Report: Stablecoins Are Reshaping Remittances
Remittance rails have scarcely changed in fifty years, and the cost shows up in three places: a 6.49% average fee on a $200 transfer, three to five business days to settle, and hundreds of billions of dollars locked in pre-funded accounts to guarantee it arrives on time.
An Evolution of Money Movement: How Stablecoins on Solana Are Reshaping Remittances is a new report from Solana Foundation, written for established money transfer operators and fintech startups evaluating what to do about it.
What the report finds
- Transfers are still treated as dead ends. There is no additive service such as a savings account, credit score, investment access, or financial identity attached to it
- The market still ignores 1.3 billion unbanked adults, even though nearly half of them carry smartphones
- Sending remittances using stablecoins settles nearly instantly, is highly cost-efficient, and reaches the unbanked
Who is already building it
Western Union launched USDPT, issued through Anchorage Digital Bank, alongside its Digital Asset Network and Stablecard with Rain. Zepz, the company behind WorldRemit and Sendwave, launched the Sendwave Wallet for recipients across more than 100 countries. Tala, which serves 13 million customers in emerging markets, deployed a $50 million tokenized lending facility with Huma Finance.
Underneath them, Yellow Card, Flutterwave, Bitso, Trace Finance, and Sphere Pay handle local conversion in the corridors where the money lands.
What's inside
- The composable stack, with the Solana projects deployed at each layer
- Five business models beyond money movement, from wallets as financial platforms to stablecoin issuance as revenue
- Four entry paths, from low-risk treasury optimization to launching a full stablecoin platform, each with its barrier to entry, time to value, and revenue model
- Corridor deep dives for the U.S. to Mexico and Brazil, Nigeria, the Philippines, and India, with the flows, the partners, and the regulations in each market
- Regulatory detail and risks, market by market
The first generation of stablecoin-powered remittance products is here.
