SWIFT Isn’t Disappearing. Stablecoins Are Forcing It to Upgrade.
Latin Americans adopt stablecoins at a pace the traditional financial system did not foresee. In 2025, the region processed 324 billion dollars in transactions with these digital assets. The figure represents a year-over-year increase of 89 percent.
The data confirms a structural shift, not a passing trend. Users choose USDC and USDT to transfer value, protect savings, and trade. They do not speculate. They solve concrete problems the banking system fails to address efficiently.
Argentina illustrates this reality with clarity. Inflation erodes the peso’s purchasing power month after month. Workers convert their income into stablecoins the moment they receive it. They do not seek exposure to crypto risk. They seek a stable store of value. In the remittance corridor between the United States and Mexico, the firm Bitso moved 6.5 billion dollars during the past year.
That sum equals ten percent of the total flow between the two countries. Traditional transfers take days and apply fees that reach 6.2 percent of the amount sent. Stablecoins settle in minutes at a cost below one percent. The operational advantage is quantifiable and verifiable.
The Argentine platform Agrotoken tokenizes soybeans, corn, and wheat into digital assets such as SOYA, CORA, and WHEA. Agricultural producers trade these tokens directly with international buyers. The process eliminates banking intermediaries and shortens settlement times. The blockchain’s traceability adds transparency to each transaction. These use cases demonstrate that stablecoins do not compete against SWIFT in the abstract. They compete by solving specific needs with greater speed and lower cost.
SWIFT reacts with determination to this competitive environment. In September 2025, the cooperative announced the addition of blockchain infrastructure to process stablecoin payments. The pilots it executed alongside BNP Paribas and BNY Mellon confirmed the technical feasibility of on-chain settlement. SWIFT simultaneously migrates to the ISO 20022 standard, which enables structured financial messages and automates payment reconciliation.
The entity does not perceive itself as an obsolete player. It invests in interoperability. It connects more than 11,500 institutions across 200 countries and moves a daily volume equivalent to global GDP. Its main asset is not technological, but institutional: central banks and regulators trust its regulatory compliance protocols.
It integrates them. The fintech Thunes operates a service that allows banks to initiate cross-border payments via SWIFT and settle them instantly into stablecoin wallets. Western Union launched its own stablecoin, USDPT, to manage internal settlements without altering its agent network. Visa deploys a settlement service with stablecoins in Latin America that avoids the delays of traditional banking rails. These developments confirm a trend: value flows across multiple interoperable layers.
Stablecoins gain share in remittances, trade payments, and retail savings. SWIFT retains dominance in high-value interbank messaging and transactions that demand full regulatory traceability. Latin America’s financial infrastructure incorporates both components. End users benefit from the competition: they access transfers that are faster, cheaper, and more inclusive than those available just three years ago.
It faces competitive pressure that accelerates its technological modernization. Stablecoins do not replace the traditional financial system. They complement it, challenge it, and improve it. Latin America operates as the stage where this transformation advances with the greatest intensity. The region exports a hybrid payments model that other emerging economies already observe with attention. The monopoly of traditional rails has ended. The era of financial interoperability with multiple infrastructures has begun.
