Latin America · GDP rank #42
Chile
CL · CLP @ 0.0010/USD
A high-banked, card-mature OECD economy where the long-running Transbank acquiring monopoly has been pulled into a four-party model by Ley 21.365 and successive TDLC resolutions. Interchange caps set by the statutory Comité para la Fijación de Límites are now binding (debit 0.30%, credit 0.80%, prepaid 0.50%); the Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF) is licensing the first wave of fintechs under the 2023 Ley Fintec. Cuenta RUT (BancoEstado) gives Chile near-universal account coverage; MACH (BCI) and Mercado Pago lead the wallet race. There is no domestic instant rail at Pix or UPI scale.
Tab 05
Cross-border
Inbound and outbound remittance corridors, tourism flows, FX markup on retail cross-border, and the country's posture on stablecoin adoption. Corridor figures come from the World Bank RPW feed or the publishing central bank; both are cited when they disagree.
Remittance inflows
USD · 2024
Chile is structurally a net sender within Latin America given migration patterns.
Remittance outflows
USD · 2024
Driven by Venezuelan, Haitian, Colombian and Peruvian diasporas resident in Chile.
Inbound tourism spend
USD · 2024
Outbound tourism spend
USD · 2024
Avg. corridor cost
% · Q4 2024
Net sender
Top inbound corridors
- United StatesUS$210M
via MTO
Top outbound corridors
- VenezuelaUS$760M
via MTO + crypto
- HaitiUS$420M
via MTO
Cross-border card
Card flow leaving and arriving
Cards issued domestically and used abroad reflect outbound consumer travel and cross-border e-commerce; volume acquired from abroad reflects inbound tourism and foreign online shoppers.
Issued volume spent abroad
USD/year · 2024
Acquired volume from abroad
USD/year · 2024
FX cost
What consumers pay above the interbank
Retail FX markup is the spread between the mid-market rate and the rate the consumer receives — the single largest friction point in small-ticket cross-border.
- FX regime
- free-float
- Reference
- Peso free-float since September 1999; Banco Central runs inflation-targeting framework with periodic FX intervention windows
Source · Banco Central de Chile
Full reference
Remittances
Net Position: sender
Source: