forbes.com
The stablecoin cross-border payments industry is growing fast.
Ask any of the hundreds of companies gathered at the Bitso Business Stablecoin Conference in Mexico City earlier this month and they will tell you the same thing: the technology works, the regulatory environment is improving, and the volumes are climbing.
But spend time with the operators actually moving money across borders and a more nuanced picture emerges. Stablecoin-based cross-border payments are faster, more accessible, and increasingly reliable. On price, the industry is not quite there yet.
Why the gap? Stablecoins promise to compress the 60-to-70 basis point fees that FX brokers typically charge on cross-border supplier payments down to 2 to 5 basis points, and the direction of travel is clear.
What has not yet been built at scale are the deep liquidity pools that would make that cost compression real.
Imran Khan, who leads Bitso Business, the B2B arm of one of Latin America’s largest crypto exchanges, put it plainly: the cost advantage of stablecoins is theoretical until institutional liquidity floods the rails.
Once banks begin plugging in directly, pricing will compress and the math will change.
“They’re faster, they’re better. Absolutely. They’re 24-7. Absolutely. But are they cheaper? Not yet. Liquidity pools need to be built,” Khan explained during an interview on the sidelines of the conference.
Addressing the Trust Problem
Bringing that liquidity online will require some behavioral change.
Picture a mid-sized importer in Santos, Brazil, the largest port in Latin America, who has spent years moving payments through the same local FX broker.
That broker charges 60 to 70 basis points. A stablecoin alternative could, in theory, move the same payment for a fraction of that cost. But the importer does not necessarily think about the transaction in terms of basis points. He thinks about his trusted agent who has been handling his foreign exchange for a decade. The one who always picks up the phone and always delivers.
That trust-based relationship is the real barrier to stablecoin adoption in B2B payments, and it will erode only gradually as the price gap becomes impossible to ignore and a new generation of operators stops taking personal relationships as a given.
"It all does come down to trust," said Ezra Kebral, CEO of Caliza, a cross-border payments company processing supplier and treasury transactions between Latin America, North America and Asia.
“It’s not just ‘I’m the cheapest, fastest solution,’” Kebral added. "Do you know what the repercussions are if this payment does not fulfill the criteria that the counterparty needs?"
Complementing, Not Killing, Swift
Contrary to some of the rhetoric coming out of the stablecoin payments world, the companies gaining traction are the ones that have stopped treating existing infrastructure as the enemy.
Caliza’s client base runs from customs brokers in Santos to global payment processors like Flutterwave and India's Skydo, and the company works with disbursement partner LianLian on Latin America-to-China flows.
Despite operating on stablecoin rails, Caliza still routes many transactions through Swift. The reason: in supplier payments, getting the payment right matters as much as getting it there fast. A remittance with the wrong tax codes or missing payment fields can hold goods at customs indefinitely.
"Some of my counterparts may say they’re the ‘Swift killer,’" Kebral said. "I think Swift has done a remarkable job" at creating the standardization that supplier payments require.
That willingness to work alongside legacy systems rather than against them has translated into consistent growth. Caliza has grown more than 40% month-over-month since its launch, with last month reaching 60%.
The company built its own licenses and banking partnerships from the ground up to avoid relying on intermediaries, a decision that looked expensive in the early years and is now looking like a competitive advantage.
Bitso’s Khan reckons that the growth over the last year of stablecoin companies operating in these cross-border corridors has been nothing short of impressive, but he sees a natural selection eventually coming given the structure of the business and its highly-regulated nature.
"The growth trajectory of these companies has been fascinating to see," he said. "There's not yet a graveyard of stablecoin companies. I think there will be at some point."
What determines who stays standing, he argues, comes down to three things: licenses, ramps, and liquidity. Build those, and you have a real business. "Otherwise, you're just kind of a go-between."