Latin America · GDP rank #12
Mexico
MX · MXN @ 0.0575/USD
A two-speed payments economy: SPEI handled more than 7.3 billion interbank transactions in 2025 and is on track to overtake card volume by 2026, while CoDi has been allowed to wind down in favour of DiMo's phone-alias overlay. Remittance inflows from the United States stayed the world's largest by absolute value but fell 4.6% in 2025 — the steepest annual decline in 16 years. The fintech sector regulated under the 2018 Ley Fintech has become the region's most active deposit-competition battleground after Brazil.
Tab 03
Rails & infrastructure
The instant rail, the RTGS spine, the card switch, the direct-debit scheme, and the country's CBDC stance. Each rail is reported with operator, launch year, and 2024 flow so the relative scale across rails is readable at a glance.
CBDC status is deliberately granular: live, pilot, preparation, live stalled, and sceptical, no pilot are different things.
Banxico's board indicated in 2021 a target of 2024 for a retail CBDC launch; that timeline has since been quietly abandoned. Current work is exploratory and focused on wholesale tokenised settlement rather than retail issuance. No public pilot is running.
Instant payments
Sistema de Pagos Electrónicos Interbancarios
The instant leg typically carries the vast majority of retail consumer flow in modern payment systems — and sits in direct tension with card networks and wallets for the same transactions.
- Operator
- Banco de México
- Live since
- 2004-08-13
Transactions · 2024
txns/year · 2025
Cleared value · 2024
MXN/year · 2025
Participating institutions
institutions · 2025
Alias registrations
aliases · Q1 2026
Rail features
- ▌24/7/365 clearing and settlement with near-instant finality (averaging under 5 seconds)
- ▌SWIFT-derived messaging today; SPEI 2.0 ISO 20022 migration package opened for consultation Q1 2026
- ▌Flat MX$5.70 per-transaction fee (SPEI-SPID cross-border corridor: free to US$ settlement)
- ▌DiMo overlay for P2P/P2M using phone-number alias crossed 11M users in Q1 2026
RTGS
Real-time gross settlement
The RTGS spine clears high-value interbank flow — including the settlement of the instant-rail cycles and card-network net positions. Transaction count is modest; cleared value is enormous.
Transactions · 2024
txns/year · 2024
Cleared value · 2024
MXN/year · 2024
Open banking
Regulatory and technical posture
- Regime
- Open Finance under Ley Fintech (2018) — regulatory standards still being drafted
- Live Since
- 2020-06-04
Active open-finance connections
consents · Q4 2025
Monthly API calls (public + aggregate data)
calls/month · Q4 2025
Full reference