Choosing payment providers for LATAM: a country-by-country checklist

Most provider shortlists for Latin America start with a slide that says “LATAM coverage” and a list of flags. The slide is true and not very useful. A provider can collect Pix for you from abroad and still be unable to offer the instalments Mexican shoppers expect, settle Colombian payments in pesos, or pay out to a Peruvian wallet. The differences only appear when you ask country by country.

This article is the list of questions to ask, for Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile. It starts with the questions that apply everywhere, then goes country by country, and ends with an illustrative scorecard and the common mistakes. How many providers to end up with is a separate question, covered in how many PSPs per market; this article is about choosing which ones.

What should you ask every LATAM provider?

Six questions apply in every country, and the answers usually differ by country within the same provider:

1. Local or cross-border? Does the provider process through a local entity and a domestic acquirer, or collect locally and move funds abroad? Ask per country and per method.
2. Which local methods, and are they live? “Supported” sometimes means “on the roadmap”. Ask for the methods that are in production today, with their limits.
3. Instalments. Can you offer them, how many months, who finances them, and is it available to a merchant without a local entity?
4. Settlement and FX. Settlement currency, spread over a named reference rate, when the rate is fixed, and how many days until funds reach your account.
5. Refunds and payouts. Can the provider refund each method, and pay out to local bank accounts and wallets? Cash and transfer methods often cannot be refunded through the method itself.
6. Licensing and tax. Which licensed entity handles the local leg, and what taxes it collects, withholds or passes on to you.

Why does local versus cross-border processing matter so much?

Because several features exist only for domestic processing. Stripe’s documentation shows the pattern clearly across three methods:

Feature at Stripe	Who can offer it
Meses sin intereses in Mexico	Stripe Mexico accounts only, on Mexican-issued consumer credit cards
Boleto in Brazil	Stripe Brazil accounts only; not available cross-border
Pix in Brazil	Brazilian accounts and businesses in supported countries abroad, with IOF on cross-border payments

Other providers draw the lines differently, which is the point: ask. A cross-border setup is faster to launch and needs no local company. A local one can open up instalments, domestic card approval rates and settlement in the national currency. One practical path is to launch cross-border and move the largest markets to local processing once volume justifies it.

Brazil: what should you ask?

• Pix, and who is behind it. A foreign merchant collects Pix through a Brazilian partner institution. According to a client alert from the law firm Lefosse, BCB Resolution 561 means that from 1 October 2026 eFX, the framework for international payment services, may be provided only by institutions authorised by the Central Bank; unlisted providers must apply for authorisation by 31 May 2027 to keep operating. Ask which authorised institution handles your Brazilian leg.
• IOF. Stripe’s documentation says Brazilian customers paying businesses outside Brazil with Pix pay 3.5% IOF, and the merchant can absorb it instead. Ask how the provider shows it, collects it and reports it.
• Cross-border caps. Stripe limits Pix from Brazilian customers to businesses abroad to 3,000 USD per day and 10,000 USD per month per customer. Ask for each provider’s caps.
• Parcelado. Ask whether the provider supports credit card instalments for your setup, how many, and whether you receive the full amount at settlement or month by month.
• Pix Automático for subscriptions, and Boleto for shoppers without cards, if your provider can offer them to you.

Our Brazil guide covers the market in more depth.

Mexico: what should you ask?

• Meses sin intereses (MSI). Stripe’s documentation lists plans of 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months, with default minimums from 300 MXN for 3 months to 2,400 MXN for 24, and an extra fee on top of the card fee from 5% for 3 months to 22.5% for 24. It is available only to Stripe Mexico accounts and Mexican consumer credit cards, and not every issuer supports every plan length. Ask each provider for its plan lengths, issuer list and fees, and whether a foreign merchant can offer MSI at all.
• SPEI. Does the provider issue a unique CLABE reference per order or customer, match incoming transfers automatically, and pay out by SPEI for refunds and marketplace sellers?
• OXXO. Amount cap per voucher, expiry window, confirmation time, and how cash orders are refunded.

See our Mexico guide for the payment mix.

Colombia: what should you ask?

• PSE, Colombia’s online bank-transfer button. Ask which banks are covered and how fast confirmation arrives.
• Nequi and other wallets: push payments in the app, refunds and payouts to the wallet.
• Bre-B. Banco de la República’s instant payment system offers real-time transfers between all financial system accounts, any day and at any time. The central bank reported more than 34 million registered users after six months of operation. Ask whether the provider accepts Bre-B payments by key and QR, and when.
• Tax. PwC’s tax summary lists Colombia’s financial transactions tax at 0.4% of financial transactions, general VAT at 19%, and a requirement for non-resident providers of services from abroad to register for VAT. Ask whether a local collection account adds the transaction tax to your costs, and how settlement reports show it.

The Colombia guide has more on the market.

Peru: what should you ask?

• Yape. Infomercado reports, citing Credicorp, that Yape reached 16.4 million monthly active users at the end of the first quarter of 2026, with 67 transactions a month per active user. Ask whether the provider supports Yape for online checkout, not only QR at the counter, and how refunds work.
• PagoEfectivo. Reference-code payments that shoppers complete through online banking, at agents or in person. Ask about expiry, confirmation time and refunds, which work like other cash and transfer methods: outside the method.
• Cards and settlement. Whether cards are acquired in Peru, and whether you can settle in soles or only in dollars.

See the Peru guide.

Chile: what should you ask?

• Webpay. Transbank’s Webpay Plus accepts credit cards, Redcompra debit and prepaid cards, and identifies each merchant by a commerce code. For credit cards, the merchant can offer 2 and 3 interest-free instalments, or up to N interest-free instalments with N set by the merchant to a maximum of 12, while issuers offer regular instalments from 2 to 48. Ask whether your provider gives you Webpay under your own commerce code or its own, and which instalment types it passes through.
• Funding type. Because Webpay takes credit, Redcompra debit and prepaid cards, ask for approval rates split by funding type, not one card average.

The Chile guide covers the rest.

Worked example: what does a scorecard look like?

Example figures and provider names, for illustration only.

A subscription software company in Armenia selling to Brazil, Mexico and Colombia sends the questions above to three providers. A regional provider (R) acquires locally in Brazil and Mexico and works cross-border elsewhere. A Mexican provider (M) is local only. A cross-border provider (X) covers all three countries from abroad.

Question	R	M	X
Brazil: Pix, recurring with Pix Automático	Yes, yes	No	Yes, no
Brazil: IOF shown and reported	Yes	No	Yes
Mexico: MSI available to us	Yes, 3 to 12 months	Yes, 3 to 24 months	No
Mexico: SPEI pay-ins and payouts	Yes, yes	Yes, yes	Yes, no
Colombia: PSE and Nequi	PSE only	No	Yes, yes
Settlement	USD, T+3	MXN, T+1	USD, T+5
FX spread over reference rate	1.2%	None (MXN)	2.0%

No single row picks the winner. R covers the most jobs; M is better for Mexican instalments and settles locally; X is the only route to Nequi. A merchant might choose R as primary, M for Mexican cards and SPEI payouts, and X for Colombia, then revisit once Colombian volume is known. The scorecard is also the record of why, which matters when the decision is questioned a year later.

What are the common mistakes?

• One LATAM price. A blended rate hides that one country carries a high FX spread or slow settlement. Ask for every country separately.
• Assuming cross-border means everything. Instalments and some methods need local processing. Check before you design the checkout.
• Ignoring refunds and payouts. Pix refunds, OXXO refunds by SPEI and payouts to wallets are separate capabilities. A method you cannot refund is a support problem waiting to happen.
• Not asking who is licensed. In Brazil especially, the rules for the institution behind the local leg are changing. Know who it is.
• No second route. A single provider per country means a single point of failure; see single PSP risk.

How does Omno help when you use several LATAM providers?

Omno puts the providers you choose behind one API for Pay-In and Pay-Out. Eligibility rules by country, method, currency and customer group decide which providers may take each payment, routing chooses among them, and if a provider is unavailable or rejects the request, the payment moves to the next provider in the rule until one accepts. Reporting shows approval rates and volumes per provider, method and country on the same definitions, and the routing-decision log records every choice, so the scorecard can be checked against real traffic. The payment orchestration page shows how providers are configured.