# Traditional Providers Were Cheaper in One-Third of 33 Matched Corridors

By John Kim

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/business/45512
Published: 2026-10-31T13:36:31.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-31T13:36:31.000Z
Section: Business

> A $200 stablecoin transfer averaged 2.18% across 270 corridors, below the G20’s 3% target. The traditional-provider comparison covered 33 matched corridors.

Stablecoin transfers averaged 2.18% on $200 payments across 270 cross-border corridors, below the G20’s 3% target, though the cheapest traditional remittance provider cost less in about one-third of 33 matched corridors.

The calculation spans 18 countries and regions, 29 exchanges, two stablecoins and five blockchains. It covers 4,005 complete transfer routes. The median cost was 1.99%, while results ranged from -2.18% to 8.03%.

A route includes depositing fiat currency at an exchange, buying stablecoins, transferring them over a blockchain, selling them at an exchange in the destination country and withdrawing fiat to a bank account. The blockchain transfer is only one part of the payment process.

Trading fees averaged 0.85% of the transfer amount, and fiat deposit and withdrawal charges averaged 0.67%. Blockchain transfer costs averaged 0.48%, less than one-quarter of the total. Those figures show that trading and the fiat payment steps contributed more to the average cost than moving tokens on-chain.

Transfer size also changed the percentage cost. A $50 payment averaged 4.12%, compared with 1.54% for a $5,000 payment, as fixed fees took a larger share of smaller transfers. Some routes into South Korea had negative calculated costs when stablecoins sold there for more than a benchmark exchange rate. That result reflected a local pricing difference, not a profit for the sender.

The traditional remittance-price comparison covered 33 matched corridors, separate from the study’s 270-corridor sample. In those matched corridors, average stablecoin costs were nearly five percentage points below average traditional-provider costs. But when comparing the cheapest available option in each corridor, a traditional provider cost less in about one-third of cases.

The comparison covers transfers between centralized exchanges. It excludes peer-to-peer, decentralized exchange and decentralized finance routes, as well as transfers where recipients keep the stablecoins instead of converting them to fiat. It also does not account for transfer speed, account opening, identity checks, risk or exchanges’ compliance costs.