Mexico’s Football Summer Highlights Growing Crypto Payments and Stablecoin Use Cases, Binance Says

Binance Blog published a new article, revealing insights into how Mexico’s football summer is also becoming a financial moment marked by rising tourism, global attention, and increased digital payment activity. Salvador Rivero, Binance’s General Manager for Mexico, said the tournament atmosphere in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey is coinciding with measurable shifts in how people pay and move money, including double-digit week-on-week growth in Binance Card payments since the tournament began. He also pointed to Mexico’s scale as a crypto market, citing more than $71 billion in crypto transaction volume over the past year. Rivero argued that adoption is being pushed by gaps in traditional banking, which he described as risk-averse and focused on higher-income customers while charging high fees for basic services. In his view, crypto is increasingly being used to provide lower-cost access to accounts, local payment rails, and investment tools, even as much of current activity remains centered on trading and treasury use. He said practical utility is emerging most clearly in cross-border payments and foreign exchange, where transaction volume can translate into everyday impact. The article also highlighted stablecoins as a potential cost-reduction tool for remittances and trade between the United States and Mexico. Mexico is described as the world’s second-largest recipient of remittances, with $62 billion sent last year across more than 12 million transactions to nearly 2 million households, while average transfer fees exceed 4%. Rivero said stablecoins are being used by new and traditional players to reduce costs to 1–2% by integrating with local payment rails, estimating that at scale this could return roughly $150 million annually to families. Beyond remittances, he emphasized the US–Mexico trade corridor, which he said moves $1 trillion a year, where businesses often pay 3–4% per transaction and wait 1–3 business days for settlement, longer on weekends. Rivero said stablecoins could lower costs to 1–2% with instant settlement and competitive FX. He framed regulation as foundational to broader adoption, arguing that stablecoin rules should come first, followed by tokenization of real-world assets. The article also recounted a user story from late June involving Ricardo from Monterrey, who won match tickets through a Binance app campaign, as an example of crypto services operating in the background of everyday life, and it noted Rivero’s expectation that by 2030 the focus could shift from defining crypto to choosing which app to manage money.