In the U.S., the average adult carries three credit cards. In Mexico, three adults share one.
If your vacation rental business only accepts card payments, you’re invisible to the majority of Mexico’s domestic market. And in a country where the vacation rental industry crossed $5 billion in 2025 and continues to grow, that’s a lot of bookings walking out the door.
Here’s the good news: there’s a solution, and it’s sitting on nearly every street corner in Mexico. It’s called OXXO. And if you’re using Hostfully with Stripe, you may already have access to it.
This post breaks down Mexico’s payment landscape, explains why OXXO has become the country’s dominant payment network, and shows you how to put it to work for your vacation rental business.
Most of Mexico doesn’t pay the way you think
If you manage vacation rentals in Cancun, Tulum, Puerto Vallarta, or anywhere along Mexico’s coastline, you already know the market is hot. Mexico is the second-largest e-commerce market in Latin America, and its vacation rental sector is growing at nearly 7% year over year.
But here’s what catches most operators off guard: the payment infrastructure looks nothing like what you’re used to in the U.S., Canada, or the UK.
Consider the numbers. According to the World Bank, roughly 51% of Mexico’s adult population is unbanked; they don’t have access to a traditional bank account, let alone a credit card. As of mid-2025, Mexico had about 37 million credit cards in circulation for a population of 130 million people. Even among those who do have bank access, cash remains the preferred payment method for 82% of citizens.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s e-commerce market surpassed $74 billion in 2023, and it’s still accelerating. So where’s the disconnect? How do tens of millions of people shop online without a credit card?
The answer: they pay in cash. At a convenience store. And the convenience store they use, overwhelmingly, is OXXO.
The corner store that beat Walmart
If you haven’t heard of OXXO, you’re not alone (at least outside of Latin America). But within Mexico, OXXO is everywhere. More than 21,000 stores span the country, from Mexico City neighborhoods to small coastal towns. It’s the largest convenience store chain in Latin America, owned by FEMSA (Fomento Económico Mexicano), one of the most powerful conglomerates in the region.
And OXXO stopped being “just a convenience store” a long time ago.
In Q2 2024, FEMSA reported EBITDA of 26.9 billion pesos for its proximity division (anchored by OXXO). That same quarter, Walmart Mexico posted 23.5 billion. OXXO’s profit margin: 13 cents on every peso of revenue. Walmart Mexico’s: 10 cents. A Mexican chain of small-format stores is now more profitable, on a margin basis, than the world’s largest retailer in its own backyard.
How? By becoming the bridge between digital commerce and the real world.
OXXO processes payments for Amazon, Temu, Shein, and a growing list of global e-commerce brands. Through its Spin by OXXO digital wallet (9.9 million active users) and its Spin Premia loyalty program (27.7 million members), FEMSA has built a full-fledged financial services platform on top of a convenience store network.
Here’s how OXXO payments work in practice, and this is the important part: a customer makes a purchase online, selects OXXO at checkout, and receives a voucher with a unique reference number. They walk into any OXXO store, hand the voucher to the cashier, and pay with cash. Efectivo. Physical bills and coins. No bank account required. No Spin card, no digital wallet, no app. Just cash over the counter at any of 21,000+ locations. The payment is confirmed to the merchant the next business day.
It’s simple, familiar, and trusted. And it now accounts for more than 30% of all online transactions in Mexico. For the tens of millions of Mexicans who operate entirely in cash, OXXO is the on-ramp to the digital economy.
Even Barclays analysts have taken notice. During FEMSA’s Q2 2024 earnings call, a managing director at Barclays specifically asked about the “strength of the gross margin at OXXO” and wanted to understand the success of its digital initiatives. The response from FEMSA’s investor relations team pointed to a relentless focus on monetizing every aspect of the store: physical signage, digital screens, in-store advertising, and, most critically, financial services and payment processing.
OXXO is also expanding beyond Mexico. FEMSA now operates stores in Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and Peru. And in 2024, the company acquired 249 U.S. convenience stores in Texas, New Mexico, and Arkansas, with plans to rebrand them all as OXXO by 2028.
This isn’t a local curiosity. It’s a continent-wide payments infrastructure.
Your next guest might pay in cash at a convenience store
So what does all of this mean if you manage vacation rentals in Mexico?
It means your domestic guest pool is much larger than you think, but only if your checkout supports how they actually pay.
Think about who’s booking vacation rentals in Mexico right now. Yes, there are American and Canadian tourists, and they’ll pay with Visa or Mastercard without a second thought. But the fastest-growing segment of travel demand in Mexico is domestic. Mexican families booking beach houses in Riviera Maya. Young professionals renting apartments in CDMX for long weekends. Regional travelers from Colombia and Central America looking for affordable getaways. Digital nomads staying for a month in San Miguel de Allende or Oaxaca.
Mexico’s middle class is growing, disposable income is rising, and the cultural shift toward vacation rentals over traditional hotels is well underway. Market data projects nearly 21 million users will book vacation rentals in Mexico by 2027. That’s a massive addressable market, and a significant portion of it prefers to pay without a credit card.
And with the FIFA World Cup coming to Mexico in 2026, that demand is about to spike. Not just from international visitors, but from millions of Mexicans traveling domestically to host cities. Many of those travelers prefer to pay in cash. Many of them will pay through OXXO.
If your booking engine only accepts credit cards, you lose that guest at checkout. They don’t call to negotiate an alternative. They don’t send a bank transfer. They just leave.
OXXO payments through Stripe solve this cleanly. When a guest books through your direct booking site and selects OXXO as their payment method, they receive a voucher with a reference number. They walk into any OXXO store and pay the total in cash at the register, the same way they’d pay an electricity bill or an Amazon order. No card needed. No bank account needed. No app needed. Just efectivo. Once the cash payment is made, Stripe confirms the transaction and the funds arrive in your account like any other payment.
There are real operational advantages, too. Because the guest physically hands over cash at the OXXO register, fraud risk is extremely low. There’s no card number to steal, no chargeback to dispute. Guests can’t reverse an OXXO payment once it’s made. The currency is always processed in Mexican pesos (MXN), with real-time exchange rates applied if your rates are listed in another currency.
And for guests who do have credit cards? Stripe also supports “Meses Sin Intereses,” a popular Mexican payment option that lets customers split purchases into interest-free monthly installments through participating banks. It’s the equivalent of buy-now-pay-later, but deeply embedded in Mexico’s banking system. Both OXXO and Meses Sin Intereses expand your reach across the full spectrum of Mexican consumers: cash-first and card-holding alike.
Cash payments, meet guest screening
If you’re thinking “accepting cash sounds great, but how do I know who’s booking my property?”, you’re asking the right question. It’s a natural concern: when a guest doesn’t pay with a traceable credit card, you lose one layer of identity verification at checkout.
Here’s the reality, though. OXXO payments aren’t anonymous. The guest still provides their name and contact information when they book through your direct booking site. Stripe still processes and records the transaction. You still have a confirmed reservation with guest details attached. The only thing that changes is the payment method, not the guest’s accountability.
That said, smart operators layer in additional protection regardless of how a guest pays. Credit card fraud, fake identities, and problem guests aren’t exclusive to cash transactions. They happen with card payments, too.This is where Hostfully’s Screen + Protect comes in. Screen + Protect is built directly into the Hostfully platform and gives you two critical safeguards: identity verification (confirming your guest is who they say they are) and damage protection (covering you if something goes wrong during a stay). Every guest goes through the same screening process, whether they pay with Visa, PayPal, or cash at an OXXO store.
The combination is powerful. OXXO opens your property to Mexico’s cash-paying majority. Screen + Protect makes sure you’re not trading security for reach. You get a wider guest pool and the confidence that every booking has been vetted, regardless of payment method.
Already built in. Here’s how to turn it on:
Here’s where it gets practical.
Hostfully’s Property Management Software integrates deeply with Stripe, which supports 24+ payment methods globally, including Google Pay, Apple Pay, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Revolut Pay, and more. For operators with a Mexico-based Stripe account, OXXO is available as a payment method that can be enabled directly through your Stripe dashboard.
That means if you’re running your direct booking site through Hostfully and processing payments through Stripe, your guests in Mexico can already pay for their vacation rental stay with cash at any OXXO store. No custom code. No third-party plugin. No separate payment gateway. Your guest pays in efectivo at the counter; you receive the funds through Stripe.
This is one of those capabilities that most property managers don’t even realize they have. And it’s a genuine competitive advantage. The major OTAs (online travel agencies) in Mexico already offer OXXO at checkout; it’s one reason they capture so much domestic demand. With Hostfully and Stripe, your direct booking site can match that experience, giving guests the payment flexibility they expect while you keep the booking (and the margin) on your own platform.
In a market where the average property management software still treats payments as a credit-card-only problem, this is a real differentiator.
Mexico is a $5 billion opportunity. Meet guests where they pay.
Mexico’s vacation rental market is large, fast-growing, and increasingly competitive. The country represents over 12% of North America’s vacation rental revenue, with coastal destinations like Tulum and Los Cabos pushing peak-season yields above 15%. Domestic travel is rising steadily. And the FIFA World Cup will bring a once-in-a-generation surge of demand in 2026, with matches hosted across multiple Mexican cities.
The operators who win in this market won’t just be the ones with the best-photographed listings or the highest Airbnb ratings. They’ll be the ones who remove friction from the booking process, starting with how guests pay.
OXXO isn’t a workaround or a niche option. It’s how Mexico pays. And with Hostfully’s Stripe integration, it’s already part of your toolkit.
Ready to see how it works? Book a personalized demo and we’ll walk you through payment processing for your Mexico properties, including OXXO, Meses Sin Intereses, and 24+ payment methods through Stripe.