After CEX and Wallet, OKX enters the payment game

2025-05-01 15:59

Read this article in 16 Minutes

AI summary

View the summary

Source: OKX

OKX is a leading indicator in the Web3 industry, with its product technology and narrative direction often at the cutting edge and able to quickly establish industry paradigms. On April 28, OKX CEO Star mentioned the "secret business line" unveiled during the 2024 New Year's greetings—digital asset payment tool OKX Pay. With the launch of OKX Pay, OKX's three major business sector strategies have been officially defined: centralized exchange platform, on-chain gateway, and decentralized digital asset payment.

Relying on OKX's base of over 100 million users, OKX Pay completed a cold start in the early stages of its launch, rapidly entering the crypto payment track. In the next phase, as it further connects to B2B merchant networks and integrates with global payment service providers like Mastercard through OKX Card, OKX Pay is expected to achieve instant cryptocurrency payments and settlements in globally supported regions, bridging the gap from online transactions to offline consumption and truly driving the integration of cryptocurrency into everyday life's "last mile." At the same time, with a Web2-like user experience, OKX Pay is also paving the way for the mass adoption of Web3 applications. As Star envisions, "Road to the Next Billion Users."

While the vision is ambitious, the reality is worth exploring. Entering the payment space, what is OKX Pay truly leveraging? Is it a broader user base, a larger market, or a deep integration of the crypto world into daily life? Let's start from the beginning.

OKX Pay Rapidly Gains Popularity

The first version of OKX Pay launched with three core functions: digital asset payments, social features, and asset management. For novice users, the entire process of OKX Pay can be summarized as "having an OKX exchange account → activating OKX Pay smart account → depositing USDT/USDC stablecoins → easily making on-chain payments → currently receiving up to 5% annualized reward as a balance subsidy from the official side → creating groups with friends and sending digital asset red envelopes in chats." This process not only leverages the convenience of existing KYC in CEX but also uses AA multi-signature technology to protect assets securely and comply with AML and other regulatory audits. It's worth mentioning that if you lose your Passkey, you can easily recover your wallet through the ZK email recovery feature.

After the launch of OKX Pay, it quickly gained traction on social media, with KOLs posting praise for its innovative on-chain social payment experience: exclusive groups limited to 100 people instantly filled up and even after upgrading to 500 people, demand was still high. Many even called for OKX Pay to remove the group size limit. In addition, the sent-out red envelopes were quickly snatched up. While OKX Pay initially planned to attract users rapidly through the "5% annualized subsidy" and "X Layer transaction fee exemption" incentives, what unexpectedly made it popular was the combination of social features and digital asset red envelopes.

OKX Pay also supports scanning QR codes or displaying QR codes for encrypted asset payments, providing a Web2-like convenient experience. Coupled with zero fees, instant stablecoin payments, and seamlessly integrated text/voice chat and digital asset red packets, these advantages make OKX Pay the best entry point for novice users to dive into on-chain social payments. However, OKX Pay still has shortcomings in its first-generation version: for example, it is only available in certain regions, supports a limited number of public chains, group members cannot be added by scanning a code, and group nicknames cannot be freely changed. Additionally, the address book sync permission cannot be turned off, among other features. While these functional deficiencies will require subsequent iterations, they also reflect users' tremendous enthusiasm and participation in social payment scenarios.

Entering the Stablecoin Payment Field

Since OKX Pay already supports the two major stablecoins, USDT and USDC, let's explore its business model from the stablecoin perspective to see if it is robust enough and has sustainable profit potential.

As of April 2025, the global stablecoin market cap has exceeded $240 billion, becoming a key driver of cross-border payment innovation. Thunes' research indicates that stablecoins are reaching a tipping point in B2B trade and rapid settlement, with over 70% of cross-border transactions using stablecoins to reduce the high intermediary fees and long delays associated with traditional wire transfers. Compared to traditional SWIFT wire transfers or credit card networks, cross-border transactions settled using stablecoins can reduce costs by over 40% and increase speed several times, significantly enhancing payment efficiency. Moreover, banking institutions like FV Bank predict that this year, enterprise-level stablecoin payments will surpass traditional methods, providing institutional support for OKX Pay's large-scale enterprise application.

Fueled by massive demand, traditional payment giants are exploring cryptocurrency payments: Visa leverages the Ethereum network to offer USDC-directed settlement services for banks and large FinTech firms, while PayPal, through Paxos Trust's centralized issuance, supports the buying, selling, and transfer of PYUSD within its custodial accounts, seamlessly integrating crypto funds into the existing fiat payment system. However, OKX Pay, as a purely on-chain native product, leverages the AA Smart Account architecture of OKX Wallet and the X Layer ZK L2 network based on the Polygon CDK to achieve zero-fee on-chain final settlement. This not only gives users asset control but also lays the groundwork for integrating the payment process with DeFi ecosystems and smart contracts in the wallet, advancing towards innovative digital asset payment experiences in PayFi scenarios.

More importantly, by establishing a compliance loop with local institutions and industry partners, OKX Pay can rapidly gain the trust of enterprises and high-volume merchants. For example, by providing an SDK and API set, merchants can easily access this vast and liquid payment pool and further collaborate with traditional payment networks like Mastercard and Stripe to bridge on-chain stablecoins with the banking card system, enabling cross-border instant settlement in globally supported regions. With the advantages of low cost, high security, and fast settlements, OKX Pay not only strengthens the competitive barriers of the OKX ecosystem but also drives competitors like Binance Pay, Kraken Pay, Crypto.com Pay, and Coinbase Pay to accelerate technological and compliance innovations, potentially allowing OKX to gain ground in the cryptocurrency payment race.

Establishment of Three Major Business Lines

OKX's strategic layout has gradually become clear, forming three core business segments: Centralized Exchange (CEX), On-chain Gateway (Wallet), and Decentralized Payments (OKX Pay). This deep-rooted layout not only meets users' diverse needs from asset trading, on-chain interaction to daily payments but also signifies OKX's strategic upgrade from a traditional digital asset trading platform to a comprehensive Web3 service provider with financial infrastructure capabilities.

Among these three segments, the centralized exchange platform remains the core hub of the OKX ecosystem, providing users with an efficient and secure cryptocurrency trading experience thanks to its strong liquidity foundation, millisecond-level matching engine, and global compliance layout. OKX Wallet, as a one-stop gateway to Web3, supports multi-chain asset management, DApp interaction, NFT browsing, DEX trading, and other core functions, greatly reducing the technical barriers for ordinary users to enter the on-chain world. Meanwhile, OKX Pay plays a key role in the field of decentralized payments, supporting on-chain instant feeless payments of mainstream stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, and through partnerships with traditional financial services providers like Mastercard, actively promoting the mainstream adoption and application scenario expansion of cryptocurrency payments in globally supported regions.

Through the coordinated development of these three segments, OKX has built a functionally closed-loop, interconnected cryptocurrency ecosystem. The business segments have complementary advantages, collectively driving the continuous optimization of user experience. They demonstrate significant advantages in terms of the convenience, security, accessibility, and usability of asset trading and on-chain applications. This strategic synergy not only significantly enhances the overall smoothness and completeness of user experience but also strengthens user stickiness and activity on the OKX platform. Based on this foundation, OKX continues to promote the penetration of cryptocurrency technology and applications into the mainstream market, injecting new momentum into the industry and becoming a bridge and accelerator for the popularization of cryptocurrency.

From Tool to Way of Life

OKX Pay has broken through cross-border settlement barriers in globally supported regions through feeless stablecoin payments, significantly lowering the threshold for cryptocurrency payments with a smooth Web2-like experience. It is not just a payment tool but is gradually becoming the infrastructure of the Web3 era. Leveraging the strategic synergy of the three major business segments, OKX Pay is building a complete cryptocurrency ecosystem loop, redefining the application scenarios of cryptocurrency assets in daily life. With the comprehensive rollout of OKX Card and merchant networks, cryptocurrency payments are expected to naturally integrate into our daily lives, much like scanning a QR code to shop.

Imagine one morning, when you go to buy soy milk, the owner shows you a QR code that can be scanned to receive USDT; and when you pay for coffee with ETH on your phone, the receipt automatically shows "This transaction is equivalent to 0.0012 ETH, and the real-time exchange rate has converted it to your local currency for you." This is no longer science fiction, but the future payment scenario that OKX Pay is advancing. Perhaps one day, we will no longer discuss "Do you have any crypto assets?" but rather "How do you live with crypto?" At that time, OKX Pay may be the answer. It is not asking us to adapt to a new world, but to let the new world, fairly, embrace every ordinary person.

OKX Pay is responding to this expectation at the fastest pace. Sherry, the head of OKX Pay, revealed in a Space sharing session that in the 8 months before the product went live, 4 iterations were completed, with each update reflecting deep thinking about the future payment ecosystem and strategic planning. Such a high-frequency pace of innovation not only demonstrates the team's dedication to refining the product but also signifies that OKX Pay is using technological innovation as the engine to gradually bring the integration of crypto assets into daily payments closer to reality. Through continuous iteration, OKX Pay continually breaks through technological bottlenecks and scenario limitations, accelerating the transformation of crypto payments from theoretical concept to practical daily life, and making every effort to bridge the "last mile" of integrating crypto assets into daily life.

Users can perceive that this kind of beauty is getting closer and closer.