Financial inclusion depends on the effective use of digital payments. When SMEs adopt these tools, they generate financial records, reduce cash-related risks, and gain access to credit, driving long-term business growth.
Financial inclusion is often discussed as a matter of reach: how many people hold a bank account, how many products exist in the market, and how quickly institutions extend their footprint. Access is measurable and politically appealing, but access alone rarely changes how businesses operate or how households manage money. What truly transforms economic participation is the sustained adoption of digital payment tools that make commercial activity visible, measurable, and eventually creditworthy.
For millions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Mexico—especially traditional business operating with limited technological infrastructure—the real challenge is not whether financial services exist in theory. The challenge is whether digital tools can be integrated into day to day operations in ways that improve visibility, protect cash flow, and support long-term viability.
The moment a merchant begins accepting digital payments, the mechanics of the business shift: transaction histories are captured automatically, cash-handling risks decline, and accounting routines become simpler. Over time, this generates a digital footprint that can, with proper safeguards, support credit assessment, financial planning, and eligibility for more sophisticated services.
Digital acceptance is an entry point into the formal economy. Yet real inclusion requires more than distributing terminals or launching apps. It depends on coordinated action across an ecosystem that includes banks, fintechs, regulators, and merchants. Banks contribute to regulatory certainty and stable infrastructure. Fintechs bring agility and new user-centric models. Regulators ensure safety, consumer protection, and trust. When each actor optimizes for its own domain without alignment, fragmentation increases cost and friction. When there is shared commitment to interoperability and consistent standards, the cost and complexity of adoption decrease significantly for small businesses.
This ecosystemic view is particularly relevant in countries like Mexico, where traditional commerce remains the backbone of local economies. Many SMEs have limited documentation, informal accounting practices, or intermittent connectivity. For these merchants, onboarding must be straightforward, compliance requirements must be explained in practical terms, and acceptance solutions must be affordable and reliable. Designing such an environment requires deliberate collaboration across the financial system. Interoperable payment rails, standardized APIs, and predictable settlement processes are not abstract technical preferences; they form the foundation layer on which inclusion at scale depends.
Mexico has a strong foundation to build upon. The country has a large domestic market, a dynamic fintech sector, and a growing digital payment infrastructure. Real-time transfers have become part of everyday economic life. In 2024, Mexico’s realtime payment system SPEI processed approximately 5.41 billion transactions—an annual increase of about 39%—with close to 90% of transfers corresponding to lowvalue operations between end users, reflecting the normalization of frequent microtransactions (Mexico Business News). More than 73 million adults used SPEI during that same period, confirming the shift toward digital tools for everyday financial activity (Mexico Business News).
These numbers offer a useful anchor: they show that Mexico is not waiting for digital adoption; it is already happening at scale. But the persistence of cash—especially for low-value transactions and in regions with connectivity gaps—remains a reality. This duality does not contradict the objective of inclusion. Instead, it highlights what digital solutions must become: practical, resilient, and accessible to segments that continue to rely on cash even as they engage selectively with digital services.
When talking about financial inclusion, payment infrastructure is often reduced to the rails that move money. In reality, infrastructure is the complete set of operational layers that make payments dependable. It includes onboarding and identity verification, fraud monitoring and authentication, settlement controls, reconciliation tools, and dispute management. These processes define whether digital payments feel safe and predictable for small businesses. Reliability is felt at ground level—when funds settle on time, when errors are resolved efficiently, and when data remains secure.
Security and resilience are inseparable from this effort. Faster payments compress response times for detecting anomalies. SMEs cannot afford prolonged uncertainty: a single delayed settlement or unresolved dispute can disrupt inventory cycles and vendor relationships. Strengthening operational trust therefore becomes a daily requierement rather than a conceptual goal. Tools such as tokenization, which replace sensitive financial data with secure digital identifiers, now play a central role in protecting transactions without adding friction for users (Mexico Business News).
From Evertec’s standpoint, financial inclusion is not a standalone program but a matter of ecosystem architecture. Real progress requires aligning technology, risk management, operations, and compliance so that institutions of different sizes and technological maturities can interact seamlessly. Our experience across Latin America and the Caribbean shows that modular, interoperable infrastructure enables institutions to meet local requirements without giving up consistency or reliability. The true value of regional learning is the ability to translate shared lessons into simpler, more robust solutions for smaller businesses.
In Mexico, this means supporting institutions and partners with flexible integration models, digital acceptance and issuing capabilities, and interoperability across channels. When financial institutions and fintechs can introduce new products without rebuilding operational components from scratch, innovation becomes more sustainable for the system as a whole. For SMEs, this translates into access to tools that once seemed exclusive to large companies: real-time dashboards, automated reconciliation, fraud controls, and payment acceptance that works across customer preferences.
To move from discussion to measurable impact, the financial ecosystem must reconsider how it evaluates progress. Counting newly opened accounts offers a narrow view. What matters is usage—consistent, recurring, embedded in everyday routines. Usage grows when payments, data, credit, and risk processes reinforce each other rather than operate in isolation. It also grows when merchants feel confident that digital payments will work reliably every time.
Mexico has the components needed to convert digital payments into a meaningful driver of opportunity for SMEs and traditional businesses. The direction is clear. What will determine success is the ability of the ecosystem to prioritize interoperability, operational resilience, and shared standards. If collaboration can stay focused on these elements, inclusion will stop being a recurring theme in public discourse and become a lived experience across the country. The more predictable, accessible, and trustworthy digital payments become, the more they will serve as an engine of mobility for the businesses that form the backbone of the Mexican economy.
