The 6% that gets lost along the way

Every year, millions of people working in Europe send money back to their families in their home countries. It's a huge flow, worth more for many economies than development aid and foreign investment combined. And every year, a significant portion of that money never reaches its destination: it remains in the chain.

According to World Bank data, the average global cost of an international remittance is over 6% of the amount sent. On specific corridors, especially to sub-Saharan Africa and for small amounts, it can exceed 9%. The target set by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda is 3%: we are far from achieving this, and progress is slow.

Understanding why it costs so much requires looking at how money actually moves between two countries.

Why is an international transfer slow?

The dominant infrastructure is based on a system of correspondent banks. The originating bank, if it doesn't have a direct relationship with the receiving bank, relies on one or more intermediary institutions that act as a bridge. Each step involves anti-money laundering checks, accounting reconciliations, a fee, and a delay.

Then there's a less visible and more costly problem: pre-funded liquidity. To process payments in a foreign currency, an institution must maintain pre-funded accounts with banks in that country, with capital tied up and generating no return. Industry estimates suggest trillions of dollars are tied up in this way in the global system. That opportunity cost ends up in the price of the service.

Added to this is the time factor: national settlement systems operate in windows that do not coincide between different time zones, and many stop on weekends.

What digital infrastructures offer

The idea behind distributed ledgers applied to payments is to replace the chain of correspondents with a single shared infrastructure, on which settlement occurs in seconds and without the need for pre-funded accounts.

The XRP Ledger, the network upon which the eponymous token is based, was created with this purpose in mind: consensus achieved in seconds, minimal transaction costs, and a mechanism that does not require the computational mining typical of other blockchains. The model envisions using the digital asset as a bridge currency: the euro is converted into the token, transferred, and reconverted into the destination currency, theoretically eliminating the need to keep capital locked away abroad.

In recent years, the company developing the ecosystem has launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, alongside the token. Its market capitalization has exceeded $2,4 billion. The total amount of stablecoins on the ledger has surpassed $1,12 billion, and the total value locked in the ecosystem has risen to approximately $41 million from $29,5 million the previous month.

The gap between promise and adoption

Here comes the honest part of the argument. Just because an infrastructure is technically more efficient doesn't mean it will be adopted, because international payments involve constraints that no technology can address on its own: regulatory compliance in every jurisdiction involved, anti-money laundering requirements, management of exchange rate risk at the time of conversion, integration with existing banking systems, and, above all, sufficient market depth to prevent the transaction itself from impacting the price.

Those looking for reliable XRP forecasts come up against precisely this: the asset's valuation depends less on its technical characteristics than on the pace at which financial institutions decide to use it, a variable that is measured in years and compliance decisions, not software updates.

Market numbers reveal an intermediate phase. Listed financial instruments linked to XRP have attracted over $1,7 billion in cumulative flows, with approximately $12,9 million on a single Wednesday in September. However, the price on September 10, 2026, hovered around $1,39, down from the monthly high of $1,70 and far from the all-time high of $3,65 reached on July 17, 2025.

Growing institutional flows and declining share prices over the same period: this is a snapshot of a market in which infrastructure adoption and price are not yet moving at the same pace.

What to watch instead of forecasts

For those who follow the topic as an observer, three indicators say more than any numerical projection.

The first is the volume of real payments settled on the infrastructure, as opposed to the volume of speculative trading. The second is the number of regulated financial institutions integrating it into their operational processes, not just press releases. The third is regulatory evolution: in Europe, the MiCA regulation has defined a common framework for cryptoassets, and compliance with that framework is a prerequisite for any institutional use at scale.

These are verifiable and boring data. In the medium term, however, they explain much more than a price target. Finally, it's worth remembering that cryptoassets remain highly volatile instruments, with fluctuations that can lead to the complete loss of invested capital.