Traditional cross-border payments cost time, money, and transparency. SWIFT wires take two to five business days. Intermediary banks each add their own fees and currency conversion markup. Bank transfers can cost around ~3–7% depending on the corridor and provider. And tracking a payment between banks is often guesswork.
The “stablecoin sandwich” is quickly emerging as the solution. This is a cross-border payment model where the sender pays in their local currency, the money travels across a blockchain as a stablecoin, and the recipient receives payment in their local currency – often at near-instant speeds. In simple terms: sender’s local currency → stablecoin → recipient’s local currency.
The best part? There are no slow, expensive intermediaries in between.
What’s ahead:
A stablecoin sandwich is a cross-border payment that works in three steps:
In other words, a stablecoin sandwich places local currency on both ends, with a stablecoin in the middle.
A key factor here is that neither the sender nor recipient needs to deal with stablecoins. The sender can convert their local currency with a licensed payment provider, and the recipient receives payment in their preferred currency. The stablecoin layer operates entirely behind the scenes.
A variation of the stablecoin sandwich – the "open sandwich", or also so-called, the "stablecoin toast” – allows the recipient to accept stablecoins, which they hold in a digital wallet and convert as needed. The “open sandwich”, then, is simply a 2-step framework:
This is a particularly popular option for contractor and creator payouts in emerging markets. Recipients may prefer to hold dollar-denominated assets rather than converting directly to a more volatile currency, such as Nigerian naira (NGN), Argentine peso (ARS), or Turkish lira (TRY).
Traditional cross-border payments cost time, money, and transparency. SWIFT wires take two to five business days. Intermediary banks each add their own fees and currency conversion markup. Bank transfers can cost around ~3–7% depending on the corridor and provider. And tracking a payment between banks is often guesswork.