The most common misreading of Latin America is treating installments as a marketing tactic when they are payment infrastructure, and treating cash vouchers as instant when their confirmation takes days. This playbook covers Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, including dominant methods, settlement timing, tax ID and e-invoicing requirements, and local dispute risk.
Mercado Pago is often slotted into the "Stripe of Latin America" box, but it is an ecosystem platform rather than a pure gateway. It is at once a payment method fed by Mercado Libre traffic, a consumer wallet in its own right, and an acquirer open to third-party merchants. This article sets out how eligibility differs across those three roles, what "Latin America is not one market" actually means in practice, and the four boundaries a cross-border merchant hits at the account layer.