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In the world · Migration · 18 June 2026

Remittances to Latin America hit a record in 2025

Migrants sent about US$174 billion to Latin America in 2025, according to the IDB. And sending money is still expensive, says the World Bank.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published

Remittances sent by migrants to Latin America and the Caribbean reached about US$174 billion in 2025, the highest amount ever recorded, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It was the 16th consecutive year of growth. In June 2026, the bank reported that the pace slowed between January and March, with growth of 5.7%, and that Brazil led the expansion in South America, up 11%. At the same time, the World Bank shows that sending money home remains expensive.

What happened

In November 2025, the IDB's annual report, Las remesas a América Latina y el Caribe en 2025: adaptaciones en un contexto de incertidumbre, estimated the year's total at US$174.4 billion, US$11.7 billion more than in 2024. The consolidated figures, published by the bank in June 2026, came very close to that: US$173.7 billion, up 7.3%.

Growth was uneven:

  • Central America: up about 20%, driven by Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador;
  • South America: about 10%;
  • Mexico: down 4.5%, yet still the largest recipient in the region.

The IDB attributes the 2025 increase to the behavior of migrants themselves in the face of uncertainty over U.S. immigration policy, the source of more than half of the region's remittances. Many sent money ahead of time, drew on savings and worked longer hours. In 2026, that reserve began to run out, hence the slowdown.

Colombia is the third-largest recipient in the region. According to Banco de la República, it received US$13.1 billion in 2025, 10.5% more than the previous year. In September 2026, a report by IFAD, the UN's agricultural fund, calculated using another methodology that remittances to the region more than doubled in a decade.

On the cost side, the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide database shows that the global average cost of sending US$200 remains above 6% of the amount sent. The Sustainable Development Goals target is below 3% by 2030.

Why it matters

A remittance is not a financial statistic. It is the school fee, the medicine, the repaired roof. In Colombia, according to data from the country's central bank cited by the press, it is equivalent to almost 3% of GDP.

Brazil appears on both sides. It is a destination for remittances from Brazilians abroad and a source of the money immigrants send home. According to OBMigra, with Central Bank data, the country's balance of personal transfers was US$2.5 billion in 2025, the second highest in the series, and among the main destinations of outflows are Haiti, Peru and Bolivia. The absence of Venezuela, the report notes, suggests that much of that money circulates outside the financial system.

When each transfer loses 6% along the way, those who pay are those who have least. The difference between 6% and 3%, added up over millions of transfers, is money that never reaches families.

In Bairo's view

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez is Colombian and has lived in Brazil since 2002. In his reading, the remittance is the most concrete proof that immigrants do not live only for themselves: they work in one country thinking of another. The story of his arrival is in Capoeira was the bridge.

For Bairo, the cost of sending money is a silent way of charging more to those who have less. In his view, this is where technology should serve: so that the value of a person's work arrives whole to those they love. He often says the sun is for everyone, but shade, in the heat, is for few. In his reading, expensive and slow financial systems are a way of keeping that shade for the few.

Where this meets the ecosystem

CEASA Bank is not a remittance service. It is a financial platform for agribusiness that operates on the infrastructure of an authorized institution, focused on those who produce and sell food. What connects CEASA Bank to this topic is the vision: international payments for a cargo load with tracking, ISO 20022 messaging and an account opened in the client's country, so that money from trade between countries arrives faster and with fewer intermediaries. These are proposals under development, subject to each country's regulation.

BTZ Chain records transactions with proof of human life and uses BICOIN as a yardstick of purpose, in which 1 BTZ equals 1 minute of human life. It is a measure of the value of time, not a price, nor a promise of return, nor a means of remittance.

Sources

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In the world: Migration