Latin America Gaming Payments: NetEase Adds Pix and Local Rails in Five Markets

A partnership with cross-border processor EBANX lets NetEase Games Club accept instant transfers, digital wallets and cash vouchers, opening its checkout to the majority of regional players who do not hold a credit card.

NetEase Games Club will start accepting the local payment methods that most Latin American players actually use, following a partnership with cross-border payments company EBANX aimed at one of the fastest-growing video game markets in the world. In an initial rollout across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru, players will be able to top up accounts and buy in-game content using instant transfers, digital wallets and cash-based vouchers alongside credit and debit cards. For a region where only about one in four adults holds a credit card, the change targets the single biggest point of friction in Latin America gaming payments: moving money from willing players to publishers.

The top-up platform belongs to NetEase Games, the online games division of NetEase, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES; HKEX: 9999) and the publisher behind titles including Marvel Rivals and Naraka: Bladepoint. The supported methods include Pix in Brazil, SPEI in Mexico, PagoEfectivo in Peru, and the Mercado Pago digital wallet across the region.

Why does Latin America's card gap matter for game publishers?

The gap between how many people can play and how many can pay is wide. According to World Bank data, only around one in four Latin American adults has a credit card, while more than half of the population aged 15 and over has already made a digital payment. That mismatch is where local rails have taken over.

In Brazil, the central bank's instant payment system Pix reaches roughly 170 million people, close to the entire adult population, while about 60 million Brazilians have no credit card at all. In Mexico, only around a third of adults hold a card, yet more than half use the account-to-account system SPEI. In Peru, roughly 37% of adults have a credit card, while the cash-based PagoEfectivo reaches an estimated 64%. For a publisher selling digital goods, a card-only checkout in these markets leaves most of the addressable audience unable to complete a purchase.

How large is the revenue at stake?

The five markets covered by the partnership are expected to generate USD 8.4 billion in video game revenues in 2026, according to Payment and Commerce Market Intelligence (PCMI) data analysed by EBANX, with Brazil alone projected at USD 3.8 billion.

Independent figures point the same way: the wider Latin American games market grew 6.4% in 2025, according to Newzoo, outpacing North America at 4.2% and Europe at 3.6%, and the region now counts 372.3 million players. (The PCMI figure covers the five partnership markets in 2026; the Newzoo growth data covers the region as a whole in 2025, so the two headline numbers are close but not directly comparable.)

EBANX puts a commercial number on closing the gap, though these are self-reported figures. The company says merchants integrating Pix have seen revenue rise by up to 37% within six months, with SPEI producing gains of up to 46% within three months and PagoEfectivo up to 19% within one month. The 37% figure is a ceiling rather than a typical result: EBANX's own published Pix materials cite an average uplift of 16% for merchants that add the method. Readers should treat the higher numbers as best-case outcomes rather than an expected return.

What does the deal signal about APAC money moving into Latin America?

The more significant story sits beneath the checkout mechanics. The partnership is one instance of a broader movement of Asia-Pacific companies pushing into Latin America as home markets mature and growth corridors open elsewhere. For a Chinese publisher such as NetEase, the region offers a large, young and highly engaged player base that has been structurally under-monetised because of payment friction rather than lack of appetite.

EBANX has positioned itself at the centre of that flow. The company reports 48% growth in total payment volume in 2025, a company record, and established a technology and regulatory headquarters in Singapore in 2026, where it holds a Major Payment Institution licence. That combination, a compliant APAC base plus local acquiring across Latin America, is what lets an APAC-headquartered company plug into regional payment rails through a single counterparty rather than building market-by-market infrastructure itself.

For investors, the pattern is familiar from the wider payments sector: the durable advantage in emerging markets tends to accrue to providers that own local licensing and domestic scheme connectivity, because that infrastructure is expensive to replicate and directly converts otherwise-lost transactions into captured revenue. Payment localisation, on this reading, functions less as a feature and more as a moat.

Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers

For finance professionals and investors, this deal is a clean illustration of how payment-method fragmentation in high-growth emerging markets translates directly into revenue leakage, and therefore into partnership and investment opportunity. The economics are structural: when a majority of a paying audience cannot use a card, every point of checkout localisation maps onto recoverable revenue.

Watch two things. First, whether EBANX's self-reported uplift figures hold up as the gaming vertical scales beyond early adopters. Second, the widening APAC-to-Latin America commerce corridor, which is quietly reshaping who owns the payment relationship with the region's consumers and creating a defensible niche for providers with local licences on both ends.