Onchain Remittances Make Sending Money 150× Cheaper
This is not a promise. This is already happening.
For a long time, onchain remittances lived on conference slides: a compelling idea that struggled to cross the gap between tech demo and everyday use. That gap has closed. The rails are real, the costs are real, and the impact is measurable.
Traditional average cost
To send $200 internationally: ~6.65%, over $13 per transfer. (World Bank, 2024)
Median onchain cost
The same $200 sent onchain: approximately $0.09. Less than 0.1%. Roughly 150× cheaper.
Mexico's remittances
Over $60 billion in annual remittances. The largest source of foreign income in the country, ahead of oil and tourism.
For families whose survival depends on those funds arriving in full, a 6.65% cut is not a fee. It is a tax on poverty. Each percentage point saved on Mexico's remittance volume translates to hundreds of millions of dollars that stay with families instead of with financial intermediaries.
The rails exist. Wallets built on Base, apps built on Stellar, and a growing ecosystem of onramps in LATAM are making this practical at street level. The bottleneck is no longer the technology. It is awareness, UX, and regulatory clarity. Those are solvable problems, and people are actively solving them.
What changes when the cost of moving money approaches zero? That is the question LATAM builders should be building around right now. Not as a future thought experiment, but as the present market reality.
If you're building remittance infrastructure or onramps in LATAM, I want to know about it. Let's talk.