Source: VeradiVerdict
Compiled by: Zhou, ChainCatcher
Summary
Crypto-as-a-Service (CaaS) represents the ‘Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) moment’ for the blockchain industry. Banks and fintech companies no longer need to build crypto infrastructure from scratch. By integrating APIs and white-label platforms, they can launch digital asset functionalities within days or weeks, as opposed to the years it previously took. (Note: White-label refers to one party providing a product or technology that another party brands and operates under its own name. In the financial/crypto sector, this means banks or exchanges using third-party trading systems, wallets, or payment gateways while branding them as their own.)
Mainstream adoption is accelerating through three key channels. Banks are partnering with custodians like Coinbase, Anchorage, and BitGo while actively exploring tokenized assets; fintech firms are leveraging platforms like M^0 to issue their own stablecoins; and payment processors such as Western Union (with an annual transaction volume of $300 billion) and Zelle (with an annual transaction volume exceeding $1 trillion) are now integrating stablecoins to enable instant, low-cost cross-border settlements.
Crypto-as-a-Service (CaaS) is not overly complex. Essentially, it is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) built around cryptocurrencies, making it exponentially easier for institutions and businesses to integrate into the crypto ecosystem. Banks, fintech companies, enterprises, and others no longer need to expend significant effort building internal crypto capabilities. Instead, they can simply plug-and-play, deploying proven APIs and white-label platforms within days. Businesses can focus on their customers without worrying about the intricacies of blockchain technology. They can utilize existing infrastructure to engage in cryptocurrency transactions more efficiently and economically. In other words, they can seamlessly integrate into the digital asset ecosystem.
CaaS is poised for exponential growth
CaaS is a cloud-based business model and infrastructure solution that enables enterprises, fintech companies, and developers to integrate cryptocurrency and blockchain functionalities into their operations without having to build or maintain the underlying technology from scratch. CaaS provides ready-to-use, scalable services, typically delivered via APIs or white-label platforms, such as crypto wallets, trading engines, payment gateways, asset storage, custody solutions, and compliance tools. This allows businesses to quickly offer digital asset capabilities under their own brands, reducing development costs, time, and required technical expertise. Similar to other ‘as-a-service’ offerings, this model enables businesses of all sizes—from startups to established enterprises—to participate in a cost-effective manner. In September 2025, Coinbase Institutional identified CaaS as one of its largest growth areas.
Since 2013, Pantera Capital has been driving the development of CaaS through strategic investments. We have strategically allocated funds toward infrastructure, tools, and technologies to ensure CaaS can operate at scale. By accelerating the development of back-end fund management, custody, and wallets, we have significantly enhanced the service levels of CaaS.
Advantages of CaaS
By using CaaS, enterprises can transparently integrate encryption capabilities into their systems, achieving numerous strategic and operational advantages more quickly and cost-effectively. These advantages include:
- One-stop integration and seamless embedding: The CaaS platform eliminates the need for custom development cycles, enabling teams to activate functionalities within days rather than months.
- Flexible monetization models: Enterprises can opt for subscription-based pricing for cost predictability or pay-per-use billing to align expenditures with revenue. Either way, significant upfront capital investment is avoided.
- Outsourcing blockchain complexity: Enterprises can offload technical management while benefiting from a robust enterprise-grade backend that ensures near-perfect uptime, real-time monitoring, and automatic failover.
- Developer-friendly APIs and SDKs: Developers can embed wallet creation and key management features, handle on-chain settlements seamlessly, trigger smart contract interactions, and create comprehensive sandbox environments.
- White-label branding and intuitive interfaces: CaaS solutions are customizable, enabling non-technical teams to configure fee structures, supported assets, and user onboarding processes.
- Additional value-added features: Leading providers bundle auxiliary services such as fraud detection based on on-chain analytics, tax filing automation, multi-signature fund management, and cross-chain bridging for asset interoperability.
These features transform cryptocurrency from a technological novelty into a revenue-generating product line while maintaining focus on core business capabilities.
Three Core Use Cases
We believe the world is rapidly evolving toward a crypto-native environment where individuals and businesses increasingly interact with digital assets. This shift is driven by growing user adoption of blockchain wallets, decentralized applications, and on-chain transactions, facilitated by continuously improving user interfaces, abundant educational resources, and practical application value.
However, for cryptocurrencies to truly integrate into the mainstream and achieve widespread adoption, a robust and seamless bridge must be built to bridge the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi). Institutions seek the advantages of cryptocurrencies (speed, programmability, and global accessibility) while relying on trusted intermediaries to manage underlying complexities: tools, security, technology stacks, and liquidity provision.
Ultimately, this ecosystem convergence has the potential to gradually onboard billions of users onto the blockchain.
Use Case One: Banks
Banks are increasingly collaborating with regulated cryptocurrency custodians such as Coinbase Custody, Anchorage Digital, and BitGo to provide institutional-grade asset custody, insured storage, and seamless spot trading services for digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. These foundational services (custody, execution, and basic lending) represent the low-hanging fruit of cryptocurrency integration, enabling banks to onboard clients effortlessly without forcing them out of the traditional banking system.
Beyond these fundamental elements, banks can also leverage decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to generate competitive yields using idle treasury assets or customer deposits. For example, they can deploy stablecoins into permissionless lending markets (e.g., Morpho, Aave, or Compound) or into liquidity pools of automated market makers (AMMs) like Uniswap, thereby earning real-time, transparent returns that often outperform traditional fixed-income products.
Tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) holds transformative potential. Banks can initiate and distribute on-chain versions of traditional securities (e.g., tokenized U.S. Treasuries, corporate bonds, private credit, or even real estate funds issued through Blackrock’s BUIDL fund), bringing off-chain value onto public blockchains such as Ethereum, Polygon, or Base. These RWAs can then be traded peer-to-peer via DeFi protocols like Morpho (for optimized lending), Pendle (for yield splitting), or Centrifuge (for private credit pools), while ensuring KYC/AML compliance through whitelisted wallets or institutional vaults. RWAs can also serve as high-quality collateral in DeFi lending markets.
Importantly, banks can offer seamless access to stablecoins without causing customer attrition. Through embedded wallets or custodial sub-accounts, customers can hold USDC, USDT, or FDIC-insured digital dollars (for payments, remittances, or yield-generating investments) directly within the bank’s application without leaving the bank’s ecosystem. This “walled garden” model resembles neobanks but with regulated trust.
Looking ahead, major banks may form consortia to issue branded stablecoins backed 1:1 by centralized reserves. These stablecoins can achieve instant settlement on public chains while complying with regulatory requirements, thereby bridging traditional finance with programmable money.
If a bank views blockchain as infrastructure rather than an ancillary tool, it is likely to capture the next trillion-dollar opportunity.
Use Case Two: Fintech Companies and Neobanks
Fintech companies and neobanks are rapidly integrating cryptocurrencies into their core offerings through strategic partnerships with established platforms such as Robinhood, Revolut, and Webull. These collaborations enable seamless use and secure custody of digital assets while providing instant trading access to tokenized versions of traditional equities, effectively bridging the gap between conventional finance and blockchain-based markets.
Beyond partnerships, fintech firms can also build and launch their own blockchain infrastructure by leveraging specialized service providers like Alchemy. As a leader in the blockchain development platform space, Alchemy offers scalable node infrastructure, enhanced APIs, and developer tools that streamline the creation of custom Layer-1 or Layer-2 networks. This empowers fintech companies to tailor blockchains for specific use cases such as high-throughput payments, decentralized identity verification, or RWA (risk-weighted authorization), while ensuring compliance with evolving regulatory requirements and optimizing for low latency and cost efficiency.
Fintech companies can deepen their engagement in the cryptocurrency space by issuing their own stablecoins and utilizing decentralized protocols provided by platforms like M^0 to mint yield-generating, fungible stablecoins backed by high-quality collateral such as U.S. Treasuries. By adopting this model, fintech firms can mint their tokens on demand, maintain full control over underlying economic mechanisms (including interest accrual and redemption processes), ensure regulatory compliance through transparent on-chain reserves, and participate in co-governance via decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Additionally, they benefit from enhanced liquidity pools in major exchanges and DeFi protocols, reducing fragmentation and boosting user adoption. This approach not only creates new revenue streams but also positions fintech companies as innovators in the programmable money space, fostering customer loyalty in a competitive digital economy.
Use Case 3: Payment Processors
Payment companies are building the ‘stablecoin sandwich’: a multi-layer cross-border settlement system that receives fiat currency on one end and outputs instant, low-cost liquidity in another jurisdiction while minimizing forex spreads, intermediary fees, and settlement delays. The components of the ‘sandwich’ include:
Top Slice (Entry Point): U.S.-based customers send dollars to payment providers such as Stripe, Circle, Ripple, or neobanks like Mercury.
Filling (Minting): Dollars are immediately exchanged 1:1 for regulated stablecoins—typically USDC (Circle), USDP (Paxos), or bank-issued digital dollars.
Bottom Slice (Exit Point): Stablecoins are bridged or swapped into local currency stablecoins—such as aARS (Argentine peso peg), BRLA (Brazil), or MXNA (Mexico)—or directly into central bank digital currency pilot projects (e.g., Drex in Brazil).
Settlement: Funds arrive at T+0 (instantly) in local bank accounts, mobile wallets, or merchant payments, with total costs typically below 0.1%, compared to 3-7% via SWIFT + correspondent banking.
Western Union, the 175-year-old remittance giant processing over $300 billion annually, recently announced the integration of stablecoins into its ecosystem. In July 2025, Pantera Capital CEO Devin McGranahan stated that the company had historically been ‘cautious’ about cryptocurrencies due to concerns about volatility and regulatory issues. However, the introduction of the Genius Act has changed this stance.
“As the rules become increasingly clear, we see a genuine opportunity to integrate digital assets into our operations,” said McGranahan during the Q3 2025 earnings call. The result: Western Union is actively testing stablecoin solutions for treasury settlements and customer payments, leveraging blockchain technology to eliminate the cumbersome processes associated with correspondent banking.
Zelle, the peer-to-peer payment giant backed by banks (part of Early Warning Services, a consortium that includes JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo & Co), facilitates over USD 1 trillion in fee-free transfers annually within the United States through simple phone numbers or email addresses. It now boasts more than 2,300 partner institutions and 150 million users. However, cross-border payments had remained unattainable until now. On October 24, 2025, Early Warning announced a stablecoin initiative aimed at expanding Zelle into international markets, offering “the same speed and reliability” overseas.
As banks, fintechs/neobanks, and payment processors integrate cryptocurrencies in an intuitive, plug-and-play, and compliant manner (minimizing regulatory touchpoints wherever possible), they can continue to expand their global reach and strengthen relationships.
Conclusion
CaaS is not hype—it represents a transformation of infrastructure, making cryptocurrency invisible to end users. Just as people don’t think about AWS while streaming Netflix or Salesforce when viewing CRM systems, consumers and businesses won’t consider blockchain when conducting instant cross-border payments or accessing tokenized assets. The winners of this transformation are not companies retrofitting cryptocurrency as an afterthought into legacy systems but rather institutions and enterprises that view blockchain as foundational—and investors who support the underlying technologies enabling it all.
