Enhancing Cross-Border Payment Efficiency with Stablecoins: Reducing Costs and Settlement Delays

This study explores how emerging digital payment technologies—particularly stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)—are transforming the global payment landscape, with a specific focus on enhancing cross-border transactions. By examining efficiency gains and cost reductions achieved through stablecoin-based payments, this study highlights the potential of stablecoins to streamline international payments, reducing transaction times by 30% and cutting fees significantly. Stablecoin transactions enable direct, traceable payments on the blockchain, bypassing traditional intermediaries and improving transparency. CBDCs offer further benefits by enhancing security, as they allow direct payment authorizations under central banks’ oversight, potentially eliminating the need for third-party involvement. Additionally, this study considers environmental implications, as stablecoins can be deployed with lower energy requirements than traditional blockchain models, supporting more sustainable financial operations. A multi-method approach was used, incorporating economic modeling, energy consumption analysis, and security assessment through the Stablecoin Payment Framework (SPF). Results demonstrate that SPF reduces data exposure risk by 70%, increases interoperability by 50%, and significantly reduces transaction times, achieving a new standard for efficient and secure global payments. While stablecoins provide notable advancements, challenges remain regarding scalability for high transaction volumes. These findings underscore the urgent need for secure, sustainable, and scalable digital payment infrastructures as digital assets reshape the financial landscape.