Hey Banco, tapi Partner for Digital Services Payments in Mexico

Hey Banco is integrating tapi payment infrastructure to enable recurring bill payments directly within its mobile application, supporting Mexico's broader transition toward digital banking. The partnership addresses a structural market where cash accounts for 85% of transactions below MX$500, expanding digital access to utilities, tuition, and municipal taxes following Hey Banco's transition to an independent banking license under Regional. Affected stakeholders include commercial banks, fintech infrastructure providers, utility companies, and digital banking consumers across Mexico.

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Mexican neobank Hey Banco announced a partnership with tapi to integrate recurring bill payment capabilities directly into its mobile application. The technological integration enables Hey Banco clients to process routine service payments — including electricity, water, telecommunications, tuition fees, and municipal taxes — within a single digital interface without navigating outside the primary banking application. The collaboration forms part of Hey Banco's broader strategic roadmap to expand its digital banking ecosystem, offering financial management tools that simplify daily personal finances within a unified environment. 

Tapi operates as a specialized payments infrastructure coordinator across Latin America, maintaining operations in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. The company's processing platform connects more than 20,000 corporate service providers and integrates 70,000 physical payment points, processing over 300 million transactions annually.

Through the integration, Hey Banco provides its user base with consolidated access to tapi’s network of public utilities, educational institutions, and municipal tax authorities via a single application programming interface (API). As part of the ongoing rollout, both companies are developing additional functional capabilities within the Hey Banco application, including mobile airtime top-ups, scheduled future payments, and automated direct debit tools.

"Today we take another step in Mexico, partnering with Hey Banco so that hundreds of thousands of people can pay electricity, water, tuition, taxes, and much more from their app, in a few clicks," said Tomas Mindlin, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of tapi. "Every integration like this brings people's financial lives a little closer to the digital world."

Digitizing Recurring Payments in Mexico’s Cash-Dominant Market

The digitization of recurring service payments addresses a persistent reliance on physical cash within Mexico's consumer economy. Data cited by tapi indicates that approximately 85% of transactions valued under MX$500 (US$28.94) in Mexico continue to be settled in cash. 

Claudia Núñez Sañudo, Managing Director, Fintech México, argues that reliance on cash is rooted not only in habit, but in trust gaps and system design. In the absence of frictionless digital alternatives, consumers continue to rely on physical channels. Moreover, without digital transaction histories, large segments of the population remain excluded from formal financial profiling. “Seventy-five percent of first-time credit applicants are rejected,” she said. “Often, this is not due to risk, but to a lack of data.”

For Kevin Litvin, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer,  tapi, these limitations highlight the importance of infrastructure. The development of fintech in Mexico, he said, is inseparable from the modernization of payment and collection rails — the underlying systems that enable digital finance to operate at scale. “Tapi did not begin as an infrastructure company,” he explained. “We started as a consumer wallet. But we soon realized that the greatest inefficiencies, and therefore the greatest opportunities, existed at the infrastructure level.”

These inefficiencies are particularly evident in collections. While users can access multiple payment applications, the number of billers available digitally remains narrow. “In a country of more than 130 million people, most applications allow payments to only 80 to 110 companies,” Litvin said. “By contrast, Colombia, with roughly one-third of the population, offers digital access to more than 17,000 billers.”

Evolution of Hey Banco

The deployment of tapi's bill payment infrastructure coincides with an operational transition for Hey Banco within Mexico’s regulated banking system. Hey Banco operates as an entity within Banregio Grupo Financiero and functions as a direct subsidiary of publicly traded financial holding company Regional.

The digital bank officially began operating under its own independent multiple banking license granted by the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), completing its corporate spin-off from Banregio while remaining within the same financial group. The independent authorization established Hey Banco as a standalone digital bank within Mexico's commercial banking sector, driving the institution to expand its proprietary product offerings, client administration tools, and digital transaction channels. Integrating tapi's multi-biller payment network allows Hey Banco to enhance its competitive posture against both traditional commercial banks and emerging non-bank fintech entities in Mexico.