Raynor de Best
Research expert covering finance, insurance & real-estate, internet & e-commerce
Get in touch with us nowDigital payments refer to any form of cashless payment, or payments conducted without banknotes or coins, in an online or offline environment. Such payments can include mobile payments - digital payments performed on a mobile device - but also relatively new trends like buy now, pay later (BNPL), cryptocurrency, or instant (real-time) payments. Out of all these digital options, which developments are noteworthy to know about for Mexico?
CoDi, a national initiative in QR and contactless
The biggest initiative to improve digital payments access in Mexico, CoDi - or Cobra Digital - is the country's national system for QR codes and contactless (tap to pay) technology. Launched in 2019 by the Banco de Mexico to modernize the old SPEI service from 2004, CoDI aims to promote in-person smartphone payments using real-time (instant) transaction speed. By 2022, the annual value of CoDi transactions was roughly 2.5 billion Mexican pesos, an increase of 600 million pesos compared to 2021. The general adoption of CoDi, however, seems to be slow as the number of accounts that made at least one payment with this system was 1.2 million in 2022. Consequently, Mexico's instant payments are lower than elsewhere, especially compared to real-time payments in Brazil.Mexico's role in buy now, pay later (BNPL) in Latin America
Perhaps aided by the lack of financial inclusion in Mexico, several domestic companies entered the buy now, pay later market. The two main players for BNPL in Mexico include Kueski and Nelo. The former is an online consumer lender founded in 2012 and started to offer debt financing in late 2021 to help support BNPL products. Nelo was founded in 2019 and offers BNPL on Mexico's most popular e-commerce websites through a partnership with Mastercard. The two companies are relevant as they both seek to expand beyond Mexico and across Latin America to capitalize on the increasing use of e-commerce across multiple countries in the region.
