Put simply, Stellar is an open network that allows money to be moved and stored. When it was released in July 2014, one of its goals was boosting financial inclusion by reaching the world’s unbanked — but soon afterwards, its priorities shifted to helping financial firms connect with one another through blockchain technology.
Fees are a sticking point for many. However, high costs when making cross-border payments aren’t just exclusive to fiat-based payments solutions such as PayPal — transaction fees have also been known to go through the roof on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains because of congestion.
Stellar is unique because every transaction costs just 0.00001 XLM. Given how one unit of this cryptocurrency only costs a few cents at the time of writing, this helps ensure that users keep more of their money.
Few blockchain projects have managed to secure partnerships with big-brand technology companies and fintech firms. A few years ago, Stellar and IBM teamed up to launch World Wire, a project that allowed large financial institutions to submit transactions to the Stellar network and transact using bridge assets such as stablecoins.