Banca d’Italia study challenges stablecoin remittance claims
New research from Italy’s central bank casts doubt on the promise that stablecoin remittances can cut fees and speed up cross‑border money transfers.
Study Shows No Clear Cost Edge
The Banca d’Italia examined corridors linking Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Japan. It compared transfers of the USDC token against established money‑transfer operators.
Results indicated total costs ranging from 0.3% to almost 9%. In several cases the digital‑dollar option cost more than the traditional services it was meant to replace.
For context, the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide index reported an average charge of 6.36% in Q3 2025. Major operators such as Western Union averaged 5.52%, a figure that sits inside the range observed for the crypto‑based transfers.
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Industry Experts Cite On‑Ramp Friction
Fintech strategist Daniela Sozzi argued the test was “fundamentally flawed” because it used a modest $200 transaction size. In an email she said stable‑coin benefits appear only for sums of at least $100,000, a scale still small compared with wholesale correspondent‑bank deals that run into millions.
She noted the $200 benchmark matches the World Bank’s standard for its index, which explains why the two systems looked comparable at that level.
According to a Bank for International Settlements paper released earlier this year, cross‑border payments—including remittances and retail transactions—remain more costly and slower than domestic equivalents.
Alexander Taskey, chief executive of settlement platform Frame, said most of the expense comes from moving funds on and off the blockchain, not from the blockchain itself. “Much of the cost around crypto‑backed tokens comes from on‑ and off‑ramps, since that requires moving in and out of legacy payments infrastructure,” he wrote.
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Pankaj Bengani, founder of Meld, echoed that sentiment: the blockchain cost is negligible once fiat lands on the chain; the bulk of fees are baked into the entry and exit points.
These observations suggest that judging the technology solely on current consumer‑facing pricing ignores a larger structural shift. The bottleneck lies in the surrounding legacy networks, not the settlement layer itself. As the supporting infrastructure improves, the cost advantage could become more pronounced.
Taskey added that once funds sit on the chain, transaction fees “collapse to near zero.”
For now, the Italian central bank’s findings remind market participants that while blockchain settlement can be cheap and fast, the surrounding financial architecture still adds significant cost.
