Mexico is reviving CoDi, the instant payment service its central bank launched seven years ago, as the centerpiece of a government campaign to move everyday payments from cash to digital. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s plan, detailed by the Financial Times on August 19, 2026, sets an adoption target for 2027 and makes digital payment acceptance mandatory at gas stations and highway toll booths.
“In 2027, at least 50% of adults will make at least one digital payment,” said José Antonio Peña Merino, one of Sheinbaum’s closest advisers, whom she tapped to oversee mass adoption. The stated rationale goes beyond payment efficiency. Traceable flows are meant to fight tax evasion, corruption, and the financing of the criminal economy.
CoDi runs on SPEI, the interbank payment system operated by Banco de México (Banxico). A user scans a QR code or opens a payment link to trigger an immediate transfer between accounts at any institution in the country. The service never caught on with consumers.
Cash still covers most everyday purchases
Cash is not a leftover in Mexico. It is the default, including for amounts a card would handle easily in other markets.
Those figures frame the challenge. Brazil, often held up as the model, still runs four in 10 transactions through cash. Mexico is not trying to eliminate cash. It is trying to reach the point where paying digitally becomes a routine habit rather than the exception.
The plan targets journeys, accounts, and acceptance
- A simpler CoDi user journey, backed by a public campaign promoting the service.
- A new kind of online bank account that is not linked to a tax ID, to bring informal businesses into digital acceptance.
- Mandatory digital payment acceptance at gas stations and highway toll booths.
- A requirement for lenders to adopt a standardized CoDi user experience by the end of the year.
Mexico borrows Brazil’s lesson on a uniform experience
The obvious comparison is Pix, which Brazil’s central bank launched in 2020. Both are instant transfer services, both can be started from a QR code, and both are run by the country’s central bank. The difference lies in how the rail was rolled out. Brazil made participation mandatory for its largest institutions and standardized the Pix flow inside banking apps, which erased differences in experience from one bank to the next. CoDi, by contrast, was long offered as one option among many, and each bank designed its own flow.
The most significant measure in the Mexican plan addresses exactly that gap. Requiring lenders to adopt a standardized CoDi experience effectively concedes that the service failed on design and commercial execution, not technology. Consumers adopt an interbank rail when every bank puts it in the same place, under the same name, with the same number of taps, not simply because it exists.
| Measure | Goal | Prerequisite |
|---|---|---|
| Standardized CoDi experience required of lenders | Remove differences in experience between banking apps | An enforceable specification and compliance checks |
| Online accounts not linked to a tax ID | Bring the informal economy into digital acceptance | Lighter, capped onboarding requirements |
| Mandatory acceptance at gas stations and toll booths | Create frequent, everyday points of use | Deployed acceptance hardware and reliable connectivity |
| Public promotion of the service | Overcome distrust of digital payments | Banks carrying the message in their own apps |
Private players are building out acceptance
Acceptance does not depend on the government alone. In May 2026, FEMSA, the group that runs the OXXO convenience store chain and a gas station network, said its payments unit NetPay was launching a digital payments system for gas stations, in line with government policy. The system lets stations accept card, QR code, and CoDi payments. That matters: in a country where cash dominates small-ticket spending, any shift in behavior depends on equipping the merchants that handle those very amounts. Card acceptance, through Visa and Mastercard , remains concentrated among formal merchants in large cities.
Mandates guarantee acceptance, not demand
Mexicans don’t hold on to cash only for convenience. Cash keeps part of economic activity out of view of the tax authorities, and an informal merchant has no natural incentive to leave a record of sales. The plan tackles that objection with accounts that require no tax ID, which lowers the cost of entry but does not remove the trade-off. An acceptance mandate does not create demand either. It guarantees a place to pay digitally, not a customer who chooses to.
Europe faces the same problem in reverse
Europe already has an instant rail, and it has brought the price of an instant transfer down to that of a standard one. Yet instant payments remain marginal at the point of sale, where cards still dominate. Mexico’s case shows what making infrastructure available does not deliver on its own: acceptance, habit, and a uniform user experience. All three have to be mandated or negotiated, and they are won one institution at a time.