A Bank of Italy research report released in July 2026 used a first-of-its-kind "mystery shopper" investigation to track 200 USDC transfers across 10 corridors linking Italy with Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE and Japan. Total stablecoin remittance costs ranged from 0.3% to almost 9%, while on-chain transfers averaged just 0.4% of the total. Most expenses came from fiat deposit and withdrawal stages, including exchange spreads, credit-card charges and withdrawal fees. Stablecoins were cheaper than traditional services such as Wise on some routes, including Brazil to Italy, but more expensive on others, such as the UAE to Italy. Blockchain transfers took only a few minutes, but end-to-end timing depended on local payment infrastructure: Brazil's PIX, Italy's TIPS and Argentina's Transferencias 3.0 kept transfers below 20 minutes, while South Africa's reliance on traditional bank transfers extended arrival times to one or two business days. The report said stablecoin and traditional payment infrastructure are complementary rather than substitutive. It also described regulatory fragmentation, contrasting the EU's MiCA and the US's GENIUS Act with Japan's strict "safety first" access regime, transitional frameworks in India and Turkey, and prohibitive measures in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that pushed activity into gray channels rather than suppressing demand.