The Mexpat Dispatch: March 21
5 economy + business stories from the national conversation
Welcome to The Mexpatriate.
“We are living through difficult times in the world. Three weeks ago, no one would have thought that fertilizers would be 60% more expensive, or that a barrel of oil would exceed 100 dollars,” said President Claudia Sheinbaum in the inaugural address of the national banking convention on Thursday. Despite the uncertainty, she said “we must remain optimists,” and prodded the banking sector to deliver on its promises of more credit access and lower fees (more on this below).
She also opened another front in the battle against cash: digital payments will become mandatory at all gas stations and toll booths later this year. Only around 30% of gas station sales transactions are paid with bank cards today. To push this transition, the government and banks are working on increased uptake of the Bank of Mexico’s free digital payments platform, CoDi (which is now available on mobile phones). Meanwhile, digital remittances from the U.S. overtook cash for the first time in 2025 according to Banxico data, accounting for 50.4% of transactions—in 2020, 81% of remittances were still in cash.
In today’s edition, I cover five economy and business stories from the national conversation, including Mexico’s biggest crop of Forbes billionaires yet, the contraction of manufacturing and the formal launch of U.S.-Mexico trade talks in Washington.
