Mexico Plans to Issue a CBDC by 2024, Government Confirms

The Central Bank of Mexico (Banxico) plans to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) by 2024, the Mexican government confirmed in a tweet on Wednesday evening.

According to the tweet, which was written in Spanish, Banxico “will have a digital currency of its own in circulation” by 2024 as it considers of “utmost importance these new technologies and state-of-the-art payment infrastructure as options of great value to advance financial inclusion in the country.”

Banxico plans to have its CBDC in place “by the end of 2024, at the latest,” Banxico’s deputy governor, Jonathan Heath, said in a recent video conference organized by S&P, Mexican publication El CEO reported on Tuesday.

“We’re going to have the use of paper money as the preponderant payment domestically for a long time, so we don’t want to be absent from these technological advances,” Heath added.

Mexico joins Brazil and Peru as Latin American countries working on the development of CBDCs.

On Dec. 2, Banxico’s governor, Victoria Rodriguez Ceja, said that the monetary authority was analyzing the launch of a CBDC.

“Authorities at the international level, given the interest that these virtual assets and their evolutions have awakened, have recognized the need and the potential to extend the functionalities of legal tender through the potential implementation of digital currencies issued by the Central Bank,” she said, according to a report by Independent en Español.

In June, Arturo Herrera, Mexico’s finance minister, said cryptocurrencies aren’t legal tender assets nor currencies within the country’s current regulatory framework. One month later, Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) accused 12 crypto exchanges of not complying with its reporting requirements.