Latin America has become one of the most active testing grounds for stablecoin infrastructure in the world. The region processed nearly $1.5 trillion in digital asset transactions between 2022 and 2025, according to Chainalysis, with stablecoins driving the largest share of that volume’s growth. Brazil alone accounted for $318.8 billion between mid-2024 and mid-2025, roughly one-third of the regional total. Argentina ranked second at $93.9 billion, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia. Each of these countries has a different economic profile, but across all of them, stablecoin adoption is accelerating as a solution to practical problems facing enterprises and individuals alike.

The conditions driving this growth are complex. Some of the key drivers that often come up in conversations about this market include:

• Devaluation of some of the region's local currencies,

• Capital controls that complicate international transfers,

• Payout infrastructure that can turn multi-day delays into a business constraint.

Across emerging economies where high inflation and currency volatility erode the value of local savings faster than interest rates can compensate, stablecoin use as a dollar-denominated store of value has gained traction with both retail users and businesses.

Enterprises and payment operators in the region are responding to this demand by adopting stablecoins into their core operations, using these crypto assets to solve liquidity, settlement, and access problems that traditional systems handle poorly.

To examine what that building process actually looks like, Utila brought together five operators and founders for Episode 7 of the Stablecoin Builder Series - a monthly live program for founders, entrepreneurs, and operators working in the stablecoin ecosystem.

The panel included:

• Caio Barbosa, founder of Lumx (a Brazil-based cross-border payments company)

• Andres Kim, Tether's expansion lead for Latin America

• Salvador Yanez, Chief Product Officer at Movantis, which enables roughly 60 percent of remittances flowing from the US into LATAM annually

• ​Cristobal Valle Gonzalez, partnerships manager at Global66, a multi-currency account platform founded in Chile

• ​Leandro Meneses, founder and CEO of Mandioca, which connects LATAM exporters to international counterparties via stablecoin settlement.

The conversation covered what's driving adoption, where the real infrastructure gaps are, how local and regional companies are building stablecoin products within evolving regulatory frameworks, and what founders learned the hard way. Below are the five most important takeaways.

Digital Dollars Remain a Core Use Case

Access to US dollar-denominated savings and accounts has historically been restricted in much of Latin America, typically available only to wealthy individuals through private banking relationships. Stablecoins are changing the conditions under which that access is offered.

For example: in Argentina, where annual inflation hit 117.8 percent in 2024 and where capital controls limit how much foreign currency citizens can hold, stablecoins now account for 61.8 percent of crypto transaction volume, according to Chainalysis - well above the global average of 44.7 percent. The data reflects how households and businesses are using digital dollars to protect purchasing power against currency devaluation.

For companies building LATAM-facing products, this creates a clear opportunity. Salvador Yanez of Movantis described how they've deployed stablecoin wallet infrastructure across 19 countries, white-labeling it to financial institutions and retail partners who can now offer dollar-denominated accounts to customers who previously had no path to them. The product promotes financial independence and democratizes dollar access at scale.

At the same time, Caio Barbosa pointed to a Brazil-specific dynamic: the growth of BRL-denominated stablecoins, with more than ten Brazilian Real-backed tokens now active in the market. In Brazil's case, the demand driver is different - non-residents want BRL-denominated accounts they couldn't access through traditional banking, and onchain instruments make that possible without requiring a local bank relationship.

The practical applications for multi-currency wallets are expanding as more institutions recognize that stablecoin accounts serve different customer segments than originally anticipated. For operators assessing LATAM, the question is how to structure those products within the compliance frameworks that apply in each jurisdiction.

Cross-Border Transfers: Fixing the Liquidity Problem

Remittance flows into Latin America reached $162.7 billion in 2024 and are projected to hit $174.4 billion in 2025, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. Most of that volume moved through a concentrated set of money transfer operators charging between 3.5 and 15 percent depending on channel.

For operators building on these corridors, stablecoin settlement can reduce costs meaningfully - particularly on routes where high fees have historically reflected correspondent banking overhead rather than actual service complexity.

But Yanez offered an operational framing that goes beyond the familiar cost-reduction pitch. Before integrating stablecoin infrastructure, Movantis held idle balance sheet capital in each of the 19 LATAM countries where it operates - funds sitting in local accounts waiting to enter payout networks.

Stablecoin settlement allows that capital to move more efficiently between corridors, reducing carry costs and improving the company's ability to serve more routes at lower prices. This is a treasury optimization problem, and stablecoins are the most efficient tool Movantis has found for solving it.

Leandro Meneses described a complementary use case at Mandioca, which processes cross-border payments for exporters. The workflow:

• Collect local fiat currencies in the Latin American market where the exporter sells goods

• Convert to stablecoins for settlement, removing the need for correspondent bank involvement

• Pay counterparties internationally at T+0, regardless of where in the world they are

The result is that exporters can access same-day international settlements on corridors that previously took several business days, and without the per-transaction fees that correspondent banking imposes. For companies running regular cross-border transactions into LATAM, the compounding effect on costs and cash flow is significant.

Local Stablecoin Ecosystems Need Real Infrastructure

The growth of local and regional stablecoins across Latin America is well underway, but building into those ecosystems reliably requires more than accessing existing blockchain rails. Each country presents a different regulatory environment, different payout network infrastructure, and different customer onboarding requirements.

Cristobal Valle Gonzalez of Global66 described the infrastructure gaps they encountered as the company expanded into stablecoin products: transaction reporting requirements varied across jurisdictions, API reliability for treasury management across currencies was inconsistent, and serving both retail users and institutional partners required configurable reporting architecture rather than a single solution. Global66 invested in building that layer specifically.

Caio Barbosa reinforced the point from a regulatory angle: Brazil's framework is evolving, and products designed around current rules need to be reconfigurable as those rules change. For operators evaluating LATAM markets, the infrastructure requirements look like this:

• Multi-jurisdiction AML monitoring that scales per-corridor and adapts to local compliance frameworks

• Configurable wallet policies at the level of user segment and asset type, not just platform-wide rules

• Treasury tooling that handles multi-currency liquidity across corridors in real time

• API-level reporting that can serve both internal compliance and institutional partner requirements

Crypto adoption across the region is growing faster than the compliance infrastructure that surrounds it in many jurisdictions. The companies that invest in that layer now are better positioned when regulation tightens, because they've built the controls before they became mandatory.

Regulation Rewards Early Engagement

The regulatory picture across LATAM remains complex and not entirely settled yet, but the companies with the most durable positions aren't the ones waiting for clarity - they're the ones building compliance infrastructure ahead of it.

A recent example: Brazil generated significant media alarm when proposed stablecoin legislation emerged, with some headlines suggesting a blanket ban. The actual content of the proposals was considerably more specific, and operators who had stayed close to the regulatory process rather than reacting to coverage were better positioned to respond.

Andres Kim and Salvador both made the same important point: as stablecoin volumes scale and more financial institutions enter the space, they want to see KYC, AML, and audit-grade transaction monitoring that matches what they'd expect in traditional finance. The opportunity for operators is to bring those controls into digital asset operations from the start, making compliance a feature of the product rather than a layer added afterward.

Regulation is still taking shape across several major markets at the same time. Europe has MiCA, the US is advancing the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts, and Brazil is developing its own framework. These rules will also influence how other LATAM regulators approach stablecoins and digital assets.

That creates a clear product challenge. If a company builds around today’s rules as if they are fixed, the product may need major changes later. Compliance architecture needs to be flexible from the start, so teams can adapt to new requirements across markets without rebuilding core workflows.

Founders: Build Compliance In Early

Both Leandro Meneses and Caio Barbosa reflected on the same lesson from building stablecoin companies in LATAM: when you're moving capital, the cost of getting compliance wrong is not an iteration problem.

Meneses described the moment when an exporter's payment in Singapore had to clear immediately because a ship would not depart otherwise. At that point, the abstract importance of having reliable settlement infrastructure becomes concrete. The stakes of handling other people's funds are not theoretical.

Barbosa framed it as a product design principle: compliance and regulatory requirements should function as structural constraints from the beginning of the design process, not as layers added after the core product is working.

Companies that try to retrofit controls onto a product built without them will encounter problems at scale, precisely when the cost of encountering problems is highest. In regulated markets like Brazil, the requirement to build controls in from the start has become a baseline, and operators entering other LATAM markets would do well to treat it the same way.

Practical advice both founders offered to builders entering the region:

• Know your questions before engaging lawyers or consultants - open-ended legal engagements are expensive, and the specificity of your questions determines the value of the advice you receive

• Design around the regulatory framework, not despite it - working closely with regulators is an advantage, especially for companies operating with financial institutions and large enterprises that expect compliance parity with traditional finance

• Build controls that can scale - the moment your volume attracts regulatory attention is not the moment to be building compliance tooling from scratch

The stablecoin ecosystem in LATAM is maturing, and the innovation happening there is increasingly being built by companies with a clear-eyed view of what it takes to move money responsibly. The founders who've done it longest are unanimous: infrastructure first, speed second. Operators who treat compliance tooling as an upfront investment - rather than a cost deferred until regulators require it - benefit from faster institutional onboarding and more durable relationships with financial partners.

Explore Wallet Infrastructure for LATAM Stablecoin Companies with Utila

Among all the insights shared in this webinar, one conclusion stood out the most: the Latin America stablecoin market is becoming more operationally mature. The companies on this panel are processing meaningful volume, addressing treasury needs, and building compliance infrastructure that can adapt as regulation develops.

For many operators, stablecoin infrastructure is now becoming part of the core operating model for payments, liquidity management, and dollar access. The architecture decisions being made today will shape how effectively companies can scale across the region and serve growing institutional demand.

Utila provides fintechs, banks, and enterprises with the infrastructure to build and manage stablecoin and digital asset operations across Latin America and globally. Serving over 300 institutions and securing more than $25 billion in monthly volume, Utila gives companies the wallet infrastructure, multi-jurisdiction compliance integrations, policy controls, and treasury tooling to operate across complex, multi-country environments.

If you're building cross-border payment products, multi-currency wallets, or stablecoin-powered financial services for Latin American markets, explore what Utila can do for your operations.