Stablecoins Reduce Hidden FX Costs
Fernando Sandoval, co-founder of Kapital, on stablecoins for cross-border payments
The real opportunity is not just cheaper payments, it is taking FX spread economics away from incumbent banks and turning cross border money movement into a near zero cost feature inside a broader SME banking product. In Kapital’s example, a retail bank spread of 1.4 pesos on a 15.65 buy rate implies roughly 895 bps of hidden FX cost, versus about $0.0037 to move USDC onchain and much lower all in cost when stablecoins are used as the transfer rail.
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The spread matters because it is where banks quietly make money. A customer sees one FX rate to sell dollars and a much worse one to buy them back. That gap can dwarf any visible wire fee, especially for smaller B2C style transfers.
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Kapital is not using stablecoins as a standalone crypto product. It uses them inside Kapital Flex, where an SME buying inventory can have Kapital pay an overseas supplier quickly, then repay Kapital over time. The payment rail gets cheaper, and the credit product becomes easier to use across borders.
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This is similar to what Airwallex did in fiat. It used cheaper rails to undercut legacy B2B FX providers by 50 to 80 percent, then used payments as the entry point into broader banking and software. The pattern is that low cost money movement becomes customer acquisition, not the whole business.
The next step is that stablecoin rails stop being the product customers notice and become the default plumbing behind trade finance, treasury, and global accounts. Companies that combine local regulatory access, low cost transfer rails, and adjacent products like credit and expense management will capture the margin that used to sit inside FX spreads.