Mexican credit-card data reflects weaker consumer confidence

Mexico's consumer spending reflects the nation's sluggish economy. To get a sense of the slowdown, we can look at high-frequency spending data from credit and debit cards.

Card-payment growth rates were running above 30% year-on-year in 2023 but have been steadily slowing ever since. In January, growth slowed to 6.5%, the slowest since the height of the pandemic in early 2021.

We can also observe trends for sub-categories like retail and restaurants. Two categories have tipped over into negative growth -- "payment aggregators" and "other;" again, that's a post-pandemic first.

As our second and third charts show, these trends are broadly in line with another alternative dataset for Mexico: the Big Data Consumption Index, which is calculated by the pan-Latin American BBVA banking group. It measures payment-card spending on a daily basis. Adjusted for inflation, BBVA's dataset suggests that spending growth is near zero. (Core inflation has been running hotter than 4% since May 2025.)

BBVA is showing a slowdown in many discretionary spending categories; the most stable growth is seen in the staples of food and healthcare. Spending on entertainment has swung into reverse.

The stagnation reflects the chilling effect that Donald Trump's trade policies have had on business and consumer confidence. President Claudia Sheinbaum's challenges this year include renegotiating the USMCA trade deal with the American president and kickstarting an investment plan.

Economists expect the Mexican economy to expand at a 1.4% pace in 2026, according to Bloomberg News -- a modest ramp-up from 2025's 0.5% pace.

CEIC's proprietary weekly nowcast for Mexico is not showing evidence of a growth pickup in real time, as our last chart indicates. For the week to Feb. 16, our model estimates GDP growth was running at 1.5.%, slightly slower than the Q4 pace reported in official data.

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