When I talk to banks across Latin America, the conversation has changed. A year ago, I was explaining why digital assets were relevant to a bank’s core business. That conversation is over. Banks today are talking about how to build, at what layer, and at what speed.
The conviction behind that shift is unlike anything I’ve seen in this region. Certainly the investment matches conviction, as I discuss below, but the issue is this: there’s a mismatch with what’s actually live.
That’s the gap worth closing, and it’s more solvable than most institutions think.
Latin America’s Digital Asset Commitment Predates 2026
According to our Financial Grid survey of 600+ financial institutions and corporates globally, 41% of Latin American financial institutions had already committed budget for digital asset infrastructure before 2026 began. This is deployed capital. The decision was made, and the money moved, before our survey was fielded.
50% of Latin American institutions are now investing $1 million or more in digital asset infrastructure over the next 12 months. In the United States, that figure is 15%. Let that land for a moment: a region often characterized as a late adopter is outpacing the United States by more than 3x on investment commitment. The narrative about Latin America lagging on financial infrastructure has not caught up with what’s actually happening. This region is a high-conviction market operating at materially higher investment levels than the most developed financial market in the world.
The reasons aren’t hard to find if you spend time in the region. Remittance corridors, currency instability, large populations who’ve never had a traditional bank account: Latin America has more structural reasons to want digital rails than almost any other market. The investment numbers reflect that.
Drilling down to these three countries, the picture varies in ways that matter. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico all show strong early commitment in terms of being budgeted before 2026:
- Argentina at 58%
- Brazil at 34%
- Mexico at 31%
Latin America’s Digital Asset Build Has Momentum
Take Wenia, a Grupo Bancolombia subsidiary, as a reference point. Its digital asset platform generated $75 million in transaction volume in its first year, with 64% month-on-month growth, and trading, stablecoin issuance, yield, and cross-border all live. That is production at scale, from a bank-led institution, in this market.
The rails these institutions are building on are already carrying real volume. Fireblocks processed approximately $1.2 billion in local currency-denominated stablecoin volume across the region in the trailing 12 months, roughly 440% growth over two years.
And Wenia is not the outlier. It’s the preview. This $1.2 billion in stablecoin volume was mostly flowing through fintechs and payments providers, not banks. That’s the window banks are racing to close. Much of that volume is running through payments providers and fintechs.
Banks are watching this happen on infrastructure they don’t yet control. In banking, the institution that offers digital asset services inside an existing primary relationship captures the customer, the data, and the revenue. The window to do that on their own terms is what’s at stake. It is a reason to build. The sections that follow map what that build requires.
Why Latin American Banks Are Stuck Between Pilot and Production
Most Latin American banks have already decided digital assets are worth pursuing. The harder question is what happens after the pilot. 50% of regional financial institutions are in active pilots, but only 14% are in production. Closing that gap is where the real work sits.
Internal governance is the leading blocking obstacle across the region, cited by 47% of Latin American institutions, the highest of any region globally. Where to start, what to sequence, and how to build without creating downstream problems: these are governance questions, not technology questions.
Mexico is the sharpest expression of this dynamic. 71% of Mexican institutions cite internal governance as a blocking obstacle, the highest of any country in the dataset. In practice, that means the hard questions haven’t been answered yet: which use case launches first, what operational readiness actually requires beyond a technology integration, and which architectural decisions made now will constrain what the institution can build later.
Brazil has a different profile. 68% of Brazilian institutions cite security and resilience as their leading external constraint, 20 percentage points above the global figure. Brazil runs real-time payments at institutional scale through PIX.
I’d push back on anyone who reads Brazil’s security concerns as hesitation. PIX processes hundreds of millions of transactions. Brazilian banks have skin in the game on operational resilience in a way most markets don’t. Their security scrutiny is due diligence, not delay.
What Closing The Digital Asset Gap Requires
75% of Latin American financial institutions cite transformation of financial infrastructure as a significant strategic driver, the highest of any region globally. The institutions acting on that are not adding a digital asset product line. They are making a foundational infrastructure decision.
Custody is where that decision becomes real. 75% of Latin American institutions cite secure institutional custody and wallet governance as a critical factor in provider selection, the highest of any region globally and 13 percentage points above the global average. The institutions making the most progress globally, including Latin American banks like Banco Bradesco, get the custody infrastructure decision right early, build the governance framework, and prioritize front-to-back requirements before anything else. That foundation is what allows them to move at a speed their peers cannot.
The internal governance constraint doesn’t get resolved through process design alone. It gets resolved when the wallet architecture provides the control structure that makes the approval and oversight frameworks work. The wallet is not storage. It is the control point. I’ve seen banks spend 18 months on integrations they had to unwind because the wallet architecture they chose couldn’t accommodate the approval structures their compliance team required. The custody decision isn’t a later-stage problem. It determines what you’re able to build
Latin America’s Digital Asset Build Can Move Faster Than Most Banks Think
The pilot-to-production gap looks wider than it is. Building the custody and wallet governance layer in-house takes most banks 18 to 24 months. Deploying against the right infrastructure partner, however, only takes weeks. The governance problem is solvable faster than most institutions think, if the infrastructure decision is made correctly.
Brazil’s timeline has a hard external constraint. The Banco Central do Brasil VASP authorization deadlines under BCB Resolutions 519, 520, and 521 come into effect October 30, 2026. The counterparty pool for any Brazilian institution not authorized by that date contracts. The infrastructure bar for late entrants rises. Institutions in wait-and-see mode are waiting on a deadline that is already visible.
The Real Work Starts After the Budget Clears
93% of Latin American financial institutions expect the regulatory environment to be favorable or very favorable for their digital asset strategy. The direction is settled. The capital is committed. The use cases are live.
What remains is the execution gap between pilots and production. That gap is organizational and infrastructural, and it is solvable. The institutions that close it in 2026 will not just add a product line. They will define the financial infrastructure their markets run on for the next decade.
My read: the institutions that close the pilot-to-production gap in 2026 won’t just add a product. They’ll define the financial infrastructure their markets run on. I’m not making a forecast here: this is what I’m already seeing happen with the banks further along in the build.
If you’re navigating where your institution sits in that journey, we’re happy to talk.
Read the full Financial Grid Latin America report and the global report.
