{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T14:10:17Z","timestamp":1785334217610,"version":"3.55.0"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"group-title":"SSRN","reference-count":0,"publisher":"Elsevier BV","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,1]],"date-time":"2026-01-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1767225600000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.uspto.gov\/ip-policy\/copyright-policy\/copyright-basics"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"<jats:p>The global decline in cross-border remittance costs is widely attributed to the entry of digital channels. I construct a provider-level panel from the World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide database-188,700 provider-corridor-quarter observations covering USD 200 send transactions across 377 corridors, 50 sending and 108 receiving countries, 2016Q2 to 2025Q1-to examine whether the cost gains from digital channels are evenly distributed across destinations. Within the same corridor and quarter, digital channels (internet, mobile) charge 2.52 percentage points less than physical channels (agent, branch, post office) on average, with corridor and period fixed effects (t =-19.3). The digital discount is larger in destinations with higher digital channel availability: 3.30 percentage points one standard deviation above the mean availability, 0.97 percentage points one standard deviation below, and approximately zero at the minimum. The interaction is robust to a leave-one-corridor-out availability measure that breaks any mechanical link with the regression sample, to pre-period (2016-2018) availability used to predict post-2018 costs, to firm \u00d7 corridor fixed effects that identify the channel margin within a single provider operating in a single corridor, and to corridor-specific time trends. The within-corridor digital advantage is widening over time, by 0.10 percentage points per year. Decomposition shows the entire advantage runs through the fee component, not the foreignexchange margin. The inclusion gradient is statistically significant in East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia, but not in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, or Europe and Central Asia. These findings suggest that the inclusion benefits of digital remittance channels are concentrated in already-digitised destinations within specific regions and are not flowing uniformly to the populations most in need of cost compression. The paper documents the inclusion gradient as a stylised fact and discusses its implications for the design of cross-border payment-system policy under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10.c. The findings speak directly to the Digital Finance collection on financial inclusion through digital platforms.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.6830281","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T13:37:40Z","timestamp":1785332260000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Digital Discount in Cross-Border Remittances: Stylised Facts on the Inclusion Gradient, 2016-2025"],"prefix":"10.2139","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-8477-9393","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Boon Chuan","family":"Lim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"78","container-title":[],"original-title":[],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T13:37:40Z","timestamp":1785332260000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.ssrn.com\/abstract=6830281"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2139\/ssrn.6830281","relation":{},"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"subtype":"preprint"}}