Stablecoin firms target $112B Latin America remittances

Claudia Wang, Bybit’s chief marketing officer, wrote on X after six months studying Latin America that stablecoin and fintech firms should look beyond the U.S.–Mexico corridor to capture roughly $112 billion in remittances outside that route.

Wang noted U.S.–Mexico remittances fell 4.5% to $61.8 billion in 2025 while remittances to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala rose 19%, 18% and 15% respectively. She said the total Latin America remittance market stands near $174 billion, with about $112 billion coming from corridors other than U.S.–Mexico.

She identified faster-growing corridors including U.S.–to–Central America and transfers within Latin America, naming Venezuela–Colombia, Argentina–Bolivia and Spain–Ecuador as examples that many fintechs are not optimized to serve.

Wang linked the Central American increase in part to changes in U.S. immigration enforcement, writing migrants from Central America are sending larger amounts more quickly ‘to hedge against deportation risk.’ She contrasted that with Mexico’s more established and documented diaspora.

‘Stop treating LATAM as one market,’ Wang wrote, arguing companies need country-specific operations with different licenses, payment rails, stablecoins and marketing. She wrote that firms winning in the region will run local stacks combining local payment rails, stablecoin liquidity and closed-loop services that let users remit, hold, spend and earn.

‘Users don’t want to ‘use’ stablecoins for a transaction and convert back to local currency. They want to hold dollars. The transaction is the side effect,’ Wang wrote. She added that typical remittance senders are older, around 40 to 60, and prefer products that don’t require self-custody or complex steps. ‘If your product makes a 50-year-old factory worker in New Jersey think for more than 30 seconds before sending $300 to his mom in Honduras, you’ve already lost,’ she wrote.

Traditional money-transfer firms and banks continue to move remittances on banking rails. After passage of the GENIUS Act in July, Western Union and MoneyGram announced plans for stablecoin infrastructure. Western Union is building a U.S. dollar-backed token, USDPT, which the company said is in final stages and expected to launch this month. Crypto-native firms such as Binance, Bitso, Strike and Felix Pago, and corporate entrants including Walmart and regional telco Tigo, are also active in the market.

Wang wrote many non-U.S. corridors are barely served by U.S. money transmitter operators and largely untouched by crypto rails. She said market success will depend on meeting local licensing requirements, integrating with domestic payment systems and offering simple user experiences that give senders confidence funds have arrived.