How businesses in Mexico accept payments from anywhere in the world

A busy Saturday in Oaxaca, and a customer who cannot pay

The market near Santo Domingo is full on a Saturday. A ceramics seller has spent the morning explaining the work — the glazes, the process, the region each piece comes from. A couple visiting from Chicago have picked out three pieces. They want to pay. They have US cards and a phone. The seller has a card reader that works for Mexican cards. The card reader declines the US Visa. The couple offer to find an ATM; by the time they return, the stall is closing for the afternoon.

That is not a story about a bad product or a difficult customer. It is a story about payment infrastructure that was built for a different era — one where the merchant and the customer were in the same country, on the same card network, using the same currency. The ceramics seller lost the sale. The couple left without the pieces. Neither of them did anything wrong.

Mexico receives more than 35 million international tourists a year (Secretaría de Turismo de México, 2024). A significant share of them want to spend money in local businesses that were not built to accept the payment methods those visitors carry. This article is about what it looks like when that gap closes — and what any Mexican business needs to set up to start accepting payments from customers anywhere in the world.

The problem is not the customer — it is the payment rails

A US tourist in Mexico City carries a card that works well at hotel chains and branded restaurants — merchants who have invested in international acquiring relationships. For a taquería in Condesa, a mezcal bar in Roma Norte, an artisan leather shop in San Miguel de Allende, or a day-trip operator in Puerto Vallarta, the calculus is different. International card acceptance requires an acquiring bank relationship, a terminal configured for foreign transactions, and a fee structure that makes every international sale marginally less profitable than it should be.

Wire transfers are worse. A client in Toronto who wants to pay a Mexican service provider by bank transfer is looking at one to five business days for the payment to arrive (industry analyses of SWIFT processing flows, 2026), a fee deducted somewhere in the correspondent chain, and an exchange rate neither party agreed to in advance. The money arrives different from what was sent and later than it was needed.

The merchants who feel this most are the ones serving an international customer base without the infrastructure of a hotel group: tour operators in Cancún, Playa del Carmen, and Los Cabos; artisan sellers in Oaxaca, Guanajuato, and San Cristóbal de las Casas; online businesses in Guadalajara and Monterrey selling to customers in the US, Canada, and Europe; experience businesses in Tulum and Puerto Escondido that take bookings by WhatsApp and invoice by email because no international payment system has been simple enough to set up and use at their scale.

Three ways to accept a payment on Spondula

Spondula is a global payments network. For a merchant, it provides three distinct payment surfaces — each suited to a different moment — that all settle to the same wallet instantly.

• QR code payments. Every Spondula account generates a QR code. The merchant displays it at the point of sale — printed on a card, shown on a screen, or stuck to the till. The customer opens the app, scans, confirms the amount, and pays. Settlement is immediate.
• Payment links. A payment link is generated from the wallet and sent wherever the invoice needs to go — a booking confirmation email, a WhatsApp message, an online checkout page, or an invoice PDF. The customer clicks, pays, and the merchant sees the balance land.
• Shandle payments. Every Spondula user has an Shandle — a short identifier like Smercado — that any other network user can pay directly. For repeat customers and business relationships where both sides are already on the network, the handle is the fastest path.

All three settle instantly. All three land in the same wallet. The merchant does not manage separate accounts for different payment types or different customer origins — one wallet, every channel, every corridor.

QR payments at the point of sale — the fastest payment a tourist can make

The QR code is the payment surface that replaces the card terminal for international customers. A visitor from New York, Berlin, or Tokyo who has a Spondula wallet scans the merchant's code, sees the amount, confirms, and pays. The balance arrives in the merchant's wallet in seconds — before the customer has pocketed their phone.

For a mezcal bar in Oaxaca, the QR code sits beside the till and handles every Spondula customer without a card machine or an acquiring relationship. For a ceramics stall at a market in Tlaquepaque, it is a printed card that moves with the stall. For a surf instructor in Sayulita charging per session, it is a QR on their phone shown to the client at the end of the lesson. For a food market vendor in Mexico City who serves visitors from a dozen countries every weekend, it is the same code for every one of them.

The payment does not require the merchant to know which currency the customer holds. The customer pays from their balance on the network. The merchant receives the settled amount in the wallet. If a currency conversion is needed — for example, a US customer paying and the merchant holding a different currency — the conversion happens at a flat 0.2% spread, shown before confirmation, with nothing added afterwards.

QR payments also cover domestic customers. A Mexican customer with a Spondula wallet pays the same code as the tourist from Chicago or the visitor from São Paulo. The merchant does not maintain two systems — one for local customers, one for international. The QR handles both.

Payment links for bookings, invoices, and online sales

A payment link is the QR code's counterpart for sales that do not happen in person. A tour operator in Los Cabos sends a payment link in a booking confirmation to a client in Houston. A graphic design studio in Guadalajara invoices a client in Toronto with a link on the invoice. An online shop in Monterrey selling handmade goods to customers in Germany puts a payment link at checkout. The client clicks, pays, and the merchant's wallet reflects the settled balance within seconds of the transaction.

For bookings and reservations — the dominant payment moment for tour operators, boutique hotels, cooking classes, and experience businesses — the payment link also functions as a confirmation mechanism. A client who pays confirms the booking in the same action. The merchant sees the balance land and marks the reservation confirmed. No card hold to manage. No deposit form to chase. No dispute window from a charged-but-not-yet-earned card transaction sitting open for weeks.

For online businesses selling internationally, a payment link is also a low-friction alternative to a full checkout integration. A merchant who does not want to build or maintain a custom payment page adds a Spondula link to a product description, a booking enquiry response, or a contact page — and international customers who use Spondula pay directly. The link works on any device, in any country the network supports, without the merchant having to manage a currency selector or a FX conversion at checkout on the customer's behalf.

Bank wires averaged 9.50% on a $200 international send in Q1 2025, while digital providers averaged 3.65%. Spondula's exchange spread is a flat 0.2% — one rate, shown before the transaction is confirmed, with no adjustment after.

— World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide Issue 53, Q1 2025; Spondula exchange rate, 2026

Instant settlement into a multi-currency wallet

Every payment on Spondula settles instantly into the merchant's wallet — not pending, not held for a clearing window, not available next business day. Immediately available to hold, convert, or send from the moment the customer confirms.