The benchmark spanning 108 countries and 260 corridors said June reached negative 5.9 bps, while routing and regional differences remained a major driver of cross-border payment costs.
Borderless’s Q2 2026 stablecoin payments benchmark found cross-border payments priced below interbank foreign exchange rates in every month of the quarter, with a median Parity Gap of negative 3.2 basis points and a June reading of negative 5.9 basis points, the lowest this year. The report tracked 260 corridors across 108 countries and 59 currencies using 2.96 million rate observations. It said the median cost of delivering a $10,000 payment stayed near $27 through Q2, while using the median provider instead of the best available route added 23.3 basis points, or about $2,330 for every $1 million moved across 81 corridors. Borderless said provider choice has become the biggest avoidable cost lever, with the cheapest route shifting frequently across corridors. The study also pointed to sharp regional divergence, including wider spreads in parts of Africa and narrower spreads in Latin America, while differences between USDC and USDT were small at the network level but wider in some individual markets.