Latin America shows up in almost every piece of stablecoin adoption research as one of the regions where demand is least in question. Currency volatility across several major economies, expensive and slow traditional banking rails, and a large, active remittance corridor with the US have all pushed adoption further and faster here than in most developed markets. And yet, Latin America also shows up with one of the clearest, most specific barriers to that adoption reaching its full potential: gas fees.
The barrier is specific, and that specificity matters
When researchers broke down the single biggest barrier to crypto payment adoption by region, Latin America came back with gas fees too high as the dominant complaint, cited by 46% of respondents, the highest of any region measured. Compare that to Africa and Western Europe, where the top barrier is merchant distribution, too few places to actually spend crypto, and the difference in what needs fixing becomes clear immediately. LATAM isn't primarily a merchant acceptance problem or an awareness problem. It's a cost problem, sitting directly on top of transactions that would otherwise make immediate financial sense.
This distinction matters enormously for anyone building payment products for the region, because a merchant acquisition campaign doesn't solve a gas fee problem, and a gas fee solution doesn't require convincing more merchants to accept crypto if the underlying transaction cost keeps pricing out the use cases that matter most.
Why gas fees hit harder in LATAM specifically
The reason gas fees show up as such a dominant complaint in this particular region ties directly back to transaction size and frequency. Much of the stablecoin activity in Latin America centres on remittances and everyday payments rather than large, occasional transfers. When a transaction is genuinely large, a gas fee of a few dollars barely registers as a percentage of the total. When the transaction is small, a routine grocery payment, a small remittance instalment, a peer-to-peer transfer between family members, that same gas fee can represent a meaningful percentage of the transfer itself, sometimes enough to erase the entire cost advantage stablecoins are supposed to offer over traditional rails.
This is precisely why the region's stablecoin usage skews toward store-of-value and remittance behaviour that traditional banking underserves, while everyday micro-payment use cases remain more constrained than the underlying demand would suggest, because gas costs eat disproportionately into smaller transactions.
The cross-border case for Latin America is unusually strong
Cross-border bank transfers through traditional systems can take one to five business days and typically cost 3 to 5% in fees once exchange rate spread is included, a meaningful bite out of a remittance transfer, particularly for corridors where the receiving family relies on that money arriving in full and on time. Stablecoins settle near-instantly, 24/7, with cross-border fees under 1.6% when the checkout layer itself is built well, closing a gap that traditional remittance providers in this region have been slow to address.
The US-to-Latin America remittance corridor specifically is one of the largest in the world by volume, and it's exactly the kind of corridor where the traditional rail's cost and speed disadvantages are most visible to the people actually sending and receiving the money, not just to analysts studying the data from a distance.
What a gas-fee-aware payment experience actually needs to do
Solving this barrier isn't about making blockchain infrastructure itself faster or cheaper at a protocol level, that's a much longer-term, industry-wide effort. It's about making sure the payment experience a LATAM customer actually interacts with doesn't expose them to gas fee volatility at all. No gas fees, the infrastructure handles it, just pay, is the model that removes this specific barrier entirely rather than asking the user to manage or even understand it.
This is the specific problem WalletConnect Pay's approach addresses directly for this region. Rather than a customer paying a variable, sometimes unpredictable gas fee on top of their transaction, the payment experience abstracts that cost away from the user entirely. Combined with cross-border fees running well under the 3 to 5% typical of traditional remittance rails, and settlement measured in seconds rather than days, that removes the two biggest points of friction specific to how Latin American users actually engage with stablecoins today.
What this means for merchants and PSPs building for the region
A PSP or merchant thinking about Latin America specifically should treat gas fee exposure as the single highest-priority problem to solve before anything else, ahead of merchant acceptance campaigns, ahead of awareness marketing. The demand signal is already strong, crypto card spending grew 525% in 2025 globally, and Latin America's remittance-driven use case is one of the clearest expressions of that demand anywhere in the world. What's missing isn't interest, it's a checkout and settlement experience that doesn't quietly reintroduce the cost problem stablecoins are supposed to solve.
A payment rail reaching over 500 million wallet users across 700+ providers and 125+ chains, with fees at 0.5 to 1.0% and gas costs abstracted away entirely, addresses the region's specific barrier directly rather than assuming the same product built for a US or European market will translate cleanly.
The opportunity is regionally specific, and so is the fix
Latin America doesn't need more evidence that stablecoin demand exists, the currency volatility, remittance volume, and adoption data all already point the same direction. What it needs is payment infrastructure built with the region's specific pain point, gas fee exposure on smaller, more frequent transactions, solved at the checkout layer rather than left for the user to manage themselves.
Frequently asked questions
Why are gas fees the biggest barrier to crypto adoption in Latin America specifically?
Latin American stablecoin usage skews toward smaller, frequent transactions like remittances and everyday payments, where gas fees represent a larger percentage of the transaction compared to large, occasional transfers, making cost the dominant complaint at 46%.
How much cheaper is a stablecoin remittance to Latin America compared to a traditional transfer?
Traditional cross-border transfers typically cost 3 to 5% including exchange rate spread and take one to five business days. Stablecoin transfers can settle in seconds for under 1.6% when gas costs are abstracted away from the user.
Does Latin America have a merchant acceptance problem for crypto payments?
Less so than other regions. Unlike Africa and Western Europe, where merchant distribution is the top barrier, Latin America's primary barrier is transaction cost, specifically gas fees, rather than a lack of places willing to accept crypto payments.