MexicoThe entry point to Latin America
Mexico is Latin America’s second-largest economy and one of the region’s youngest populations, home to more than 130 million people with a median age of just 29. These citizens have a growing appetite to build, spend and do business online, which is fuelling foreign interest. We’re seeing global merchants choose Mexico as their entry point into Latin America more often than any other market in the region.
The way locals pay
Local payment methods to know
Card
Online payments mix eCommerce 2026 projections
A card-first market
Cards are Mexico’s most common digital payment method, with debit and credit cards together making up around 72% of the market (debit is slightly ahead at 39–40%, and credit close behind at 32–33%). This split has held since 2025 and is expected to stay roughly where it is through to 2028. Like elsewhere in Latin America, shoppers also regularly opt for installments to make bigger purchases feel manageable.
For customers sitting outside the traditional banking system, workarounds like OXXO Pay and BNPL are establishing a stronghold of their own.
And more of that online spend is crossing borders. Cross-border eCommerce is expected to grow 18–20% a year through 2028, compared with 10–13% for domestic sales, taking its share of Mexico’s online market from around 36% to 39%.
OXXO Pay bridges the cash-digital divide
Despite the strong prevalence of cards, millions of Mexicans don’t have one and, for them, OXXO Pay is an essential part of daily life. When these customers add something to their online cart, they receive a voucher at checkout, which they can take to any one of Mexico’s 24,000 OXXO stores. There, they pay in cash, and the order goes through just as it would for anyone else.
By bridging the cash-to-digital divide, OXXO Pay has helped to on-ramp Mexico’s unbanked and underbanked customers, bringing them into the world of eCommerce. From 2026 to 2028, we expect cash in Mexico as a whole (of which OXXO Pay is the largest share) to hold flat at 8%, but that the dollar volume will grow 29% from US$ 10.7 billion to US$ 13.8 billion. This means that cash isn’t a shrinking niche in Mexico. Instead, it’s very much a part of the country’s eCommerce system and is actively contributing to its growth.
OXXO storesturn online orders into cash payments
You can really see financial inclusion play out in Mexico. It’s happening not because more people are opening bank accounts, but rather because more merchants are letting them pay without one. I think we’ll see more of this in the years to come, with access coming from ongoing improvements in the checkout process. Looking ahead, these unbanked customers are likely to simply be one of many customer segments.
Billing more than once
OXXO Pay was built for one-off payments, so subscriptions have historically been a challenge, with no way to recognize a returning customer or charge them automatically every month. For one of our streaming merchants in Mexico, we’ve adapted OXXO to support recurring billing and refunds. The result is that OXXO alone drives 16% of that merchant’s TPV, and APMs as a whole have grown to 33% of the platform’s total.
Latin America’s most successful BNPL market
Mexico’s young and digitally fluent population has also latched onto BNPL, a natural fit in a market where just 14.2% of people have a credit card. Mexico is Latin America’s most successful BNPL market. In 2026, it’s expected to exceed Colombia, Brazil and Argentina in total BNPL volume (US$ 4 billion), share of eCommerce (3%), and fastest year-on-year growth (22%). No other market in the region has managed all three. The 22% growth also makes BNPL the single fastest-growing category in Mexico’s mix, over A2A, debit and credit, cash or eWallets.
Merchants are also finding that adding more BNPL options helps to grow this market. For example, when one of our retail merchants added DiDi Paga Después, DiDi’s pay-later option built into its ride-hailing and delivery app, after Kueski, Mexico’s leading local BNPL provider, they found that DiDi reached entirely new shoppers. Although Kueski was turned on first, its customers weren’t cannibalized.
- Kueski
- DiDi
BNPL brought in new customers: Adding DiDi Paga Después alongside Kueski grew the number of customers choosing BNPL exclusively by 22% in Q2 and another 19% in Q3.
In DiDi’s first four months, TPV grew 211%, with 30% of that volume coming from customers who were new to the merchant rather than switching from another payment method. Kueski’s own launch told a similar story, with 60% TPV growth in the first four months, a quarter of transactions from new customers, and an average order value 6.1% higher than debit card purchases.
This approach is also helpful for consumers, who appreciate the option of having more than one line of credit available.
Real-time payments go retail
SPEI has moved money between Mexican banks and businesses for two decades, but it’s becoming common in everyday retail, too. Banco de México (Banxico), the country’s central bank, is now working to increase SPEI adoption and improve the user experience by forcing a unified, simplified mobile transfer standard across all institutions. At the same time, CoDi is bringing real-time payments to smaller, everyday purchases through QR-based transfers.
If these efforts make real-time payments easier and more intuitive to use at checkout, they could become a more meaningful part of eCommerce in Mexico.
