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Ripple (XRP)’s survey of 160 finance leaders in Mexico and Brazil found stronger stablecoin adoption intent, but regulatory clarity remains the main hurdle.
Stablecoins are emerging as the preferred digital-asset rail for parts of Latin America, with Mexico and Brazil standing out in Ripple (XRP)’s survey of 160 finance leaders across the two markets. The company said the region showed the strongest intent to adopt digital assets of any region it surveyed, but also the widest gap between demand and the ability to get products live because of regulation and technical constraints.
Evidence and context
In Ripple’s January-February 2026 study, 69% of respondents in Mexico and Brazil said they are using or plan to use stablecoins for payments within two years, compared with 54% globally. The same share, 69%, said they are using or plan to use stablecoin treasury management, while 66% said the same for stablecoin issuance and 63% for regulated digital asset custody. Ripple said these figures combine current users with institutions planning adoption within one to two years, so they are not current nationwide adoption rates.
The survey found that 48% of financial institutions named regulatory clarity their top concern, 39% of all respondents cited compliance complexity as the main barrier, and 40% of financial institutions pointed to security and safekeeping. Among fintechs, 28% said they lack the technical skills to build digital-asset products in-house, compared with 7% in North America, according to Ripple. The company also said 65% of respondents would rather partner than build and 61% preferred a single provider over a stack of specialists.
Ripple framed the shift around cross-border payments and treasury use cases. It said fintechs in Mexico are turning to stablecoin rails for international payroll, remittances and supplier payments, while Brazil is focused on cross-border business payments and treasury management. The company also said 75% of respondents across Latin America expect stablecoin use cases to expand beyond B2B payments and 65% of financial institutions expect stablecoins to become the default for cross-border payments, versus 47% globally.
Broader market data in the supplied material points to already material activity in both countries, but the measures are not directly comparable. Chainalysis said stablecoins represented 61%, or more than $47 billion, of Mexico’s $77.6 billion crypto economy during the period July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, with monthly cross-border stablecoin value involving Mexico reaching $1.8 billion in June 2026. In Brazil, Receita Federal said in a July 23, 2026 release that stablecoins accounted for roughly 80% of declared cryptoasset volume, based on declarations through December 2025. Those figures describe different activities and should not be added together or treated as population-wide adoption rates.
Ripple said Brazil’s central bank introduced the region’s first comprehensive framework for virtual asset providers in late 2025, while Mexico is still updating its 2018 Fintech Law to widen permitted digital-asset activity and support tokenization. The report said these shifting rules make partnering more attractive than building in-house for many institutions, particularly where compliance complexity is already the top barrier.
Ripple’s commentary is industry-sponsored research rather than a market price event, and the source material does not include a listed token price or a next verified catalyst date. The evidence supplied shows growing institutional intent and usage in Mexico and Brazil, but it does not establish a live, nationally representative adoption rate for either country.
Methodology and limits
Ripple said the primary quantitative study was conducted in January-February 2026 among 1,080 finance decision makers worldwide across banking, asset management, corporates and fintechs, with the Latin American subset covering 160 respondents headquartered in Mexico and Brazil. Because the adoption figures combine existing users with planned adoption, and because the regional figures rely on a convenience sample of finance leaders, the results indicate sentiment and business intent rather than a census of market usage.
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