Banca d'Italia has published a mystery-shopping study that complicates one of the main claims around stablecoin payments: that they are reliably cheaper for cross-border remittances.

The paper tested transfers of 200 USDC across ten corridors linking Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan. Its headline finding was conservative but important: stablecoin transfers showed no systematic cost advantage over traditional remittance channels once the full end-to-end payment path was counted.

The study says total costs ranged from 0.30% to nearly 9% of the transferred amount. On-chain transfer fees were only a marginal part of that total. Most friction came before and after the blockchain step, including exchange fees, foreign-exchange spreads, cash-out charges, and the domestic payment rails used to move money into or out of stablecoins.

Speed varied for similar reasons. Where instant payment systems were available, settlement could complete in under 20 minutes. Where standard bank transfers were required, the end-to-end process could stretch to one or two business days.

The result does not argue that stablecoins are useless for payments. It does suggest that remittance economics depend less on the blockchain transaction itself than on the surrounding financial infrastructure. For builders and policymakers, that shifts the question from whether stablecoin rails are fast in isolation to whether on-ramps, off-ramps, regulation, and local payment systems can make the full route cheaper and more reliable.