From US-Mexico remittances to the Brazilian real and the Colombian peso, local stablecoins and Polygon rails are turning Latin America into the global epicenter of efficient, low-cost digital payments.
Introduction
Just a few years ago, central banks printed money without restraint (“brrrr”) and fiat currencies lost value simultaneously around the world. In Latin America, the public’s response was clear: cryptocurrencies became a store of value and a tool for real economic activity.
Argentina is a textbook case. Annual inflation at the end of 2025 stood at around 31.5% (below the IMF’s 41.3% projection), a remarkable improvement over the triple-digit levels of 2024. Even so, it remains an extremely challenging environment.
This context has led Latin Americans to use crypto differently from the rest of the world: not just for speculation, but as a hedge against inflation and as an engine of the real economy.
The numbers confirm it:
- Crypto adoption in LATAM: +63% year over year in 2025 (the second-fastest region in the world after Asia-Pacific at +69%).
- Total crypto transaction volume in the region in 2025: more than $730 billion (+60% from the previous year).
- Monthly active users growing almost 3 times faster than in the United States.
Latin America is not a homogeneous market. Each country and each corridor has its own particularities, and the fintech startups making the biggest impact are precisely those that understand local realities. Below, we map the stablecoin infrastructure and rails modernizing the region’s main cross-border payment corridors in 2026.
1. Avenia and BRLA: the native stablecoin bridge between local rails
Brazil already has Pix and Mexico has SPEI: two instant payment systems that revolutionized domestic commerce. Now all of that needs to be connected to the world.
Avenia (integrated with Polygon) offers money movement infrastructure that connects LATAM with the rest of the planet through its stablecoin BRLA (backed 1:1 by Brazilian reais).
Key Avenia Pay figures (2025-2026):
- More than $1 billion processed on Polygon in November and December 2025 alone.
- Peak monthly volume in LATAM: $500 million.
- Revenue up 7x in 2025.
- $17 million Series A round in February 2026.
Businesses can integrate via API for instant, low-cost payments. Users use BRLA on Polygon and other networks. It also maintains BRLA/USD pairs on Polygon DEXs to power the Gnosis Pay card (more than $1.5 million in monthly card spending).
Polygon makes this model viable: its average cost per transaction is fractions of a cent, something impossible to replicate at scale on other EVM chains.
2. Blindpay: a plug-and-play API for instant payments
Blindpay lets any business integrate blockchain payments without building its own infrastructure.
It works with fiat, stablecoins and multiple blockchains, handling regulatory compliance on behalf of the client. Ideal for payroll, merchant settlements and remittances.
2025 results:
- Total volume on Polygon: more than $430 million.
- Q3: $198.7 million (+91.7% QoQ).
- Year-end: ~$55 million per month.
Its Named Virtual Accounts automatically convert ACH, Wire, RTP and SWIFT payments into stablecoins on Polygon, offering instant global settlement.
A telling economic data point: Polygon processed $1.24 billion in transactions in 2025 with just $6.31 million in total fees: the lowest fee structure of any major EVM chain.
3. Bitso: the remittance giant in the US-Mexico corridor
Bitso is one of the most important crypto players in LATAM.
December 2025:
- Annualized payment volume: $82 billion (the first stablecoin platform in LATAM to surpass $80 billion).
- 1,900 institutional clients.
- $15.6 billion in real-time payments in Mexico alone.
- Handles more than 10% of all US-Mexico remittances.
Using Polygon, stablecoin remittances cost less than 1% in fees, compared with an average of 6.49% for traditional channels (World Bank, Q1 2025).
Featured chart: Polygon commands 89% of non-USD stablecoin volume in LATAM in 2025.
4. Lemon Cash and Belo: wallets that solve everyday life
Lemon Cash (Argentina)
- 5.5 million users.
- $20 million Series B round in October 2025.
- Lemon Card (with Visa), which lets users pay in pesos using crypto and earn up to 2% cashback in BTC.
- January 2026: the first Bitcoin-backed credit card (0.01 BTC as collateral).
Belo (Argentina, now in Brazil)
- More than 3 million users.
- USD ACH deposits for 12+ Spanish-speaking countries.
- Pix support in Brazil.
- ~2% fee and 3% APY on USDC balances.
- Goal: 1 million Brazilian users by the end of 2026.
5. Mercado Bitcoin: tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) at scale
Brazil’s largest exchange and LATAM’s largest issuer of digital fixed income.
Since its partnership with Polygon, it has doubled its tokenized assets: from 340 to 752 across seven networks. Value of represented assets: $194 million (+27% in Q1 2026 alone).
It tokenizes everything from football clubs (Vasco da Gama, Santos FC) to fitness chains, cosmetics companies and payment fintechs. Polygon hosts the largest share of its assets (242 of 752).
6. Other key initiatives
- Capa: A stablecoin payments suite for regional pay-ins and pay-outs (including Europe and the US). Polygon processed 43% of all non-USD stablecoin transfers in 2025.
- DFB Network: Automated institutional liquidity management in multi-chain stablecoins.
- Littio: Borderless dollar/euro banking with USDC and EUROC. More than 375,000 users in Colombia and 7 countries. Total volume > $1 billion.
- Minteo: Local stablecoin COPM (Colombian peso). In Q4 2025: $518.3 million in volume on Polygon.
- Etherfuse: MXNe stablecoin backed by Mexican government bonds.
- BRL1: Brazilian real stablecoin (Bitso + Mercado Bitcoin + Foxbit). Lifetime volume on Polygon: more than $501 million.
- Ripio: More than 10 million users and $200 million per month. Launched the local stablecoins wARS, wBRL and wMXN.
Conclusion: Polygon cements its position as LATAM’s default settlement layer
The message is clear: Latin America’s 21st-century payments infrastructure is being built on stablecoins and Polygon.
- Fees of fractions of a cent.
- Finality in 2 seconds.
- Deep liquidity in local stablecoins (BRL, COP, MXN, ARS…).
- 99.998% savings compared with traditional networks (real example: Paxos processed $1.3 billion on Polygon for just $700 in gas).
The companies integrating regulated on-ramps, local stablecoins and onchain settlement today are the ones that will define the next decade of the region’s financial infrastructure.
Want to build in LATAM? Polygon already has the local team, the infrastructure and the ecosystem ready. The window to stand out is closing.
