Mexico’s central bank just made its biggest move in over a decade to drag small business payments into the digital era. Banco de México, known as Banxico, announced new rules creating a simplified deposit account tier designed specifically for micro, small, and medium enterprises, with substantially higher deposit limits meant to make electronic payments practical for merchants who still run on cash.
The new account category, called Cuenta Nivel 3 Bis, was developed in collaboration with the Asociación de Bancos de México (ABM), the country’s banking industry group. It targets an estimated 4 million small businesses that have historically been locked out of digital payment infrastructure by bureaucratic onboarding hurdles and deposit caps too low to be useful for daily commerce.
What the new rules actually change
The new Cuenta Nivel 3 Bis tier proposes raising cash deposit limits to 3,000 UDIS. UDIS are inflation-indexed units of account used in Mexico, and 3,000 of them represents a meaningful jump for small merchants who previously hit their ceilings far too quickly.
Electronic transfer limits get an even more aggressive bump, with proposals suggesting caps of 12,000 to 15,000 UDIS. That’s the number that matters most for digital payment adoption, because it determines whether a small business can realistically process customer transactions electronically without running into artificial barriers halfway through the month.
