Cross-border payment costs are everything that separates what the sender pays from what the recipient can use: sending and receiving fees, deductions by intermediary banks and the FX margin. For business payments the Financial Stability Board puts the average at 1.6% of the amount, and 87% of that is FX.
Most pricing pages quote a fee, but the measured cost is mostly a rate. This guide is organised by use case and region from the G20's own business-payment data, with corridor figures for Brazil, Mexico and Colombia from the BIS. Provider fees are compared in stablecoin API pricing compared, so this page stays market-wide.
What do cross-border payments cost on average?
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) reports on the G20 cost targets every October. Its consolidated progress report of October 9, 2025, built on FXC Intelligence data as of March 2025, splits retail cross-border payments into four use cases: business to business (B2B, for smaller companies), business to person (B2P), person to business (P2B) and person to person (P2P, excluding remittances).
Average cost of retail cross-border payments by use case, as a share of the amount sent (FSB, data as of March 2025).
Use case | Average total cost | FX part | Fee part | FX as share of total | Corridors above 3% |
B2B | 1.6% | 1.4% | 0.2% | 87.1% | 10% |
B2P | 1.8% | 1.4% | 0.5% | 74.5% | 12% |
P2B | 1.9% | 1.9% | 0% | 99.7% | 16% |
P2P | 2.6% | 1.4% | 1.2% | 55.2% | 30% |
The averages are per payment service, not weighted by money moved, and components may not sum because of rounding.
Consumer remittances run much higher, at 6.5% for USD 200 in 2025 (World Bank, as reproduced in the FSB report), the wrong yardstick for a supplier invoice.
Where the money goes: six cost layers
The six layers of cost in a cross-border payment and who controls each.
Layer | Who charges it | Shown on the quote? | Shape |
Sending fee | The sender's bank or provider | Usually | Flat fee or percentage |
Intermediary deductions | Correspondent banks in a wire chain | Rarely | Taken out of the amount in transit |
FX margin | Whoever converts the currency | Often only as a rate | Percentage built into the rate |
Receiving fee | The recipient's bank or provider | Rarely | Flat fee, heavier on small payments |
Network fee | The blockchain network, on stablecoin routes | Varies | Fixed amount per transfer; no figure on this page |
Float | Your own treasury | Never | Interest lost on balances held in advance |
The FX margin is the largest component in every use case: 1.4 points of the 1.6% B2B total. On USD 10,000 the fees are USD 20 and the FX is USD 140, so negotiating the fee line while accepting the rate means negotiating the smaller number. At USD 500,000 a month, 1.4 points of FX margin is USD 7,000 every month, against USD 1,000 in fees.
Receiving-side costs sit outside those averages, and the FSB says not to add them to sender-side numbers. In its 2025 provider survey, receiving fees averaged 1.3% below USD 500 and 0.1% above USD 20,000, plus an extra FX margin of 0.7% to 1.1% where the receiving provider converts.
Over a year that is USD 84,000 in the rate against USD 12,000 in fees, and nobody invoices the rate.
On Lumx the order is explicit, per the Lumx Docs pages on exchange rates and partner fees (read on November 1, 2026). A locked quote returns a base rate and amount and a final rate and amount, and a partner fee set by the platform is priced into it. In the docs example the base target amount is 10,000 USDC and the final one is 9,978 USDC, and that final figure is the one that settles. The gap is the Lumx fee plus the partner fee, plus the lock fee on a one or five minute lock; no FX margin is built into the rate. Once you confirm, Lumx deducts nothing further on a payout over Pix (Brazil's instant payment system), SPEI (Mexico's interbank transfer system) or Bre-B (Colombia's instant payment system): only the recipient's bank can charge from there. How a quote is built is covered in how stablecoin payout pricing works.
What do cross-border payments cost by region and corridor?
The FSB reports retail costs by sending region. A corridor is one sending country paired with one receiving country, such as the United States to Brazil, and the FSB corridor view was not used here.
Average cost of sending retail cross-border payments by sending region (FSB, data as of March 2025).
Sending region | Average cost range | Corridors above 3% |
Europe and Central Asia | 1.0% to 1.9% by use case | 2% for B2B |
Latin America and the Caribbean | 1.9% (P2B) to 3.4% (P2P) | 46% to 55% for B2P and P2P |
North America | 3% or more, except P2B at 1.4% | None for P2B |
Where the receiving provider converts, the extra FX margin averaged 1.7% in Latin America on payments of USD 500 to USD 19,999, against 0.6% in Europe and Central Asia. The Latin America picture is in cross-border payments in Latin America, and a route in what is a stablecoin corridor.
For named corridors the closest primary source is the BIS paper of October 19, 2026 (BIS Working Paper 1385), whose tables cover US-outbound payments to Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. It measures cost in basis points (100 basis points is 1%) as the FX markup against a Bloomberg benchmark rate. BlindPay, a stablecoin payout provider, cites the same paper in its own article (read November 2, 2026): money transfer operators' median cost of about 200 to 300 basis points on USD 200, falling to about 40 to 130 on USD 10,000.
US-outbound cost to three Latin American corridors, as a share of the amount sent (BIS Working Paper 1385, Tables 3, 4 and 5).
Corridor | Fintech operator median, USD 10,000 | B2B platform FX wire, mean markup | Stablecoin FX cost, mean 2025 to 2026 |
United States to Brazil (BRL) | 1.04% | 6.08% (29 wires) | -0.19% |
United States to Mexico (MXN) | 0.77% | 1.49% (32 wires) | -0.02% |
United States to Colombia (COP) | 1.89% | 4.88% (30 wires) | +0.59% |
The columns use different samples. The B2B wire column is FX markup only, from one platform, and leaves out a USD 8 wire fee. A negative stablecoin figure means the rate beat the benchmark. Read the rows as how rails rank per currency, not as a price list and not against the FSB averages; what the BIS competing-rails paper found has the caveats.
On Lumx the conversion happens in the TRADING stage of an off-ramp (per the Lumx Docs page on transactions), so the recipient's bank receives a domestic payment. Routes live on Lumx:
Payout routes on Lumx (Lumx Docs, read on November 1, 2026).
Route | Rail | Settlement | Cut-off |
Pix | Instant, every day | None | |
SPEI | Instant, every day | None | |
Bre-B or ACH Colombia, set on the destination | Bre-B is capped at 1,000 UVB per payment (COP 12,110,000 in 2026, per Banco de la República). ACH Colombia has no per-payment cap | None published | |
USDC to EUR | SEPA | Instant, or same or next business day for EUR 100,000 or more between 4:30 PM and 2:30 AM UK time | None |
USDC to GBP | Faster Payments (the UK's real-time bank transfer network) | Instant, up to GBP 1,000,000 per payment | None |
USDC to USD | ACH, FEDWIRE (the Federal Reserve's same-day wire system) or SWIFT | ACH 1 to 2 business days, FEDWIRE same business day, SWIFT 1 to 5 business days | 2:00 PM ET, 3:00 PM ET, 3:00 PM ET |
SWIFT on Lumx is USD only, and where a country has no local rail the payment goes out as USD over SWIFT. The full rail list is on Lumx coverage, and how cut-offs shift the real arrival time is in payout cut-offs by rail.
What counts as cheap: the G20 targets
The FSB's published targets, endorsed in 2021, set the bar.
Retail payments, business included: a global average cost of no more than 1%, with no corridor above 3%, by end-2027.
Remittances: a global average cost of sending USD 200 of no more than 3% by 2030, with no corridor above 5%.
The targets also ask providers to show the total cost, FX rate included, before the payment.
Business payments are not close. The B2B average of 1.6% is 0.6 points above the 1% target, and 10% of B2B corridors exceed the 3% ceiling. Only 2.2% of B2B payment services credit the recipient within one hour, the subject of why cross-border payments are slow.
On the transparency item, Lumx's 30-second rate lock carries no fee, and longer locks of one or five minutes add a fee for volatility risk.
A USD 10,000 business payment at FSB averages and against the G20 targets. Market averages, not a quote.
Line | Percentage | On USD 10,000 |
Sender-side B2B average, total | 1.6% | USD 160 |
of which FX margin | 1.4% | USD 140 |
of which fees | 0.2% | USD 20 |
G20 target for retail payments | 1.0% | USD 100 |
G20 ceiling for any single corridor | 3.0% | USD 300 |
To run the same arithmetic on a real quote, note the mid-market rate when you request it. Compare the amount that lands with what a no-fee payment would have landed at mid-market, convert the gap to dollars, add the fees and divide by the amount sent.
Does pre-funding add to cross-border payment costs?
Yes, and it never appears on a quote. A provider that needs money parked in each destination country ties up working capital. At an assumed 4% a year (use your own rate), USD 100,000 held for 30 days costs about USD 329 in lost interest.
Lumx's pricing model is a monthly platform fee plus usage-based per-transaction fees, transparent FX on locked quotes, no pre-funding; no published plans. No pre-funding means the customer does not leave capital parked in settlement (nostro) accounts before a transaction: conversion and settlement happen when the transaction starts. It does not contradict holding a USDC balance in a Lumx wallet, which is the customer's own choice.
How can you reduce cross-border payment costs?
Ways to reduce cross-border payment costs and the FSB figure each one rests on.
Lever | What to do | Why it works |
Convert once, before the payout | Pay out in the recipient's currency | Receiving-side FX adds 0.7% to 1.1%, and 1.7% in Latin America on USD 500 to USD 19,999 |
Ask for the base and final rate | Request both before approving, and note a mid-market reference | FX is 87.1% of the average B2B cost, so the rate is where the saving is |
Avoid intermediary hops | Prefer a local rail over a wire chain | Intermediaries can deduct from the amount in transit and rarely show it on the quote |
Match ticket size to the fee band | Where terms allow, send fewer, larger payments | Receiving fees average 1.3% below USD 500 and 0.1% above USD 20,000 (FSB Table 10) |
The FSB data is not split by rail, so this page does not measure whether a stablecoin route beats a bank wire; the BIS paper concludes stablecoins are not a panacea. One figure is missing because no source read here states it: a typical SWIFT deduction. Ask the sending bank who can deduct along the chain. On the legs Lumx runs, the network fee is subsidized, so there is none to price.
How to compare a route before you compare providers
I would not start a route review with a provider list. I start with one real payment size, one screenshot of the mid-market rate taken when the quote is requested, and one question: how much arrives? The fee line is easy to negotiate and the rate is easy to accept, so I ask for the base and final rate side by side before anything else.
Run that test on your three biggest routes at your real ticket size. A provider that cannot say who can deduct along the way is quoting a headline fee, not a cost. On Lumx it is one POST /exchange-rates call per route.
When comparing cost is the wrong exercise
For a supplier in mainland China, notice Yinfa [2026] No. 42 of the People's Bank of China (February 6, 2026) bars foreign crypto services, so the comparison is wire against wire, covered in stablecoins versus SWIFT for B2B payments.
What these costs look like on a Pix, SPEI or Bre-B payout with Lumx
Lumx is stablecoin payments infrastructure for businesses that move money between Latin America and the rest of the world: one API to collect, hold, convert, and pay out in BRL, MXN, COP, USD, EUR, and GBP or in USDC and USDT, over local rails such as PIX, SPEI, PSE, Bre-B, ACH, FEDWIRE, SEPA, and Faster Payments, with SWIFT and on-behalf-of payments and collections (POBO and COBO) in USD, EUR, and GBP, plus named virtual accounts, custodial wallets, and KYB/KYC built in.
The full product is on the global payments page.
Methodology and sources
FSB: consolidated progress report for 2025 (October 9, 2025), Annex C tables 7 to 12 and section 3.4, data as of March 2025 (FXC Intelligence). The 2026 data was not yet published.
BIS: Working Paper 1385 (October 19, 2026), Tables 3, 4 and 5 as summarised in the sibling post, whose author read the full PDF; the corridor percentages here are its basis points divided by 100.
World Bank: remittance figures as reproduced in the FSB report, Table 16; no link, the site was unreachable on the day.
Banco de la República: Bre-B ceiling from Circular Reglamentaria Externa DSP-465, subject 18, item 3.2, COP 12,110,000 for 2026.
People's Bank of China: notice Yinfa [2026] No. 42, cited by name and date; text not read.
Lumx Docs: exchange rates, partner fees, transactions, coverage, cut-offs and the off-ramp prompt, read on November 1, 2026.
Verified on November 1, 2026. Operational context, not legal, tax, or investment advice.
What are cross-border payment costs?
Cross-border payment costs are what separates the amount sent from the amount the recipient can use: sending fees, intermediary deductions, the FX margin and receiving fees. The FSB measured an average of 1.6% for business payments in 2025. Lumx charges a monthly platform fee plus usage-based per-transaction fees, with transparent FX on locked quotes.
How can you reduce cross-border payment costs?
Convert once before the payout, ask for the rate and not just the fee, avoid wire chains with intermediary banks, and send fewer, larger payments where receiving fees fall with size. For a foreign supplier that usually means a local rail. Lumx pays suppliers over Pix, SPEI or Bre-B, with ACH Colombia for invoices above the Bre-B cap of 1,000 UVB.
How much does it cost to send money to Brazil, Mexico or Colombia?
In the BIS data for US-outbound payments, a fintech operator's median on USD 10,000 was 1.04% for Brazil, 0.77% for Mexico and 1.89% for Colombia, while the mean FX markup on B2B platform wires was 6.08%, 1.49% and 4.88%. The samples differ, so treat it as a ranking of rails. Lumx publishes the live conversion for each of the three routes on its USDC to BRL, USDC to MXN and USDC to COP pages.
How long do cross-border payments take?
Slowly, on average: the FSB found only 2.2% of B2B payment services credit the recipient within one hour. Lumx settles Pix, SPEI, SEPA and Faster Payments payouts instantly, while USD over ACH takes 1 to 2 business days and SWIFT 1 to 5.
Are stablecoin routes cheaper than bank wires?
The FSB data does not split cost by rail, so this page does not measure it. The BIS paper finds stablecoins are not a panacea, and its corridor rows show the ranking changing by currency. On Lumx, a USD payout over SWIFT does not let the customer choose who bears the fee (OUR, SHA or BEN); it is charged to the sender, while a Pix or SPEI payout has no wire chain at all.
