Banca d'Italia's 10-corridor USDC study found total remittance costs of 0.3%–9%, with fiat conversion fees, not blockchain costs, driving the gap between promise and reality.
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Researchers at Banca d'Italia executed real transfers of 200 USD Coin (USDC) across 10 international payment corridors in March 2026 and found that stablecoin-based remittances carry no consistent cost advantage over conventional transfer services.
The study, published in July 2026 as Markets, Infrastructures and Payment Systems Paper No. 86, is the first known mystery-shopping exercise on stablecoin remittance costs conducted by a major central bank across multiple countries. Its authors are Alberto Di Iorio, Enrica Di Stefano, Michele Mascioli and Giorgio Trebeschi.
The corridors connected Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE, and Japan, running in both directions for most pairs. Transactions were conducted on March 24 and March 26, 2026. The 200 USDC transfer amount was chosen to align with the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW) standard. The World Bank's Q1 2025 data put the global average remittance cost at approximately 6.4%. That figure sits more than double the 3% target set by the G20 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10.c for 2030.
On-Ramps and Off-Ramps Drive the Cost
Each transfer was broken into five phases. Phase I involved loading local fiat currency onto a crypto exchange. Phase II covered the conversion of that fiat into USDC. Phase III was the on-chain blockchain transfer of USDC to the recipient's exchange wallet. Phase IV covered the recipient's sale of USDC for local fiat. Phase V was the withdrawal of local fiat to the recipient's bank account. The on-chain transfer was the cheapest component in every corridor. It averaged 0.4% of the total transferred amount across all corridors. It dropped as low as 0.01% on the Brazil-to-Italy leg. Exchange trading fees, foreign exchange spreads, and fiat deposit and withdrawal charges accounted for nearly all of the cost in every corridor tested.
Total costs ranged from 0.3% on the Italy-to-Argentina transfer to roughly 9% on both the Argentina-to-Italy and UAE-to-Italy corridors. The Italy-to-Argentina figure requires a caveat. The calculation used Argentina's official central bank retail exchange rate, which diverges from the effective market rate applied in actual crypto transactions. The crypto-embedded peso rate runs higher than the official benchmark, meaning the low apparent cost partly reflects a measurement artifact tied to Argentina's multiple exchange rate system. Using a parallel market rate would raise the stated cost of that corridor considerably. The UAE-to-Italy cost reached roughly 9% because the only funding method available to the sender at the time was a credit card, which carried a 3.8% surcharge.
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When compared against Wise, one of the largest money transfer operators globally, USDC transfers came out cheaper in three corridors. Those were Italy to Argentina, Italy to South Africa, and Brazil to Italy. The Brazil-to-Italy direction produced the clearest gap. USDC cost 2.21% against Wise's range of 4.68% to 4.89% for the same route. In four other corridors, USDC was more expensive than Wise. Those corridors were Argentina to Italy, Italy to UAE, UAE to Italy, and Italy to Brazil. South Africa posted the highest World Bank RPW average in the sample at 15.23%, and USDC came in at 5.44% for that direction. That gap is substantial in absolute terms, even though the stablecoin cost itself was not low by international standards.
Speed Depends on Local Banking Rails
Settlement times split sharply depending on the domestic payment infrastructure of the countries involved. In Italy, Brazil, and Argentina, where instant payment systems handle fiat transfers, the entire five-step process was completed in under 20 minutes.
Brazil's PIX system settles transactions in an average of three seconds, per International Monetary Fund data published in 2023. South Africa relies on standard bank transfers for the funding and withdrawal phases, producing end-to-end settlement times of one to two business days. The speed advantage typically associated with stablecoins did not exist in the South Africa corridor at all.
Japan could not be assessed on the same basis as other corridors. Local regulations restrict retail USDC access to a single domestic operator. That operator does not permit direct outbound transfers to foreign exchanges. The researchers were therefore required to use an unhosted wallet as an intermediate step, a workflow the paper describes as incompatible with ordinary retail use.
The paper concludes that stablecoins function as a complement to domestic instant payment infrastructure rather than a replacement for it. It identifies regulatory design as a primary factor determining whether stablecoin transfers are practical and affordable for ordinary users. Highly restrictive frameworks raise costs, reduce the number of available operators, and push users toward offshore platforms.
Meanwhile, outright prohibitions redirect demand into unregulated channels without eliminating it. The paper also notes that the greatest potential efficiency gain would come if recipients could spend stablecoins directly in the real economy, which would remove the fiat conversion step entirely and eliminate the off-ramp cost that currently drives the bulk of total transfer costs.
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