Stablecoin Trade Corridors: Latin America to Asia in Data

Stablecoin trade corridors between Latin America and Asia are the country pairs where a trade payment can travel as a dollar stablecoin. The trade under them is concentrated: China alone was 27.2% of Brazil's goods trade in 2025. No public source we found measures the stablecoin flow, so size a corridor from customs data and company records.

The corridor explainer defines the term. This post covers one region pair: how much trade there is, which way it runs, and what stablecoin data can say about it.

Latin America's trade with Asia is mostly trade with China

In most Latin American countries one Asian partner dwarfs the rest. In 2024, goods trade with China was between 11% and 32% of the total for the six economies below, on each country's own customs reporting.

Goods trade with China in 2024, in US dollars, as reported by each Latin American country to UN Comtrade. Share is trade with China divided by the country's total goods trade.

Brazil is 26.6% here on 2024 Comtrade data and 27.2% in the next section on 2025 Comex Stat data, so the two years are not a discrepancy.

The columns show which way the invoices run. Brazil, Chile and Peru sell more to China than they buy, so as a first approximation their companies receive payment. Mexico, Colombia and Argentina buy far more than they sell, so their companies pay, and Mexico's $129.5 billion of imports is the largest payer flow in the table.

Which Asian markets does Brazil trade with most?

China, by a very wide margin, then a group of markets at 0.4% to 2.4% each. Brazil's customs data for 2025 gives the whole list, the cleanest public view of one Latin American country's trade with Asia.

Brazil's goods trade with Asian partners in 2025, in US dollars, from the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services (MDIC) Comex Stat database. Share is of Brazil's total goods trade of $628.5 billion.

The twelve partners in the table add up to $252.6 billion, or 40.2% of Brazil's trade, and China is $170.9 billion of that.

The partner-level table covers Brazil only because Comex Stat is the one customs source we could read for 2025. Hong Kong and Singapore look small here, and this is where customs data stops being enough. It records where goods are shipped, while trading companies in both places book invoices for goods made elsewhere. Our reading, not a claim in the customs data, is that their share of payments is higher than their share of goods: a Brazilian importer whose supplier invoices through a Hong Kong trading company pays a Hong Kong company for goods that customs records as Chinese.

What the stablecoin data shows on each side

Stablecoin data exists for both regions, and it measures activity inside each one, not between them. The source below is Chainalysis, for value received by country.

Chainalysis crypto data from its 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report excerpts, September 24 and October 2, 2025. The figures cover all crypto activity, not payments and not stablecoins alone.

Asia-Pacific's peak month was about 2.8 times Latin America's, by our arithmetic. We found no primary-source split of stablecoin payments between the two regions that we could read, so this post does not quote one.

Read against the trade table, the markets with the most stablecoin activity also appear in Brazil's trade list: Brazil's trade with Singapore and Hong Kong adds up to $13.0 billion and with South Korea to $10.8 billion. That is an overlap, not a causal link, because exchange purchases do not show how suppliers get paid.

How the Asian leg of a payment settles

A payment between the two regions has a local leg at each end and, in the middle, either a dollar stablecoin or a dollar wire. The Latin American end is the fast one: Pix (Brazil's instant payment system, run by the Central Bank) and SPEI (Mexico's interbank transfer system, run by Banxico) run every hour of every day. The Asian end is slower and differs by the supplier's country and by whether that country lets a company receive a stablecoin.

What a supplier in each Asian market can receive on the Lumx rails, from the Lumx coverage and cut-off pages read on November 1, 2026, and the rules on mainland China and Hong Kong.

Mainland China is a separate legal case. On February 6, 2026 the People's Bank of China and seven other agencies published [Yinfa [2026] No. 42](https://www.pbc.gov.cn/tiaofasi/144941/3581332/2026020619591971323/index.html), which states that foreign entities and individuals may not provide virtual currency services to parties in mainland China in any form, so a supplier there is paid in dollars. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority says that issuing fiat-referenced stablecoins has required a licence since August 1, 2025 (issuer regime). That regime is about issuers, and a Hong Kong company can still receive USDT today (Hong Kong suppliers paid in USDT). Singapore is covered in the MAS rules. The whole case is in paying suppliers in China from Brazil.

A stablecoin leg exists to shorten the middle of that path: a SWIFT-only payment takes 1 to 5 business days and has a 3:00 PM ET cut-off, while Pix and SPEI settle instantly at the Latin American end.

On Lumx the Asian leg is one of two things. A supplier destination, with the relationship SUPPLIER and the purpose TRADE_TRANSACTIONS, is paid by SWIFT in USD with a 3:00 PM ET cut-off, and the docs say intermediary banks may add hours or days and deduct fees outside Lumx's control. Or the payout is a transfer from the customer's wallet to an external wallet address, screened before it runs.

What to size a corridor from instead of a regional total

I would size a Latin America to Asia corridor from the customs side first and from the company's own invoices second. Pick one partner pair, take the two-way trade figure from the customs office of the Latin American country, then count how many of the company's own invoices go to that partner and how large they are. A regional stablecoin total says nothing about either number. I would rather see one named pair with a customs figure and an invoice count than a chart of two continents.

A team needs three figures, and none is a regional stablecoin statistic: the customs total for the pair, split by exports and imports; your own invoices to that country, by count and size; and the settlement route for each counterparty, meaning the entity on the invoice and whether it can lawfully receive a stablecoin. The third is where corridors diverge. Two suppliers in the same industry, one in Shenzhen and one in Hong Kong, sit in the same customs column and need different routes. The Latin America payout rails comparison covers who pays out where in the region, and the stablecoin versus traditional comparison covers what each route costs.

When trade statistics are the wrong tool for a corridor

Customs data counts goods, so it is the wrong tool for services such as software or consulting, and for deciding whether a stablecoin belongs in a corridor at all: a large trade total says nothing about whether the supplier can receive one or whether the amounts justify a new route. A mainland supplier cannot receive USDC, and a low-value invoice to a supplier whose bank already works is cheaper where it is. For the regulatory side, see how stablecoin regulation reads in Asia.

What a Latin America to Asia payment looks like on Lumx

Lumx is stablecoin payments infrastructure for businesses that move money between Latin America and the rest of the world: one API to collect, hold, convert, and pay out in BRL, MXN, COP, USD, EUR, and GBP or in USDC and USDT, over local rails such as PIX, SPEI, PSE, Bre-B, ACH, FEDWIRE, SEPA, and Faster Payments, with SWIFT and on-behalf-of payments and collections (POBO and COBO) in USD, EUR, and GBP, plus named virtual accounts, custodial wallets, and KYB/KYC built in.

Take a Brazilian importer paying a supplier in Asia. The importer is a customer that has passed KYB (know your business, the verification of a company and its owners), with a BRL named virtual account (a local account number issued in the customer's own name) whose Pix deposits become USDC. The supplier is registered as a destination with the relationship SUPPLIER, and the payout carries the purpose TRADE_TRANSACTIONS, which the docs define as cross-border payments for goods or services. For a supplier with a bank account, Lumx pays out by SWIFT in USD, with UETR and MT103 confirmations on every SWIFT payout. For a Hong Kong company that agrees to USDT, the payout is a transfer to its wallet address.

The exporter's side runs the other way. An exporter with an Asian buyer can hold a USD virtual account, as can any company in a country on the supported list. It collects over ACH, Fedwire or SWIFT, and the docs show a USD deposit over SWIFT, with the IBAN and BIC to share with the buyer, converting to USDC in the exporter's wallet. A buyer can also send USDC or USDT to the wallet address, and an off-ramp pays the exporter in reais over Pix.

The customer has to be paying its own suppliers with its own funds. Routing money for another entity, or paying another entity's vendors, counts as nesting under the nested payments rule, and a payout that does not match its declared purpose can be held as an RFI (request for information, a compliance hold that asks for a document before a transaction clears). The payout steps are in paying Asian suppliers from Latin America. The global payments page lists the corridors Lumx runs, the coverage page lists currencies and rails, the supported countries page says where Lumx onboards customers, and the operator map shows who sits on each leg. The token behind most of these payments is in what USDC is.

Methodology and sources

What was checked, and when:

• Goods trade of Brazil with Asian partners in 2025: the Comex Stat database of Brazil's Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services, queried through its public API for flow export and import, year 2025, grouped by partner country, on November 1, 2026. Shares divide each partner's exports plus imports by Brazil's total of $628.5 billion.

• Goods trade of Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Argentina with China in 2024: the public preview API of UN Comtrade, queried with reporterCode set to each Latin American country, partnerCode 156 (China), flow X and M, cmdCode TOTAL and period 2024, on November 1, 2026. These are not mirror data: China's own figures for the same flows differ.

• Chainalysis, "APAC Crypto Adoption Accelerates with Distinct National Pathways", September 24, 2025, read on chainalysis.com on November 1, 2026, and "Latin America Emerges as a Crypto Powerhouse Amid Volatile Growth", October 2, 2025, read on chainalysis.com the same day. Both are excerpts of the 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report.

• People's Bank of China, Yinfa [2026] No. 42, February 6, 2026, read in Chinese on pbc.gov.cn on November 1, 2026. The HKMA stablecoin issuers page was read the same day.

• Lumx rails and accounts: the coverage, cut-off times, destinations, purpose codes, wallets, global accounts and supported countries pages of docs.lumx.io, read on November 1, 2026.

Verified on November 1, 2026. Operational context, not legal, tax, or investment advice.

Cover photo: Georgi Kalaydzhiev on Unsplash.