A Mother in Lagos Sends $10. JPMorgan Sends $10M. Guess Who Pays More in Fees?
A mother in Lagos sends ten dollars so her child can eat lunch at school.
JPMorgan sends ten million to London.
Guess who pays more in fees?
The mother does - about eight percent on average. The bank pays less than one-tenth of one percent.
This is the absurdity of global payments in 2025.
The Hidden Cost of Sending Small
It is not about how much money moves - it is about who is moving it. When a bank wires ten million dollars, it triggers one compliance check. When a thousand mothers each send ten dollars, the same total triggers a thousand compliance checks.
Same value moved, a thousand times the coordination cost.
According to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most expensive region for remittances, with an average cost of 7.9%.
Meanwhile, institutional transfers settle for under 0.1%.
A Lagos vendor sending twenty dollars to a supplier might lose two dollars to fees.
A pension fund wiring two hundred million across borders might lose less than two hundred thousand.
The system punishes small senders - the very people who need efficiency the most.
The Stablecoin Shortcut
Stablecoins can break this model.
Instead of paying compliance costs on every single transfer, the verification happens once at the wallet level.
Each verified wallet can transact freely after approval - one KYC, unlimited sends.
Developers and fintech operators in Lagos report that stablecoins are beginning to circulate informally among vendors and small merchants as a faster, cheaper proxy for dollars.
According to Chainalysis, stablecoins now account for the majority of crypto transaction volume in Sub-Saharan Africa, following more than a 1,200% surge in overall crypto usage during 2020-21.
It is not about speculation anymore. It is about access.
The Last Mile Still Matters
MoneyGram, Western Union, and M-Pesa could capitalize on this shift. MoneyGram launched stablecoin payouts with Stellar beginning in 2022, expanding to hundreds of thousands of agent locations. By 2023, Stellar even took an equity stake in MoneyGram to scale these integrations. With that kind of reach, the last mile - cash-out and access - is already in their hands.
Add stablecoin rails beneath that existing infrastructure and the math changes fast:
grandma’s twenty-dollar birthday gift no longer carries a three-dollar tax.
The Global Pattern
A student in Manila wiring tuition loses twelve dollars on every hundred. A Mexican worker sending weekly wages loses five dollars on fifty. The pattern repeats across continents - small senders pay the most, while institutions move billions nearly for free.
The Real Question
The question is no longer if small payments will be fixed. It is who fixes them first - crypto wallets or incumbents.
Because one thing is certain:
the mother in Lagos should not pay more to feed her child than JPMorgan pays to move a fortune.