Stablecoins Offer Cheaper Cross-Border Payments in Emerging Markets, but Off-Ramps Remain a Bottleneck

Stablecoins are typically pegged to fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar and can settle cross-border transactions directly over blockchains, reducing the costs of correspondent banking, batch clearing and prefunding local currencies. Delphi Digital said total fees for traditional remittances in foreign-exchange corridors such as Argentina and Nigeria can reach as high as 8%, with 81% of those fees used to support banking infrastructure. That leaves significant room for alternatives.

Citing Delphi Digital research on March 17, 2026, Cointelegraph reported that stablecoin minting and redemption can be completed within seconds. Moving funds into bank accounts, however, remains constrained by wire-transfer batch schedules, access to banking services and regulatory restrictions, making off-ramps a bottleneck. DeFiLlama data showed that supply increased from $308 billion on February 17 to $316 billion on March 17, a monthly gain of 2.5%.