A Bank of Italy test of USD Coin (USDC) found stablecoin remittances can cost nearly 9%, with fiat conversion and withdrawal charges overwhelming cheap blockchain transfers.
Key Points:
- Researchers sent 200 USDC across 10 corridors, with total costs ranging from 0.3% to 8.96%.
- On-chain transfers averaged only 0.4% of the amount sent.
- Stablecoins beat Wise on three corridors and cost more on four, while speed depended on local payment rails.
USDC Transfer Costs
The Bank of Italy published the mystery-shopping study Jul. 30 after researchers Alberto Di Iorio, Enrica Di Stefano, Michele Mascioli and Giorgio Trebeschi executed the transfers in Mar. 2026. They moved 200 USDC through ten routes linking Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Japan, recording each funding, purchase, blockchain transfer, sale and withdrawal step.
Total costs ranged from 0.30% for Italy-to-Argentina to 8.96% for Argentina-to-Italy, while the on-chain component averaged only 0.4% across the study. Fiat fees caused most of the difference. In the UAE-to-Italy route, a 3.8% credit-card surcharge helped push the overall cost to 8.95%, showing how access to local banking services can determine the final bill.
The paper cited a 6.4% global remittance average, still above the United Nations' target of below 3% by 2030. Blockchain settlement was rarely the expensive part.
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Stablecoin Payment Rails
Against World Bank country-level outbound averages, USDC was cheaper for Brazil, Italy and South Africa but more expensive for the UAE, where the benchmark was 2.65%. A same-route comparison with Wise, simulated on Apr. 14, found USDC cheaper in three corridors and more expensive in four, with one route unavailable.
Speed depended on local banking infrastructure.
Transfers finished in under 20 minutes where instant systems such as Brazil's Pix and the euro area's TIPS handled fiat funding or withdrawals, while South African routes took one to two business days. The researchers said this makes stablecoins complements to efficient domestic payment systems rather than substitutes for them, because on-ramps and off-ramps remain the main bottleneck.
The experiment ran on Mar. 24 and 26, 2026, during low blockchain congestion and covered one stablecoin across a limited set of jurisdictions. The authors cautioned that different tokens, operators, market structures and regulations could produce different outcomes, limiting any broad claim that stablecoins are inherently cheaper.
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