Bitso review: is Mexico’s biggest exchange right for you?

Ask anyone in Mexico City where they bought their first bitcoin and the answer is usually Bitso. It is the exchange that grew up here, it is headquartered in the capital and it solves the basic problem for anyone paid in pesos: send money from your banking app, buy, and send pesos back to your bank without a withdrawal fee.

For an English-speaking resident the picture has one big condition. Bitso's peso features depend on a CURP, Mexico's population registry code. If you have residency, you have one and Bitso works much as it does for a Mexican. If you are visiting on a tourist permit, you will mostly be using it as a crypto wallet. This review covers both cases.

What Bitso is and who runs it

Bitso is a crypto exchange for buying, selling and holding crypto with Mexican pesos. It marked its 12th anniversary in 2026, which dates its start to 2014. The company says it has about 10 million users across Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia; that is a company figure repeated by the press, not an audited one.

The structure is split in two, and it shapes everything below:

• Pesos move through Nvio Pagos México, an IFPEInstitución de Fondos de Pago Electrónico: a fintech licensed by Mexico's CNBV to hold electronic money in pesos, roughly a regulated e-wallet. authorized by the CNBV. Its authorization was published in Mexico's official gazette on 22 January 2020, the first IFPE under the Fintech Law.
• Crypto is run and held by Bitso International, which has operated since 2019 under a DLT licence from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission.

The app has two modes. The simple view lets you buy or convert in a couple of taps, with the cost built into the price. Bitso Alpha, the trading view, shows the order bookThe list of buy and sell orders posted by users. Trading here shows you the exact price and a published percentage fee. and charges published fees. For anything over a few hundred pesos, Alpha is worth learning. You can also check terms on Bitso's official site.

Depositing pesos

The main route is SPEI, free of charge. Bitso shows you a CLABE in your name; you add it as a payee in your Mexican banking app and transfer. The fee page says deposits credit "in under 24 hours", and in practice they usually land in minutes. Bitso Transfer lets another Bitso user send you pesos instantly and for free.

Two things trip up newcomers. The transfer has to come from an account in your own name, so paying from a partner's account or a friend's will bounce or get held. And your bank app may cap transfers by default; you can raise the limit in its settings. Our SPEI guide explains both.

There is no confirmed route for dollars. A US bank account cannot send SPEI, so if your money is in the US you either move it to a Mexican account first, for example through Wise, or send crypto from a US exchange to Bitso. OXXO cash deposits are not on Bitso's official fee page and we could not confirm them as a current method.

Bitso fees: what you actually pay

You pay Bitso in three places: when you trade, when you withdraw crypto to another wallet and, in the simple view, through the spreadThe gap between the price you are quoted and the market price. A cost that does not show up as a separate fee.. SPEI deposits and withdrawals are free.

On Bitso Alpha's peso books, the fee depends on whether you are a maker or takerA maker posts a limit order that waits on the book. A taker fills an order already there. Takers pay more. and on your 30-day volume. The page does not say whether volume is counted in pesos or dollars.

The full schedule has nine tiers; these are the representative ones. A Bitso blog post uses 0.50% and 0.65% as a "base" example, which does not match the official table, so we treat the table as authoritative.

A MXN 5,000 example. You send MXN 5,000 by SPEI: no fee. You buy bitcoin at market as a taker: 0.78%, or MXN 39. Post a limit order just below market and wait for it to fill, and you pay the 0.60% maker fee, MXN 30. Withdraw that bitcoin on-chain to your own wallet and the fee is 0.00001543 BTC, roughly MXN 31 at an illustrative price of MXN 2 million per bitcoin. Over Lightning, BTC withdrawals are free.

Network choice matters for stablecoins. USDT on Tron costs 3.4 USDT to withdraw, while USDT on Polygon costs 0.01 USDT; XRP withdrawals are free. If you move USDT often, picking the right network saves more than any volume discount. The USDT guide explains the networks.

The simple view does not show a separate fee, but its price includes a margin Bitso does not publish. We could not measure it reliably. Before a large purchase, compare the simple-view quote with the Alpha order book.

Limits and verification

Opening an account takes an email, a phone number, a government ID and a selfie. Bitso's help pages we could reach do not list which foreign documents it accepts, so expect to use your passport. To deposit or withdraw pesos, a CURP is mandatory: it is a requirement of the payments partner. Residents find their CURP on their residency card paperwork or can look it up on the government's CURP portal.

Account limits by level are the murkiest part. Different Bitso blog posts cite level-1 caps of about MXN 7,000 a month and MXN 50,000 a month, and the help-center limits page was not available when we checked. Rather than repeat a figure we could not confirm, we suggest checking the Limits section inside the app, which shows yours.

Withdrawing to a Mexican bank

This is where Bitso shines. Peso withdrawals are free three ways: SPEI to any CLABE in your name, to a Mexican debit card or to a registered phone number. Bitso Transfer to another user is free and instant too.

To cash out, you sell on Alpha (paying the maker or taker fee) and withdraw by SPEI. If you sold at a gain and you are a Mexican tax resident, keep your trade history for the SAT. Our crypto tax guide covers residents and non-residents, and the cash-out guide compares routes.

Coins you can buy with pesos

Bitso's public API lists 12 books against MXN: bitcoin, ether, USDT, XRP, Solana, Litecoin, Tron, a digital dollar (USD), PYUSD, TUSD, RLUSD and Decentraland (MANA). Others, such as dogecoin and PEPE, trade against dollars or through conversion in the simple view; app availability changes, so check there. Pi Network is not in the public books.

Bitso also backs MXNB, a peso stablecoinA crypto token built to hold a steady value, pegged 1:1 to a currency like the peso or the dollar. issued by its subsidiary Juno on Arbitrum and announced in March 2025. See the MXNB guide.

Other products: a yield section that the app-store listing advertises at up to 4% a year on dollar balances; US stocks and ETFs through a partnership with Alpaca, reported in October 2025; and Bitso Business, which offers an OTC desk, SPEI pay-ins and payouts for companies and FX. Bitso Business is also a major remittance pipe: the company says it handled more than 10% of US to Mexico remittances in 2024. The Bitso Card was discontinued on 26 May 2025.

Is Bitso safe? What the licenses cover

There are two answers, one for each half of the structure.

Your pesos are with Nvio Pagos México, an IFPE authorized by the CNBV and supervised by the CNBV and Banxico. You can look it up in CONDUSEF's SIPRES registry. That brings capital rules, segregation and reporting. It does not bring deposit insurance: IFPE balances are not covered by IPAB, unlike a bank account.

Your crypto is with Bitso International under the DLT licence Gibraltar granted in October 2019. We could not confirm on the regulator's register whether that licence is still active. The Mexican authorization covers pesos only; no exchange currently holds a Mexican license to sell crypto to the public, as we explain in is crypto legal in Mexico.

Operationally, Bitso publishes a status page and logs incidents, for example a 1 hour 29 minute SPEI degradation on 7 April 2026. A November 2025 opinion column collected user complaints about held withdrawals; they are anecdotes without numbers, but worth knowing. Holds tend to come from compliance reviews, so finishing verification and only depositing from accounts in your name lowers the odds.

Pros and cons

Who Bitso suits

Bitso is the natural pick if you are a resident with a CURP and a Mexican bank account and want the full loop in pesos: SPEI in, a direct MXN market, SPEI out with no withdrawal fee. It suits recurring buys and anyone receiving crypto from abroad who needs pesos in a Mexican account.

It is less useful if you are a tourist without a CURP, if you want coins without a peso book, if you want P2P trading, or if you trade large volumes and chase the lowest base fee, where international exchanges charge less.

Alternatives to Bitso

For a bigger coin list and a peso P2P market, read the Binance review and the head-to-head Bitso vs Binance. If you want to pay by card with a passport and no CURP, see CEX.IO. Kraken accepts SPEI but converts pesos to dollars on arrival. Every platform is compared on the reviews hub.

For the hands-on part —your CLABE, SPEI deposits, crypto transfers on each network and bank withdrawals— see our Bitso deposit and withdrawal guide.