Mexican Senate Passes Law Regulating Fintech; Victory for Sector says Bitcoin Exchange

Mexico is Latin America’s second-largest economy, with a GDP of over 2 trillion dollars and a booming financial sector. Despite all of this, only about half of the country’s citizens have an account at a financial institution.

This fact means that there’s a massive potential market out there waiting to be tapped by newer and more forward-thinking fintech companies. There’s lots of room to grow.

The Mexican Senate, Reuters reports, has just passed a law that would establish some preliminary regulations for the fintech industry in the country, ensuring that they do not engage in money laundering and financing of extremists.

If it goes through the executive, new laws will have to be created in order to clarify some of the contents of the bill and establish the groundwork for clearer and more transparent regulation.

Felipe Vallejo, Director of Public and Regulatory Policy at Bitso, an exchange operating out of the country that deals with various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, has endorsed the law, saying that this provides a framework that will put Mexico on the same standing as other countries.

“For us it was a victory for the sector, because this is being done internationally,” he said.

Mexico appears to have a welcoming attitude to cryptocurrencies, as it was the country that hosted the third DevCon, in which Vitalik Buterin revealed some plans for the Ethereum network that would tackle its scalability problem.

The country has also hosted BBVA’s first blockchain experiment in international shipping.

BBVA—one of Spain’s largest banks—managed to finish a transaction that would otherwise take several days, in only two and a half hours.

As part of the transaction, a company in Barcelona managed to acquire a shipment of 25 tons of tuna from Mexico.

The law just passed by the Senate—as well as these initial “sparks” of blockchain-backed commerce—might encourage grassroots crowdfunding inside of the country that will help make its financial sector and commerce more competitive.