The Banking Environment
While the Mexican Banking system is composed of 32 commercial (22 foreign banks) banks, six of them have a large part of the market. (Citi-Banamex, BBV Bancomer, Santander-Serfin, Banorte, HSBC-Bital and Scotiabank Inverlat).
There is a concentration of banking business among few providers:
Two of the Banks command the following percentages (Citi-Banamex and BBV Bancomer):
50% of banking assets
50% of total loans
76% of accounts
80% of Corporate & Consumer payments
49% of bank branches
All banks are regulated by the government and by the CNBV (National Commission of Banks and Values). Mexican Central Bank is Banco de Mexico.
The Mexican clearing house, named CECOBAN make the clearing of payments and checks issued by all Mexican banks resulting in debits and credits to the bank where bank accounts are registered. They make the Electronic data Transfers (file and data transfers).
Funds are credited as follows:
Checks/Cash
Same bank checks and / or cash are credited with same day value.
For checks from other banks there are two options:
Before 15:00 hrs (CT) the check is cleared within 24 hours.
After 15:00 hrs (CT) the check is cleared within 48 hours.
Wire Transfers
Same bank wires are credited with same day value
For wires from other banks there are two options:
For high value items <MXP$50,000.00 the funds are credited in 24 hrs
For low value items >MXP$50,000 the funds are sent via SPEUA (Mexico’s Large value transfer system) and the funds are credited within a maximum of 90 minutes