Bitso opened its Stablecoin Conference LATAM 2026 in Mexico City by framing a new phase for the region: the “Hybrid Finance” era. The data the company released from its Bitso Business platform shows traditional banks and financial institutions accounting for 60 percent of new corporate clients onboarded so far in 2026.

Context

For years, Latin America’s crypto adoption has been driven primarily by retail users and small businesses seeking dollar stability amid local currency volatility and high inflation. Stablecoins — especially USDT and USDC — became the practical tool for hedging, remittances, and day-to-day payments where banking rails are expensive or slow.

Bitso, founded in 2014 and operating across Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and beyond, built one of the largest on/off-ramp networks in the region. Its Bitso Business arm offers APIs for companies to move value using stablecoins for the cross-border leg while settling into local rails like Pix in Brazil or SPEI in Mexico.

Bitso’s Stablecoin Landscape Report

During the first day of the conference, which welcomed over 2,000 attendees, Bitso released findings from the second edition of its Stablecoin Landscape Report. The analysis covers usage across more than 1,900 institutional clients on Bitso Business during the first half of 2026.

The headline numbers:

  • Stablecoin Total Payment Volume (TPV) for B2B clients grew 81% year-over-year.
  • 60% of all new corporate clients onboarded onto Bitso Business in 2026 were traditional banks and other financial institutions. Crypto-native firms represented just 7%, with the remaining 33% traditional real-economy enterprises.
  • Stablecoins have become the most purchased digital asset category across Latin America for the first time, capturing roughly 40% of acquisitions and surpassing Bitcoin.

Bitso CEO and co-founder Daniel Vogel described the shift during the conference: “We’re entering this era of hybrid financial system where it’s no longer the TradFi world and the digital assets world, but it is just really a set of companies, individuals, businesses that are trying to build solutions for the world in an integrated fashion. And the growing participation of all of these major financial institutions I think validates the direction of that hypothesis.”

The “Hybrid Finance” label captures a two-way convergence. On one side, global banking giants and established fintechs are rapidly adding digital asset and on-chain capabilities. On the other, digital asset platforms are moving into regulated financial services and infrastructure. The result is not two separate stacks but integrated rails that combine TradFi trust and scale with blockchain’s speed and programmability.

Why LatAm cares

When the region’s largest crypto-native platform reports that banks now represent the majority of its newest institutional relationships, blockchain settlement moves from optional experiment to standard back-office option for parts of traditional finance.

For businesses and users across Latin America this carries several concrete implications. Companies that already use local rails for domestic payments can now pair them with on-chain stablecoin legs for cross-border without maintaining pre-funded accounts in every corridor. Banks and fintechs onboarding to platforms like Bitso Business bring additional liquidity and product development that ultimately surfaces to retail and SME users.

Compliance-sensitive organizations — from payroll providers to exporters and larger corporates — gain access to programmable rails inside or alongside familiar regulatory perimeters. At the same time, the consumer and self-custody side of the market does not go away: platforms serving institutions in LatAm typically continue to support withdrawals to personal wallets.

The trend also tracks with independent data. Multiple reports over the past year have shown stablecoins handling the bulk of crypto-related transaction volume and on/off-ramp activity in Brazil, Argentina and other high-adoption markets. Institutional participation adds depth and staying power to rails that were originally built for retail hedging and remittances.

Takeaway

Bitso’s conference framing and numbers make visible a shift that has been building in Latin America for some time: the most practical path forward is integration, not replacement. Banks becoming the dominant new client segment for the leading local platform is both a vote of confidence in the infrastructure already deployed and a signal that the next phase of growth will be shaped by hybrid use cases.

For everyday users and businesses, the outcome is more connected, more resilient financial plumbing — whether the flow stays on traditional rails, moves on-chain for part of its journey, or lands in a self-custody wallet at the end. The label “Hybrid Finance” may or may not become standard terminology, but the convergence it describes is already changing how value moves in the region.

Not financial advice. Stablecoins and institutional platforms carry issuer, counterparty, regulatory, and operational risks. Data shared by any single platform reflects its own client base and may not represent the full market. Users and businesses should evaluate specific products, counterparties, and compliance requirements for their own situation.

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