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CANCÚN, Mexico — Standing before the assembled leadership of Mexico's banking sector, President Claudia Sheinbaum delivered an announcement that will reshape the daily routines of millions of Mexican drivers: cash will no longer be accepted at the country's gas stations or highway toll booths before the end of 2026. Digital payment, she said, is not a suggestion. It is a mandate.

The declaration came during the 89th Banking Convention of the Mexican Banking Association, held in Cancún on March 20 — a gathering that drew the heads of Mexico's largest financial institutions alongside executives from Visa, Mastercard, and international organizations including representatives from the Bank for International Settlements and BlackRock. The audience was, in other words, precisely the group with the infrastructure to make Sheinbaum's directive a reality.

"Our goal this year is to make digital payment of gasoline and tolls mandatory," Sheinbaum told the convention. She framed the move as a cornerstone of a broader effort to digitize the Mexican economy and reduce its dependence on cash transactions — a goal that the administration has been building toward through a series of policy steps, digital payment platform upgrades, and banking sector partnerships since Sheinbaum took office.

THE DIGITAL TOOLS BEHIND THE MANDATE

The Sheinbaum administration is leaning on two existing platforms to execute the transition: CoDi and DiMo — commission-free mobile payment apps developed by Mexico's central bank, Banco de México. The government is also working with Banco de Bienestar, the state welfare bank with more than 3,000 branches, to extend digital payment access to recipients of government social programs. The newly formed Digital Transformation Agency has been tasked with cutting through permitting red tape to fast-track the installation of payment infrastructure at gas stations and toll plazas nationwide.

The implementation plan, according to the president, includes nationwide information campaigns, prepayment options for tolls, and phone-based payment systems designed to reduce congestion at toll plazas and eliminate the inefficiencies and corruption risks associated with cash-handling at high-volume points of sale. All toll booths across federal highways are expected to operate exclusively on digital payment before the year is out.

What the government has not yet specified is a hard cutoff date — the precise day after which a driver arriving at a toll booth with only paper pesos will find no mechanism to use them. Officials have signaled a gradual rollout, acknowledging that both the public and gas station operators will need time to adapt. No penalty structure for non-compliant operators has been formally announced.

"Rejection is overwhelmingly predominant and is articulated as a structural critique of the banking system." — Dinamic social media analysis, March 20, 2026

The announcement has not been received quietly. A social media analysis conducted by the monitoring platform Dinamic, tracking more than 12,800 posts across X, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram in the 48 hours following the convention, found that more than four in five responses to the digital payment announcement expressed opposition.

The most common concern, cited repeatedly across platforms, was not inconvenience — it was surveillance. Respondents described the banking sector as an instrument of government oversight, with many citing fears about the traceability of their transactions and the erosion of financial privacy. Worries about fraud, exclusion of rural and low-income communities, and the reliability of digital infrastructure in less-connected regions also featured prominently.

Those concerns are not entirely without foundation. Despite being Latin America's second-largest economy, Mexico remains heavily cash-dependent. Estimates suggest that roughly three-quarters of the Mexican population relies significantly on cash for daily transactions — a proportion driven in part by low banking penetration in rural areas, persistent distrust of formal financial institutions, and the size of the country's informal economy. Mandating digital payment at gas stations and toll booths without first guaranteeing universal access to digital payment tools risks creating a two-tier system, or simply stranding drivers who lack a smartphone, a bank account, or reliable mobile coverage.

THE ACCESS GAP — WHO GETS LEFT BEHIND

Mexico currently ranks last among Latin American nations in the amount of credit extended to small and medium-sized businesses. Sheinbaum herself acknowledged this at the convention, pressing the banking sector to increase credit from 38% to 45% of GDP by 2030. In the meantime, a mandate for cashless transactions at gas stations and toll booths affects a population in which millions of citizens remain either unbanked or underserved by digital financial infrastructure — particularly in southern and rural states.

The convention itself illustrated the scale of interests converging on this policy question. Alongside Mexican banking heads and government officials, the gathering included the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard — the two global card networks that stand to benefit most directly from any large-scale mandated shift away from cash in Mexico — as well as the close of the event featuring a keynote from former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the theme of "Global Leadership and Transformation." The presence of BIS representatives and BlackRock at a national banking convention focused on the digitization of payments is a detail that has not gone unnoticed by critics of Mexico's financial reform trajectory.

For American travelers, cross-border truckers, and U.S. businesses with supply chain exposure to Mexico, the practical implications are worth monitoring. Drivers crossing into Mexico or operating on federal highways will be expected to carry a compatible digital payment method within months. Toll systems using electronic transponders — including the existing IAVE and TAG systems already deployed on many federal corridors — are likely to become the baseline standard. Cash at the caseta, for the first time in Mexico's modern road history, will not be an option.

Whether the government can build the infrastructure, close the access gap, and bring along a deeply skeptical public before its own self-imposed deadline is the question that 2026 will answer.