Central Bank of Italy: stablecoin remittances are not always cheaper

Fiat currency conversion and local payment networks are the dominant factors, not blockchain fees.

Stabilocin savings show advantages in some regions but disappear in others.

The cheapest path in Argentina reflects exchange rate gaps rather than true efficiency.

Only recipients keep funds on the chain rather than convert them into cash. In order to achieve full savings

Researchers at the Bank of Italy conducted 200 real remittance tests through the stablecoin system, but did not buy the industry's core selling point. In the "mystery customer" study, released in late July 2026, researchers sent USDC worth US$200 through ten remittance channels (connecting Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Japan) and measured the actual amount that eventually arrived. Total costs range from 0.30% for the cheapest channel to nearly 9% for the most expensive channel. This huge difference is enough to refute the claim that digital dollars are cheaper than bank wire transfers or money transfer agencies. And the blockchain link-the most popular part of cryptocurrency marketing-accounts for almost no proportion of the cost.

Test using real transfers instead of list prices

Researchers Alberto Di Iorio, Enrica Di Stefano, Michele Mascioli and Giorgio Trebeschi did not simulate hypothetical costs. They transferred real funds on March 24 and 26, 2026, purchasing USDC on exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, Ripio and Foxbit, most of which were sent through Ethereum and converted into local currency at the end. Each link is timed and priced. They then compared the results to the global average cost of 6.65% reported by the World Bank and simulated transfers conducted through Wise.

Test data: 200 USDC transfers x US$200;10 channels (two-way); total cost range 0.30%-8.96%; blockchain costs account for approximately 0.4%; 3 out of 7 channels are better than Wise; instant delivery <20分钟，非即时到账1–2天。

The authors point out that their conclusions only represent personal views and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Bank of Italy.

Most costs arise before and after on-chain transactions

Sending USDC between two wallets is almost free. In modern Layer-1 and Layer-2 networks, on-chain fees are only a fraction of a penny, and studies have confirmed that they are almost negligible in the total cost. The costly parts are at both ends. Recharging a crypto account with a bank card or wire transfer usually triggers a 1% to 3% handling fee. The heaviest blow comes from foreign exchange conversions: When a USDC anchored in the U.S. dollar is exchanged for illiquid or volatile currencies such as the Argentine peso or the South African rand, local exchanges generate huge bid-ask spreads, which quietly eats up the value. Subsequently, recipients still need to withdraw funds to domestic bank accounts, which requires local clearing systems, which will charge their own wire transfer fees. What migrant workers need is not tokens, but cash that their families can spend, and each step of returning cash adds an additional fee.

Argentina's 0.30% path is the exchange rate gap, not efficiency

The Italia-Argentina channel has the lowest cost, at only 0.30%, which looks like a victory for stablecoin, but the reasons need to be explored. Argentina has an official exchange rate and a parallel market exchange rate far below, and the gap between the two-not the blockchain advantage-has contributed to this low price. The same distortion also penalizes reverse remittances: the cost of the Argentina-Italy route was as high as 8.96%, the worst result in the entire sample. In the same country, in two directions, the cost difference is nearly 30 times, which has nothing to do with the underlying technology.

Brazil's Pix system does what blockchain cannot do

If a country has a modern instant payment system, funds will exit the channel quickly and cheaply. Brazil's Pix system allows researchers to exchange cash almost in real time and at minimum cost, which is why Brazil's remittance channels perform well. By divesting this infrastructure, stablecoin transfers became an expensive circuitous route that would ultimately be completed through slow traditional bank wire transfers. Efficiency belongs to the local payment network of the destination country, and stablecoins are just tools attached to them and cannot replace them.

Central banks are testing their own tokenized currencies

The Bank of Italy is not raising these issues in isolation. On July 30, 2026, the Bank for International Settlements reported that the Project Agorá project had completed its true value test. 28 private institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS and Standard Chartered Bank participated in the process with five central banks and completed 30 real-time transactions worth approximately US$1 million. For the crypto industry, the key lies in the operating basis of the system: Agorá tokenizes central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits rather than using public stablecoins, and completes settlement of six currencies without directly connecting to the bank's traditional core system.

Related projects: Project Agorá (BIS): 30 tokenized transfers, approximately 80 seconds, in six currencies;Project Acacia (RBA): Wholesale CBDC and tokenized private assets; Bank of Japan: CBDC pilot and private payment operators; Bank Malaysia: B2B stablecoin backed by ringgit, launched in 2026.

Reasons for keeping funds on the chain and why the country opposes it

The Bank of Italy has made a point that the stablecoin camp would be happy to amplify: If users simply leave money on the chain, the savings will be "significantly higher." If a worker sends USDC and family members buy groceries, pay utilities or phone bills directly through the wallet app, the cost of exiting the channel drops to zero and the entire friction problem disappears. This is the closed-loop vision-a parallel dollar economy that achieves the World Bank's remittance target of less than 3% by having no exposure to local currencies at all.

The industry's own data points in the opposite direction. Benchmarking platform Borderless.xyz found that in the second quarter of 2026, cross-border payments in stablecoins were priced below the interbank exchange rate on 260 channels. Western Union also launched its own dollar-backed token in May, a sign that even traditional money transfer agencies expect this "track" to persist.

Governments across the world read the same scenes, but see threats. If households in Argentina or South Africa start settling daily transactions with dollar-backed tokens, they will dollarize their economies from the bottom, which would deprive the central bank of control over monetary policy and increase the risk of capital flight. Some of the exit channel friction measured in the study is indeed truly inefficient, but some of it is deliberate. Strict KYC and AML rules, local transaction taxes, and hidden bank bottlenecks are all designed to keep funds in the sovereign monetary system, and as long as stablecoins appear to be competitors rather than tools, these obstacles are unlikely to be relaxed.

Future differentiation paths for remittance markets

The likely outcome is two independent systems. Regulated channel traffic will shift to Agorá type bank-interoperable multi-currency ledgers, where tokenized bank funds flow under central bank supervision rather than on the original public track. FinTech aggregators such as Thunder and Yellow Card continue to build dedicated local API channels to optimize the last mile in specific countries. At the same time, the use of point-to-point stablecoins has remained strong in high-inflation economies, where a household would rather bear high offshore transaction costs than see its savings eroded by local currencies. Europe's MiCA framework and the United States 'GENIUS Act are pushing private stablecoins into the formal fence, while other regions are accelerating the development of sovereign digital currencies designed to close these consumer closed-loop loops.

Fabio Panetta, governor of the Bank of Italy, reached a similar conclusion in May. He believed that stablecoins could play a role in specific channels, but they were not a panacea to solve the problem of expensive remittances. The real job is to upgrade the domestic instant payment network and connect fast payment systems across borders. This prescription puts responsibility back on public infrastructure rather than private tokens. Today, the market value of the stablecoin market is close to US$307 billion, an increase of about 16% in the past year. Pressure to solve this problem is increasing.