How ethcash unlocked seamless onramping, bridging & swapping with Universal Bridge

ethcash is a crypto-enabled payment app that allows users to send and receive money globally —using just an email address or Farcaster account. Built by AppChain, ethcash aims to make digital payments as intuitive as traditional cash apps, while leveraging the power of blockchain.

By integrating thirdweb’s Universal Bridge, ethcash delivers seamless fiat and crypto transactions across chains and regions—without compromising on cost, speed, or user experience.

The Challenges

AppChain set out to build a product that could serve as a global, permissionless alternative to traditional cash apps like cashapp and Venmo. However, to succeed, they needed to overcome four key challenges:

Global Coverage

The problem with most cash apps is that they don’t cover every region. This means that each country or region relies on a separate app—and none of them can communicate with each other. In short, ethcash needed to enable users to send and receive payments across 160+ countries without regional restrictions.

Web2 Accessibility

Not everyone understands how to connect to crypto wallets or send blockchain transactions. To reach users of traditional cash app platforms, ethcash needed to offer a familiar, frictionless experience for users without crypto wallets or blockchain knowledge. Without a suitable option to abstract away this complexity, it would only be suitable for crypto-natives.

Web3 Compatibility

Of course, a crypto app should also support crypto-native users by allowing payments in the cryptocurrencies users already hold. The challenge comes with the fact most crypto users have multiple tokens spread across multiple chains. To address this problem, ethcash needed a way to facilitate purchases in the tokens users have lying around in their wallets.

Cost Efficiency Without Liquidity Fragmentation

While the Ethereum mainnet is secure, it’s too expensive and slow for processing transactions for apps like ethcash. To avoid these expensive fees, many apps opt to launch on a faster and cheaper chain. This is is exactly the tactic ethcash chose, launching on AppChain to benefit from its fast transaction speed and low-cost fees. However, building on layer 2 blockchains fragments liquidity since users are forced to bridge manually each time they use a different layer 2 chain. To achieve speed and affordability without this fragmentation, ethcash needed a solution that removed the complexity of bridging to AppChain and swapping manually.

The Solution: thirdweb’s Universal Bridge

To address these challenges, AppChain integrated thirdweb’s Universal Bridge—a comprehensive web3 payment solution that abstracts the complexity of onramping, bridging, and swapping.

Global Onramping Options

To address ethcash’s global coverage requirement, it implemented Universal Bridge fiat onramps in over 150 countries, automatically selecting the best provider (e.g., Stripe, Coinbase, Kado, Transak) based on user location, currency, and KYC status. Users can fund their Ethcash accounts using Apple Pay, Google Pay, debit cards, or bank transfers—or any EVM compatible crypto token they already have.

Web2-Friendly UX

Ethcash allows users to send money to any email address—no web3 wallet required. When it comes to making those payments, Universal Bridge handles the backend complexity, enabling seamlesss onramping—and always routing funds to the appropriate chain. The recipient can then withdraw funds to their bank account or crypto wallet, all through a simple interface.

Web3 Compatibility for crypto-natives

ethcash also enables crypto-natives, with the option to login via Farcaster and use crypto tokens on any EVM chain. To facilitate transactions in any EVM token, it leverages Universal Bridge’s ability to let users pay with any token on any EVM-compatible chain. In short, it automatically bridges funds to AppChain and swaps tokens to USDC when needed—from any EVM chain. This eliminates the need for manual bridging or swapping, streamlining the user experience.

Low-Cost Transactions Without Fragmenting Liquidity

To solve the challenge of liquidity locked on other L2s, Ethcash routes transactions through the most efficient paths, minimizing gas fees and avoiding the high costs associated with Ethereum mainnet. This approach maintains unified liquidity across chains, ensuring users get the best rates without the hassle of managing multiple assets.

The Results:

By integrating thirdweb’s Universal Bridge, Ethcash built a global crypto cash app with the appropriate payment solutions from the day of launch. With features such as:

• Onramp support for users in over 150 countries
• A seamless experience for both web2 and web3 users.
• Payments with any token across EVM-compatible chains.
• Fast and cheap transactions on AppChain, without fragmenting liquidity.

With ethcash’s intuitive design with powerful backend infrastructure it delivers a truly global, user-friendly crypto payment solution. This convenient and performant solution resulted in ethcash managing over $75k volume in its first six weeks post-launch.

Enabling Performant & Reliable crypto apps

Want to know more about ethcash and how it works?

Check out its official website here!

And if you’re ready to unlock a seamless web3 payment solution capable of onramping, bridging and swapping without friction, learn more about implementing Universal Bridge in your own app or game here.