Deconstructing the Stablecoin Sandwich: The Cost of Cross-Border Stablecoin Transfers

Andre Reslow, Edona Reshidi, Andrew Usher, Jeanne Verrier and Marcello Miccoli

No 2026/230, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Stablecoins are presented as a low-cost alternative to traditional cross-border payment channels, but evidence to support this claim remains limited. We develop a cost accounting framework that traces the full “stablecoin sandwich'”: fiat in, stablecoin transfer, fiat out. We manually collect data on costs from publicly available information across 270 directed corridors covering 18 countries, 29 exchanges, and over 4,000 complete routes. Assuming users select the cheapest options for fiat on- and off- ramps, we estimate that the average cost of a $200 transfer is around 2 percent across all corridors, below the G20 target of 3 percent and cheaper than traditional remittances on average. However, in roughly one-third of corridors where granular information on costs through traditional routes is available, the cheapest traditional provider offers a lower cost than the cheapest stablecoin route. Trading fees and fiat rail (on- and off-ramp) fees account for the majority of total costs, while the stablecoin premium—the deviation of local exchange prices of stablecoins from benchmark exchange rates—is the primary driver of cross-corridor variation, pushing costs below zero in some corridors and above 8 percent in others.

Keywords: stablecoins; cross-border payments; remittances; transaction costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44
Date: 2026-10-30
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