Remittances when payments become instant (research idea)

Remittances when payments become instant

Remittances appear on 50 recent papers, mostly in economics, but only 12 of them carry a cost, fee, digital, mobile, fintech or stablecoin keyword. Instant payment systems, mobile money links and stablecoins are cutting the cost of sending money home. Does cheaper sending raise the amount received, and who switches?

What prompted this

Since October 2025, 50 papers carry a remittance keyword (33 in economics journals, 10 in finance), with "remittances" on 39 and "international remittances" on 5. Only 12 of the 50 also carry a cost, fee, instant-payment, digital, mobile, fintech, crypto or stablecoin keyword. The global average cost of sending remittances has fallen but remains above the 3% target.

Questions

When a corridor gets a cheaper channel (a mobile money link or a stablecoin route), do remittances rise by more than the fee saved, and does the money shift from informal channels?
Who uses the new channels: younger migrants, those with bank accounts, those sending small amounts?
Do recipients spend remittances differently when they arrive in digital wallets rather than cash?

Data that could help

Remittance prices by corridor (the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide), central bank remittance statistics, mobile money operator data and household surveys in recipient countries.

Next step

Match corridor-level price changes since 2019 to remittance flows and test whether flows respond more where digital channels entered.

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
Keyword	Papers, last 30 days	Rank	Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*	Papers, last 36 months
remittances	0	–		83
international remittances	0	–		7

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26

Keyword

Papers, last 30 days

Rank

Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*

Papers, last 36 months

remittances

–

international remittances

–

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-remittances-and-instant-payments, author = {{Scholar4AI}}, title = {Remittances when payments become instant}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/remittances-and-instant-payments}}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0} }

Remittances when payments become instant

What prompted this

Questions

Data that could help

Next step

Related research activity