Bank of Italy research: Stablecoin remittances have no systemic cost advantage, and on-chain links account for only a small part

Comparatively, in a research report released in July 2026, the Bank of Italy first passed the “mystery customer” empirical survey to track 200 USDC transfers across ten corridors between Italy and Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan. The results showed that the total cost of stablecoin remittance fluctuated greatly, with a minimum of only 0.3% and a maximum close to 9%. The average transfer on the blockchain chain accounts for only 0.4%. Most of the costs are concentrated in fiat currency withdrawal and recharge — traditional intermediary fees such as exchange transaction price differences, credit card fees, and withdrawal fees are decisive factors. Compared with traditional channels such as Wise, stablecoins have a cost advantage in some channels such as Brazil → Italy, but channels such as the UAE → Italy are more expensive and show a high degree of “channel specificity.”

In terms of speed, blockchain transfers themselves only take a few minutes, but end-to-end efficiency depends entirely on the quality of traditional payment infrastructure in the destination country. Countries with instant payment systems such as Brazil (PIX), Italy (TIPS), and Argentina (Transferencias 3.0) can control the entire process within 20 minutes; countries that rely on traditional bank transfers, such as South Africa, extend the delivery time to 1 to 2 business days. The report points out that the efficiency of stablecoin remittance is determined by itself and the surrounding traditional payment infrastructure, and the two are complementary rather than alternative relationships. The report also analyzed the impact of global regulatory fragmentation: the European Union's MiCA and the US GENIUS Act represent a mature compliance framework; Japan's strict “safety priority” entry reduces nominal costs, but the process is complicated, causing users to flow out to offshore platforms; countries such as India and Turkey are in a transitional regulatory phase; prohibited countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have failed to curb demand and instead push transactions into gray channels.

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