from crypto storage to empowering users to manage and use their crypto as they would with a conventional bank account: borrowing, saving, and transacting with transparency and compliance baked in.

The firm’s vision is that the wallet becomes the bank, and the blockchain becomes the operating system for all financial interactions.

Case Study 3: Green Dot and Crypto.com – Making crypto real at the corner store

In the neighborhoods and small towns where traditional banks have shuttered branches, many Americans remain underbanked, unable or unwilling to engage with the traditional financial systems. Crypto holds promise, but only if it’s accessible in the real world besides through apps or exchanges.

Take Crypto.com, a crypto platform that has global brand awareness, but needed real-world financial infrastructure to reach everyday users in the US. Green Dot, a Banking-as-a-Service provider with deep roots in prepaid cards and embedded finance, played a key role here.

Recently, the two firms forged a partnership to offer US-based users fiat on-and off-ramps like ACH, direct deposit, and debit cards. 

The secret sauce is Green Dot’s Arc platform, a modular, cloud-based embedded finance system that powers everything from FDIC-insured accounts to cash deposits at over 95,000 retail locations, including Walmart and CVS. 

By combining retail access with regulatory-compliant infrastructure, Green Dot serves as a bridge layer between fiat systems and the crypto ecosystem in this partnership.

Green Dot brings the banking infrastructure and regulatory expertise, while Crypto.com brings the tech-forward crypto vision, according to Renata Caine, General Manager and SVP of Embedded Finance at Green Dot. 

“This partnership allows Crypto.com to continue building on its strength – accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrency as an industry leader in regulatory compliance, security, and privacy – while we use our decades of experience in money movement to provide a secure and convenient way to load US dollars into Crypto.com customers’ accounts to enable crypto investing,” she noted.

Together, they’re enabling users to spend, receive, and move money between crypto and fiat in a smoother, familiar way. “96% of the US population lives within a three-mile radius of a Green Dot Network location,” said Caine. “Enabling us to provide seamless access to cash services almost everywhere in the US, particularly in underbanked communities where traditional banks continue closing brick-and-mortar locations.”

More than convenience, it’s about inclusion. This collaboration also highlights a paradox: cryptocurrency, born as a challenge to traditional banking, increasingly relies on banking infrastructure to reach mainstream users.

The Takeaway?

Aligned with the overarching theme of improving usability by integrating crypto into traditional finance, these case studies show that the 3 companies are adopting mindful approaches:

• Utility before ideology and investment: The effective crypto integrations today aren’t ideological, they’re infrastructural. Whether it’s PayPal embedding stablecoins or Coinbase onboarding financial institutions, the focus is usability, not decentralization. As the Coinbase and PayPal cases note, users increasingly now come for crypto’s function (for example, payments and loans), and the investment use case follows. Earlier, the flow was in the reverse direction. That’s a major shift in adoption psychology.
• Decentralized infrastructure with centralized UX: Coinbase’s product strategy (on-chain backend with Coinbase’s frontend) supports the ‘hybrid finance’ model, blurring centralized and decentralized lines for broader access.
• Partnerships are the new way forward: Crypto.com’s collaboration with Green Dot shows that progress comes not from disruption, but collaboration. 
• Institutional collaborations are imperative: Each firm – PayPal, Coinbase, Crypto.com – relies on banking partners for compliance, fiat movement, and regulatory guardrails. Banks aren’t being pushed out by crypto firms — nor can they be — but crypto firms are serving as catalysts for redefining what more, banking can mean in the digital age.

From a more interconnected perspective, each of these stories answers a deeper question: How can crypto transition from an experimental asset to a practical financial tool?

PayPal’s approach answers with programmable fiat; Coinbase’s with smart wallets and an on-chain operating system; and Green Dot’s with real-world cash access points. Together, they reveal the larger trend of slow fusion of crypto with legacy finance, where compliance and convenience are not afterthoughts but design principles.

This integration isn’t a betrayal of crypto’s ideals, it’s a necessary evolution going forward if the crypto industry wants to mature. Without regulatory oversight, consumer protections, and broader access, crypto remains a speculative market, distant from achieving a meaningful position in mainstream financial services.