The Bank of Italy released a research report noting that “mystery shopping” experiments revealed that stablecoins are not necessarily cheaper than traditional methods for cross-border remittances. The study tracked remittances from Italy to 10 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Japan, and the results showed that, although on-chain transfer fees are lower, the total cost of stablecoin remittances—including end-to-end costs such as exchange fees, foreign exchange spreads, and banking network fees—is comparable to or even higher than that of traditional remittance providers, with fees ranging from 0.3% to nearly 9%. The report acknowledges that stablecoins still offer advantages in specific scenarios, but they have not yet achieved a universal cost advantage across the entire payment chain.