How the crypto wallet swap-provider landscape has evolved

By 2025–2026, in-wallet swaps stopped being a feature and became the primary execution layer shaping user trust, retention, and revenue.

In 2025–2026, wallet swaps stopped being a “nice extra.” They became the main journey, the revenue engine, and a core trust signal between you and your users.

The end of “swap as a feature”

Back in 2022–2023, swaps inside wallets looked like a handy add‑on. Users checked their balance in a wallet, then jumped to a CEX or DEX to actually trade. The wallet was storage, and execution lived elsewhere.

By 2025, that model broke. When your user wants to move out of a volatile token into stablecoins, they don’t want three apps, two KYC flows, and a network switch. They want to tap “swap,” confirm, and move on. Wallets that still treated swaps as a side tab started losing users to products where “see balance → rebalance → act” happens in one place.

The bar has changed: “we support swaps” is no longer a differentiator. It’s table stakes. What matters now is how clean, fast, and predictable that swap journey feels.

What changed in user behavior

Your user is not “experimenting” anymore. Early adopters were happy to play with new protocols and UIs. Today’s crypto‑native user sees the wallet as the primary execution layer, not a passive vault.

Their expectations are simple and brutal:

• Instant quotes
  No one wants to wait while you “fetch liquidity.” If quotes spin or time out, they leave.
• No KYC in the middle
  For a non‑custodial wallet, throwing a KYC wall into the flow feels like a betrayal of the core promise.
• High success rate
  Failed swaps are not just a technical metric. They are a direct hit to perceived reliability and support load.

Sending users to external DEXs now feels like a UX failure. You’re asking them to:

• Change context and interface
• Approve new contracts
• Figure out slippage, gas, and routing on their own
• Then come back and trust your app again

Every time that happens, you train them to see your wallet as a viewer, not an execution surface. And once that perception sticks, your product metrics follow.

How in‑wallet swap providers evolved

In 2023–2024, most wallet‑integrated swap solutions were fairly shallow:

• Limited asset coverage (top coins only, a few chains)
• Weak routing with obvious price gaps vs best execution
• Frequent failed swaps on volatile pairs or thin liquidity​

From 2025 onward, the stack started to look very different.

First, liquidity moved from “one DEX source” to aggregation by default. Wallets plugged into multi‑DEX routing, cross‑chain aggregators, and, increasingly, their own meta‑aggregation layers. You weren’t just embedding a widget; you were wiring a routing brain into your product.

Second, long‑tail asset support went from “nice to have” to “expected.” Users want to move in and out of niche tokens, newer L2 ecosystems, and regional favorites, without leaving the wallet. That forced providers to expand their networks and improve how they handle low‑liquidity and exotic pairs.

Third, stability started beating “best theoretical rate.” Product teams realized a harsh truth: users don’t reward you for a 0.2% better quote that fails 10% of the time. They reward you for a fair quote that just works. So the focus shifted from pure rate optimization to:

• Execution reliability
• Smart slippage handling
• Predictable UX around partial fills and failures

This is also where the more mature players started to behave like infrastructure, not like plug‑ins. SafePal is a good example: instead of betting on a single provider, they built their own swap meta‑aggregator and wired in multiple sources as part of a deeper execution layer. From the user’s perspective, it’s just a “SafePal swap.” Under the hood, it’s a full‑blown routing system that the product team actually owns and can iterate on.

Why wallet teams changed how they pick partners

The early BD conversations were mostly about revshare and promo packages. “Who gives us the best percentage?” sounded rational, until product and support teams started doing the actual math.

Now the real questions look more like this:

• How many failed swaps per 1000 attempts?
• How many support tickets per 1000 swaps?
• How much UX control do we have, or do we just iframe someone else’s product?

Reliability and support load moved to the front of the discussion. A provider that pays a bit more but creates 5x more tickets is a net loss for your team. A provider that forces their own modal flows and branding into your product damages your UX consistency and user trust.

Today, a good swap provider acts like an extension of your product team:

• They understand your UX priorities
• They respect your design and brand
• They co‑own the success rate, not just the volume
• They show up when something breaks and help you debug end‑to‑end

SafePal’s approach here is telling: they don’t position their providers as “features.” They treat them as building blocks for their own execution stack. That mindset, “provider as infrastructure, not as a widget,” is becoming the new norm for serious wallets.

Monetization and retention: The quiet growth engine

If you look at wallet revenue models in 2025–2026, swaps are one of the most resilient lines. Why?

Because swap intent is native. In most wallets, users already want to rebalance, hedge, rotate into narratives, or move into stablecoins. When you let them do it in‑wallet with low friction, you’re not forcing a new behavior, you’re capturing an existing one.

Swap usage consistently shows up as a strong signal in growth metrics:

Higher LTV
Users who swap inside the wallet tend to stick around longer and generate more revenue over time.

Better DAU/MAU
Simple, reliable swaps pull people back in regularly to manage their portfolio.

More repeat sessions
Swaps often trigger follow‑up actions: sends, staking, bridging, participation in campaigns or airdrops.

As more teams started tracking this, the obsession with short‑term fee maximization cooled down. For many, the goal shifted from “squeeze every swap” to “price swaps so they feel fair, bring volume, and support long‑term retention”.

In practice, that means:

• Competitive, transparent fees instead of aggressive markups.
• Clear breakdowns of rate, fee, and route where possible.
• Less focus on marketing “lowest fees ever,” more focus on “always works, always clear”.

For many wallets, swaps turned into a quiet growth engine: not always the loudest feature in the roadmap, but often one of the most impactful for your P&L.

Non‑custodial trust as an edge

SimpleSwap makes crypto trading feel effortless. You get instant access to 2,800+ assets and 3.2M+ trading pairs in one non-custodial exchange, live since 2018, and trusted by 100,000+ app installs and 6,000+ partners.

Today, SimpleSwap is more than a place to swap. It’s the crypto engine behind wallets, super apps, and fintech products. One integration gives you full-stack, compliant infrastructure for on-chain and cross-chain flows. Fast. Flexible. Non-custodial. No friction. No complexity. SimpleSwap.

Users are tired of:

• Long registrations
• Surprise KYC mid‑flow
• Custody risk and frozen accounts
• Hidden regional restrictions

Non‑custodial wallets live or die on trust. If your “swap” experience suddenly behaves like a custodial exchange, your user feels the disconnect immediately.

That’s why providers with non‑custodial, no‑registration flows became so attractive for wallet teams. When a user can swap without creating an account, keep custody, and receive funds directly in their wallet, the flow aligns with what they already believe about your product: “I control my assets.”

As SimpleSwap CBDO Olga Peters puts it: “Users don’t wake up thinking, ‘I want another account.’ They just want to move value from A to B, on their terms. If you force registration or custody into that flow, you lose them.” This mindset pushed swap providers to double down on non‑custodial flows, broad asset coverage, and clear rate options, so wallets can offer instant swaps that feel consistent with self‑custody instead of fighting it.

From the user’s point of view, that means: “I don’t have to trust another platform with my coins or my data just to rebalance.” From the wallet’s point of view, it means less friction, fewer surprise KYC complaints, and a swap story that doesn’t break the core non‑custodial promise.

In this environment, “invisible infrastructure” wins over flashy UX. Users don’t need to see who routes the swap. They need to feel that the process is safe, predictable, and honest. Trust becomes a product metric you can measure: incidents per swap, dispute rates, refund flows, and the tone of user feedback whenever something goes wrong.

Regional and product signals of growth

You see the strongest pull toward in‑wallet swaps in LATAM and APAC. In many of these markets, buying crypto is not just investing in speculative assets. People are using it as a tool for everyday payments, remittances, and protection against local currency risk.

Mobile‑first wallets amplified this trend. If your user lives on their phone, your app is their default financial gateway. For them, the first “advanced” action isn’t connecting a wallet to a complex DeFi frontend, it’s hitting swap inside the app they already trust.

In these regions, swap is often the entry point, not an expert‑only feature hidden behind three taps.

After 2026: when swap is no longer special

By 2026, in‑wallet swaps are a standard. Your users don’t give you extra credit for having a swap button. They assume it’s there.

So where does differentiation come from next?

A few clear directions are already visible:

• Deeper routing
  Smarter, multi‑hop routes across chains and liquidity sources that balance price, fees, and execution risk, without overwhelming the user.
• Intent‑based swaps
  Instead of forcing users to think in pairs, you let them express goals: “Exit into stables,” “Rotate into ecosystem X,” “Reduce exposure to token Y,” and you handle the complexity behind the scenes.
• Less and less friction
  Better gas estimations, safer defaults, cleaner failure states, clearer risk warnings, and fewer prompts that break the flow.

For wallet teams, the core message is simple:

You don’t win just because you “support swaps.” You win because swapping in your product feels controlled, fast, boringly reliable, and aligned with non‑custodial values. In 2022, “we have a swap feature” might have sold your roadmap. In 2026, that’s the baseline.

What actually moves the needle now is the quality of execution across the whole journey: quote, route, confirmation, settlement, and after‑swap state. That’s where trust is built. That’s where retention and revenue follow.