Banca d’Italia Finds Stablecoins Offer Little Remittance Advantage
Stablecoins have been promoted as a way to improve cross-border remittances by enabling around-the-clock transfers, faster settlement and fewer intermediaries. Those features are often presented as an answer to the high fees and slow delivery associated with conventional money-transfer services. Research from Banca d’Italia, however, suggests that rapid blockchain settlement does not necessarily make the complete remittance process cheaper or faster for users.
Banca d’Italia researchers found that stablecoins currently provide no systematic cost advantage over traditional remittance channels, while gains in transfer speed are also limited. The findings challenge a central argument for using dollar-linked and other stable-value tokens in cross-border payments. The study indicates that, under present market conditions, stablecoins have yet to deliver a broad, measurable improvement in either the price or speed of remittances.
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The history behind this eventBank of Italy Finds Stablecoins Lack Consistent Remittance Edge
Stablecoins are often promoted as a faster, cheaper alternative to correspondent banking for cross-border remittances. Yet an end-to-end transfer still requires users to fund an exchange, convert local currency into USDC, move the tokens on-chain and cash out into the recipient’s currency. Bank of Italy research found that domestic payment rails, foreign-exchange conversion and fiat on- and off-ramps matter more to overall performance than blockchain fees.
The Bank of Italy published the study on July 30, 2026, after conducting mystery-shopping transfers of 200 USDC across 10 corridors linking Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Japan. Total costs ranged from 0.30% to nearly 9% of the amount sent, showing no consistent advantage over conventional services. Transfers settled within 20 minutes where instant-payment systems were available, but took one to two business days when standard bank transfers were required.
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