How Latin America Is Rewiring Money with Stablecoins and Pix
A nurse in Los Angeles sends part of her paycheck home through a stablecoin wallet. Within minutes, her mother in Guadalajara receives pesos via SPEI.
Meanwhile in São Paulo, a café owner closes her day’s sales through Pix and moves her profits into USDT — a digital dollar that won’t lose value overnight.
These are small pieces of a bigger system that Latin America is building quietly and fast.
Stablecoins and instant payment rails are merging into the region’s new financial infrastructure where value moves as data, across networks that are public, programmable, and local.
The New Rails: Stablecoins + Pix + SPEI
Latin America’s financial evolution starts with two layers: a value layer and a movement layer.
Stablecoins act as the store of value. They’re the digital dollars people hold when inflation eats into savings.
In Argentina and Brazil, stablecoins already make up a majority of crypto activity. According to Chainalysis’s 2024 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report (Latin America chapter), 61.8% of Argentina’s crypto transaction volume moved through stablecoins between mid-2023 and mid-2024, compared with 59.8% in Brazil — well above the ~44.7% global average.
Pix and SPEI are the movement layer.
Brazil’s Pix, launched by the Central Bank of Brazil in 2020, now processes hundreds of millions of transactions every day and is accepted by nearly every merchant in the country.
Explainer — How Pix Became Brazil’s Real-Time Backbone
Launched by the Central Bank of Brazil in 2020, Pix lets anyone send money instantly, 24/7 — free for individuals and accepted almost everywhere. It now processes hundreds of millions of transactions a day and has become the country’s default way to pay, setting a global benchmark for real-time payments.
Mexico’s SPEI, run by Banco de México, powers instant transfers between banks and fintech apps. Together, they’ve created a cultural shift: people expect money to move instantly and cost nothing.The next step is connecting both layers.
Stablecoins handle liquidity in dollars; Pix and SPEI handle the local rails.
Building the Connective Tissue: Orchestration and Compliance
Behind every Pix transfer or USDT remittance sits another layer of code deciding how money moves. That layer is payment orchestration — the connective tissue between stablecoin liquidity, instant-payment rails, and compliance frameworks.
Explainer — What Is Payment Orchestration?
Orchestration is the logic that connects multiple payment rails — Pix, SPEI, cards, or stablecoins — and
...This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.