Cross-border payments · LatAm

How to Accept Payments in LatAm Without Losing 30% of Your Sales

Q: Why are so many international card payments declined in LatAm?

There are several causes: stricter fraud rules from local issuing banks for international transactions, local cards not enabled by default for international online payments, absence of optimized 3DS2, and weaker authorization track records between European acquirers and local issuers.

TL;DR Selling in Latin America with only Visa and Mastercard means leaving money on the table. In Mexico, 40% of adults have no bank card. In Brazil, 30% of online purchases are paid with Pix or boleto. In Colombia, PSE is the preferred method for digital payments. If your e-commerce doesn't offer the local payment methods of each market, you're losing between 20% and 35% of your potential sales in the region — without knowing it.

Why Card Payments Are Not Enough in LatAm

LatAm is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the world, with a compound annual growth rate above 20% over the next five years. But it has one defining characteristic that sets it apart from Europe or North America: the banking infrastructure is radically different.

While in Spain 94% of adults have a bank account, in Mexico that figure drops to 49% according to World Bank data. In countries like Peru or Paraguay, financial inclusion doesn't exceed 45%. This has a direct consequence for your checkout: many of your potential customers in LatAm cannot pay by international credit or debit card, even if they want to.

On top of that, even those who do have a card face another problem: locally issued cards in LatAm are frequently declined by European or US-based acquirers. The cross-border payment decline rate in the region can exceed 25–30% for technical and fraud-related reasons that have nothing to do with the buyer's ability to pay.

The result is devastating: a customer who reaches your checkout, adds an item to their cart and fails at payment doesn't just skip that purchase. In most cases, they never come back.

Local Payment Methods You Need to Know by Country

Mexico: The Largest Spanish-Speaking Market

Mexico is the second largest e-commerce market in LatAm by volume, and the largest in the Spanish-speaking world. However, it has a critical characteristic: 40% of adults have no bank card, and of those who do, a significant share uses local debit cards with restrictions on international payments.

Priority methods for Mexico:

OXXO Pay — Cash payment at over 20,000 OXXO convenience stores across the country. The customer generates a voucher at checkout and pays in-store. Accounts for 10–15% of Mexican e-commerce. Essential for the mid-to-lower income segment.
SPEI — Instant interbank transfer. The preferred method for high-ticket buyers who distrust entering card details online. Settlement in seconds.
Local cards — BBVA México, Santander México, Banorte. Require an acquirer with local presence or an orchestrator routing to Mexican acquirers to maximize acceptance rate.
Mercado Pago — Digital wallet with high penetration among millennials and Mercado Libre ecosystem users.

What happens if you only offer international Visa/Mastercard? You're capturing roughly 55–60% of your potential market. The remaining 40% can't or won't pay that way.

Brazil: The Giant With Its Own Payment System

Brazil is the largest e-commerce market in LatAm by absolute volume, and also the most complex. It has its own instant payment system — Pix — which has radically transformed how Brazilians pay since its launch in 2020.

Priority methods for Brazil:

Pix — The instant payment system of the Banco Central do Brasil. Since its launch, it has surpassed the boleto bancário in volume and even credit cards in many segments. Free for individuals, immediate, available 24/7. In 2024, Pix processed over 42 billion transactions. For an international e-commerce business, integrating it through a local provider is the number one priority in Brazil.
Boleto Bancário — A payment slip generated at checkout, payable at banks, ATMs or banking apps. Has a 3–5 day expiry window. Still relevant for high-ticket purchases and users who distrust online card payments.
Local credit cards — parcelamento — Brazilian cards have a unique feature: parcelamento, the ability to split a purchase into interest-free installments. Many Brazilian consumers expect to pay in 3, 6 or 12 installments. Without parcelamento, your conversion rate drops significantly at higher price points.
PicPay and Mercado Pago — Wallets with high urban penetration.

Key technical note: To process in Brazil with high acceptance rates, you need either a local acquirer (Cielo, Rede, GetNet, Stone) or an orchestrator that routes your transactions through them. Processing with a European acquirer in Brazil can result in acceptance rates below 60%.

Colombia: The Emerging Market With the Highest Growth Potential

Colombia is the third largest e-commerce market in LatAm and the fastest-growing in percentage terms. It has a relatively developed banking system, but with its own local methods that are essential to offer.

Priority methods for Colombia:

PSE (Pago Seguro en Línea) — Colombia's online bank debit system. The preferred digital payment method for mid-to-high ticket online transactions. It works by connecting directly to the buyer's bank account in real time. Without PSE, you lose the most solvent segment of the Colombian market.
Efecty and Baloto — Cash payment networks with thousands of points nationwide. Critical for capturing the unbanked segment.
Nequi and Daviplata — Bank-backed wallets with enormous penetration among young adults. Nequi alone has over 17 million users in Colombia.
Local cards — Unlike Mexico, credit card usage is more widespread in Colombia, but local cards still require acquirers with market presence.

Other Relevant LatAm Markets

Country	Key Method	E-commerce Penetration	Priority
Argentina	Mercado Pago, bank transfer, installments	High	Medium-high
Chile	Transbank, Khipu, WebPay	High	Medium-high
Peru	PagoEfectivo, Yape	Medium	Medium
Ecuador	Cash (in-store payment), local card	Low-medium	Medium-low

The Most Common Mistakes European E-Commerce Businesses Make in LatAm

Mistake 1: Assuming Stripe or Adyen Solve Everything

Stripe and Adyen are excellent for Europe and North America. In LatAm, they have partial coverage and significantly lower acceptance rates than local acquirers. Stripe has a presence in Mexico and Brazil, but its acceptance rate in both markets is lower than that of a local acquirer due to routing and interbank relationship factors. Adyen offers better coverage, but the cost and complexity of integrating local payment methods remains higher than through a specialized orchestrator.

Mistake 2: Ignoring Average Ticket by Payment Method

In Brazil, parcelamento (interest-free installments) is not an add-on — it's the norm for purchases above 200–300 BRL. If you don't offer it, the average ticket for your Brazilian sales will fall, because customers will only buy what they can pay for upfront. Parcelamento can increase average order value by 40–60% in categories like electronics, fashion or software.

Mistake 3: Not Localizing the Payment Experience

Displaying payment methods in the local language and format is critical. A checkout that shows "Bank Transfer" instead of "PSE" in Colombia, or that doesn't format the Brazilian CPF correctly in the form, generates distrust and abandonment. Localization details directly affect conversion.

Mistake 4: Not Segmenting Your Payment Stack by Market

No single payment method works across all of LatAm. The right strategy is a payment orchestrator that lets you configure a different approach per country: in Brazil, prioritize Pix + boleto + parcelamento; in Mexico, OXXO + SPEI + local routing; in Colombia, PSE + Efecty.

How to Structure Your LatAm Payment Strategy Step by Step

Step 1 — Analyze your current traffic by country. Before integrating anything, check in Google Analytics or your payment platform how much traffic and how many failed transactions you're receiving from LatAm. The decline map by country tells you where you're losing the most money and where to act first.

Step 2 — Prioritize by volume and potential. Not all LatAm markets carry the same weight for your business. If most of your traffic comes from Mexico, start with OXXO and SPEI. If it comes from Brazil, Pix is the first integration you should make.

Step 3 — Evaluate whether you need a payment orchestrator. For an e-commerce selling in 3 or more LatAm countries, managing multiple local acquirers without orchestration is operationally complex. A payment orchestrator with LatAm coverage (Kushki, DLocal, Conekta, EBANX) simplifies integration and optimizes routing automatically.

Step 4 — Measure the impact on acceptance rate by method and country. Once integrated, set up separate reporting by country and payment method. Pix acceptance rate in Brazil should exceed 95%. OXXO in Mexico will sit between 85–92% (there is dropout at the in-store payment step). These benchmarks let you detect technical issues quickly.

Step 5 — Iterate. LatAm is a fast-evolving market. Pix had zero users in October 2020 and today processes more transactions than any other method in Brazil. Maintain a payment methods roadmap that you review every quarter.

How Much Can You Gain by Integrating Local Payment Methods in LatAm?

This is the question we hear most from our clients. The answer depends on current volume and how much LatAm traffic is being lost, but typical ranges are:

E-commerce with 10–50M€ GMV and presence in 2–3 LatAm countries: An acceptance rate improvement of 15–25 pp (moving from ~65% to ~85–90%) can represent between €1.5M and €8M in additional annual revenue.
SaaS with recurring billing in LatAm: Improving acceptance rate reduces involuntary churn. Each percentage point improvement in AR can represent a 0.5–1% reduction in monthly churn.

At PayScaling, every LatAm payment optimization project we've carried out has generated a return greater than 10x the cost of the engagement in year one.

Frequently Asked Questions About LatAm Payments

What is Pix and why does it matter for my e-commerce?

Pix is the instant payment system of the Banco Central do Brasil, launched in November 2020. It is free for individuals, operates 24/7 and transfers are immediate. It is now the most widely used digital payment method in Brazil, surpassing cards and the boleto bancário in transaction volume. For an e-commerce selling in Brazil, not offering Pix is the equivalent of not offering credit cards in Europe.

Do I need a legal entity in each LatAm country to accept local payments?

Not necessarily. There are providers specialized in cross-border payments for LatAm (DLocal, EBANX, Kushki, Conekta) that operate as local Merchant of Record (MOR) in each country, allowing you to offer local payment methods without incorporating a company in each market. This significantly simplifies the tax and regulatory complexity.

What is the typical acceptance rate in LatAm with a European acquirer?

With a European acquirer and no localization, acceptance rates in LatAm typically sit between 55% and 70% depending on the country and ticket size. With local acquirers or specialized providers, that range rises to 80–92%. The main difference lies in local interbank routing and support for alternative payment methods.

What is parcelamento in Brazil and how does it affect my business?

Parcelamento is the ability to split a purchase into monthly interest-free installments (absorbed by the merchant or shared). It is a cultural expectation in Brazil for purchases above a certain price point: if you don't offer it, many customers will abandon their cart in mid-to-high price categories. Integrating it requires support from your acquirer or orchestrator.

Why are so many international card payments declined in LatAm?

There are several causes: (1) local issuing banks have stricter fraud rules for international transactions; (2) many local cards are not enabled by default for international online payments; (3) the absence of optimized 3DS2 creates additional friction; (4) European acquirers have a weaker authorization track record with certain local issuers compared to acquirers with established local banking relationships.

Want to Know How Much You're Losing on LatAm Payments?

At PayScaling, we run a diagnostic of your current LatAm payment stack: we analyze your acceptance rate by country and payment method, identify avoidable declines, and deliver a prioritized action plan by economic impact.

The Payments Diagnostic costs €200 + VAT and typically identifies improvement opportunities worth 10–50x its cost in year one.

Request a Payments Diagnostic →

PayScaling is a boutique payments optimization consultancy for e-commerce. We have worked across 550M€+ in GMV and help companies improve their acceptance rate, reduce acquiring costs, and optimize their payment stack across Europe and LatAm.