How UGLYCASH Built a Portfolio UX for The Opportunity App

When your users live in countries where the local currency can lose value overnight, showing them exactly what they own isn’t a feature. It's the core product.

UGLYCASH is a LatAm-focused fintech that helps remote workers and crypto users earn, spend, and grow money globally. To deliver a complete portfolio experience without building blockchain infrastructure from scratch, the team turned to Zerion API.

What is UGLYCASH?

UGLYCASH calls itself "The Opportunity App". 

It started as a neobank for remote workers receiving payments from the U.S. It evolved into a full financial platform serving users across El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Paraguay, and beyond.

The product does a lot: USD and EUR virtual bank accounts, a Visa card with cashback, cross-border transfers, stablecoin yields, trading of tokenized stocks, crypto, tokenized ETFs, and tokenized commodities. Over 30,000 people use it monthly, and it operates under US regulatory frameworks through licensed partners.

What makes UGLYCASH different from a typical crypto wallet or a typical neobank is that it blends both worlds. Within the same app, users can receive a paycheck via ACH or wire, hold stablecoins earning yield, and trade tokens on Solana, Base, and Ethereum. UGLYCASH was founded in San Francisco, where the company is headquartered, while the team is primarily based in Argentina. It has a bold, TikTok-first brand that doesn't pull punches ("Your bank won't do this").

The challenge: Multichain portfolio visibility

As UGLYCASH expanded from stablecoins and fiat rails into onchain trading, the team needed to show users their complete crypto portfolio: positions, balances, and values across multiple chains.

Building that from scratch would mean running blockchain indexers, maintaining token lists, handling price feeds, and normalizing data across EVM chains and Solana. For a fast-moving fintech focused on user experience and market expansion, managing infrastructure was the wrong use of engineering time.

The team needed a way to pull portfolio data that was accurate, fast, and covered the long tail of tokens their users were trading. When users in Bolivia or Argentina are navigating currency instability and looking for financial opportunity through crypto, the data behind their portfolio has to be reliable.

The solution: Zerion API's portfolio endpoints

UGLYCASH integrated Zerion API to power the portfolio section of their app. 

Instead of stitching together data from multiple providers, a single integration delivers token balances, positions, and fiat-converted values across all supported chains.

For UGLYCASH, this meant their users could see holdings on Solana, Base, Binance Smart Chain, and other networks in one unified view. It shows dollar values that actually made sense to someone in Tegucigalpa or Quito.

Zerion API handles the complexity that would have otherwise required significant backend work. It takes care of multichain token discovery, price normalization, and real-time balance aggregation. The team can focus on what they do best: building an accessible financial product for underserved markets.

"Zerion gives us the portfolio layer we need without the infrastructure overhead. Our users are active across multiple chains, and they need to see all of it in one place, in dollars, instantly. Zerion API makes that possible so we can stay focused on the product experience." — Matt Robinson, CTO at UGLYCASH

The impact: A complete financial picture

With Zerion API, UGLYCASH transformed from a stablecoin-and-payments app into a full financial platform with real portfolio visibility.

Users across Latin America can now open the app and see their complete crypto holdings alongside their stablecoin balances, card activity, and payment history. That unified view matters for a user base that's actively diversifying out of volatile local currencies and into crypto, US stocks, and stablecoins.

For the UGLYCASH team, the integration freed up engineering resources that would have gone into building and maintaining blockchain data infrastructure. Instead, that time went toward expanding into new markets, adding trading features, and growing the 2,000+ content creator program that drives the app's TikTok-first acquisition strategy.

The portfolio feature also strengthened UGLYCASH's positioning as more than a payment tool. It’s the piece that turns it into an “opportunity app” where users don’t just hold and spend. They actively track and grow their wealth while discovering what others invest in. Biewing others' positions in real time, sharing these, joining trading clubs, and interacting with other users.

What's next

UGLYCASH continues to expand across Latin America and globally, adding local banking rails, new trading capabilities, and deeper portfolio analytics for its growing user base. 

As the app adds more asset types, such as prediction markets and US equities, Zerion API provides the foundation for keeping portfolio data accurate and comprehensive across chains.

For fintech teams building for emerging markets, the takeaway is clear: you don't need to build blockchain infrastructure to deliver a great portfolio experience. Instead, create free Zerion API keys and start building today.