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At the Stablecoin Conference 2025 (WTC, Mexico City, August 27–28), organized by Bitso Business, one theme dominated the agenda: delivering real-time payments at enterprise scale by leveraging stablecoins.
The panel “Real-time payments, real-time challenges: Are we ready to bring millions onchain in Latin America?”—the one you shared the transcript for—brought together Jorge Bravo (Executive Editorial Vice President, DPL Group), Jorge Borges (Head of Sales & Strategic Development, LATAM, Fireblocks), Santiago Roel Santos (Founder, Inversion), Daniel Mangabeira (VP Strategy & Policy LATAM, Circle) and Manuel Echanove Puig (Head of BD, LATAM, Polygon Labs) to discuss closing the gap between local rails and on-chain liquidity with “like-for-like” trust standards (fraud, disputes, chargebacks). Across the event, the line-up featured leaders such as Daniel Vogel (Bitso), Michael Shaulov (Fireblocks) and executives from Remitly, Solana, Aptos, Anchorage, and Citi, underscoring the focus on infrastructure and institutional adoption..jpg?width=618&height=412&name=20251103_Bitso_Real-time%20payments_Blog1%20(1).jpg)
Today’s bottleneck: pre-funding, operating windows, and slow reconciliation
Pre-funding that traps capital. In instant-payments schemes, credit risk between participants is often mitigated by pre-funded balances or collateralized limits to guarantee payment finality. The CPMI/BIS notes that fast-payment models frequently require position pre-funding and automatic liquidity top-ups, which fragment balances across rails and counterparties. In plain terms: money that isn’t working.“24/7” isn’t always 24/7 for treasury. Although SPEI settles transfers “in a matter of seconds” and PIX runs 24/7, operating windows still exist at the institutional level—accounting cut-offs, back-office hours, reconciliation batches, liquidity calendars. Banxico describes SPEI as real-time electronic transfer infrastructure and publishes a daily operating schedule; in practice, many treasuries still anchor their closes to cut-offs that condition when cash is truly available downstream (e.g., funding nostro accounts, cross-border payments). In Brazil, PIX has already proven its scale with ~280 million transactions in 24 hours (June 6, 2025); that volume pressures intra-day liquidity and fraud monitoring, especially when rails are interconnected.
Asynchronous reconciliation = hidden friction. The promise of “money in seconds” meets asynchronous states across banks, providers, and ledgers (e.g., SPEI OK ⇄ ERP entry pending ⇄ supplier confirmation). BIS/CPMI standards emphasize governance and interoperability tooling to link fast systems and minimize status-sync friction. If those statuses don’t propagate with traceability and rich metadata, “real-time reconciliation” is a myth—and the cost shows up as idle capital and manual operations.
The financial cost is real. With the 28-day TIIE around 8% in September 2025, every MXN 10 million immobilized for pre-funding translates into roughly MXN 800,000 per year in opportunity cost. In cross-border cycles, that cost multiplies as balances are replicated by country/rail. (Source: Banxico SIE, TIIE 28d).
The thesis: SPEI/PIX + stablecoins to unlock capital
Connecting local rails (SPEI/PIX) to stable on-chain liquidity (e.g., USDC) lets cash flow 24/7 without replicating idle balances across multiple accounts and jurisdictions:
- Less pre-funding, more netting. Instead of “parking” balances on each rail, treasuries consolidate liquidity in a regulated stablecoin with near-instant settlement and deploy to SPEI/PIX as obligations arise. The CPMI already flags “liquidity bridges” and interlinking of fast systems as key workstreams to reduce funding frictions across jurisdictions.
- Like-for-like finality and traceability. SPEI delivers near-instant confirmations and PIX settles online; by wrapping those events with on-chain metadata (references, invoice IDs, webhooks), reconciliation stops depending on batches. This is critical at scale: PIX hit that ~280M-in-a-day record—without metadata and unified visibility, matching breaks.
- Institutional-grade trust and governance. USDC’s maturity isn’t only technical: Circle listed on the NYSE in June 2025, raising ~$1.05B, signaling institutional appetite; recent JPMorgan analysis (via CoinDesk) shows USDC surpassing USDT in on-chain activity, driven by regulatory clarity and transparent reserves. For a CFO, that means lower counterparty risk when choosing the compliant, stable rail.
- Collections and recurring without cards. In Brazil, Pix Automático (since June 16, 2025) enables recurring payments with a single consent; integrated with wallets/custody and stablecoins, it opens recurring use cases for populations without card rails. Reuters-cited estimates project ~$30B in e-commerce during its first two years.
What about risk? Banks themselves acknowledge that the shift to instant payments reconfigures liquidity and fraud management; global institutions warn that while ~90% of wholesale cross-border payments credit in <1 hour, the real challenge is fraud and intra-day liquidity in an “always-on” mode. The thesis isn’t “crypto vs. banks” but interoperability with standards..jpg?width=1200&height=800&name=20251103_Bitso_Real-time%20payments_Blog2%20(1).jpg)
What this looks like in production
A common architecture links local collections via SPEI/PIX to custody accounts; within an orchestrator governed by KYC/AML, screening, and fraud monitoring, balances are consolidated in USDC to provide 24/7 liquidity and execute cross-border payments or payouts to suppliers. At payment time, liquidity is deployed to SPEI/PIX or taken off-ramp locally. Throughout the cycle, events/webhooks emit rich transaction metadata (invoice ID, SPEI/PIX reference, on-chain hash) into the ERP/TMS, so reconciliation and reporting are truly real-time. This pattern aligns with BIS/CPMI governance for interlinking fast systems and closing operational-risk gaps.
What the stage told us… and what your treasury should do next
Key implementation mandates from the Mexico City panel: programmable liquidity to cut pre-funding and operating windows; a trust layer (fraud, disputes, audit) that mirrors today’s standards; and interoperability between SPEI/PIX and stablecoins to keep finality in lockstep with business velocity. The opportunity is tangible: if you immobilize MXN 50 million in pre-funding and the 28-day TIIE hovers near 8%, that’s ~MXN 4 million/year in opportunity cost. Migrating to a model with consolidated liquidity in USDC and just-in-time deployment to SPEI/PIX can trim that bill—and accelerate reconciliation in the process.
*NVIO Mexico enables direct access to SPEI and provides payment services in full compliance with Mexican regulations. NVIO Pagos México, S.A.P.I. de C.V., IFPE (“NVIO Mexico”), is an entity authorized and regulated by Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV). Learn more at nvio.mx/terms.
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