What is Barter Railway?.
Barter Railway is the payment infrastructure Pesito uses to move money between accounts. This page exists because we believe you deserve to know — in plain English — what actually happens under the hood when you tap "Send", without marketing fluff and without hiding technical names you'll find anyway in the app's fine print.
What you see.
Your Pesito balance is in Mexican pesos (MXN) and, optionally, in U.S. dollars (USD). That's what you load, send, receive, and withdraw. You never see blockchain, never buy a digital asset, never sign a crypto transaction. Pesito is not a crypto wallet.
What happens underneath.
When a transfer crosses between two Pesito accounts, on the intermediate leg, value moves using two regulated digital assets:
- USDc — a digital asset pegged to the U.S. dollar, issued by a regulated entity (Circle), 1:1 backed with dollars and U.S. Treasury reserves held in segregated, monthly-audited accounts.
- MXNB — a digital asset pegged to the Mexican peso, issued by Juno (the regulated entity within Bitso's Mexican group), 1:1 backed with pesos in bank custody.
These assets are used only as an internal settlement vehicle. You never buy them, never sell them, never hold them. Pesito redeems them 1:1 for the pesos or dollars in your balance before you ever touch anything.
Why we do it this way.
The traditional banking system charges a fee on every leg: a typical remittance passes through 3–5 institutions (sender bank, sponsor, correspondent, receiver bank, local agent). Each takes a slice as fee or FX margin. Modern rails like USDc and MXNB settle in seconds with no per-leg fee. That's what lets us keep the explicit fee near zero and the FX rate at mid-market.
What this does NOT mean.
- USDc and MXNB are not legal tender. They are virtual assets under Mexican law; the regulator says so and so do we.
- Your Pesito balance does not fluctuate with crypto prices. If your balance shows $1,000 MXN, you have one thousand pesos — not an equivalent that bounces around.
- No "depeg" risk in your experience. Pesito assumes the operational risk of the redemption mechanism. If that risk materialized, it's our problem, not yours.
- You are not "buying crypto" when using Pesito. Anti-money-laundering, tax, and consumer-protection rules that apply to a crypto wallet do not apply to Pesito in the same way — because you don't operate virtual assets, Pesito uses them internally.
More details.
For a deeper dive, Barter Railway publishes technical documentation at barter.sh. Specific regulatory questions are answered in our Terms of Service. If anything on this page is unclear, write us at hello@pesito.la — same tone as this page.
Notice: this page is general information, not legal or financial advice. The settlement model description may be updated when partners or issuing entities change; any material change is published here and in the Terms.