Mercado Pago Kills Mercado Coin, Keeps Stablecoin Focus

Mercado Pago Mercado Coin shutdown is less about one token disappearing and more about what Latin American fintechs now think crypto is actually good for. Reuters reported on March 31 that Mercado Pago, the fintech arm of MercadoLibre, will discontinue Mercado Coin, the cashback cryptocurrency it launched in Brazil in 2022, and convert any unused balances to Brazilian reais after April 17. The company said the change reflects an evolution in its crypto strategy, with its focus since 2024 shifting toward Meli Dolar, its dollar-priced stablecoin.

What Mercado Pago actually ended

The mechanics are clear. Reuters said Brazilian users earned Mercado Coin as cashback when buying products on MercadoLibre, and that remaining balances must be sold or used for purchases by April 17; otherwise, they will be automatically converted into reais. Mercado Pago did not frame the decision as a retreat from crypto altogether. Instead, it said the move is part of the evolution of its strategy in the "crypto universe." That language matters because this is not a full shutdown of digital-asset products on the platform. It is a shutdown of one specific crypto format: a loyalty token whose core use case was rewards and app-based spending inside the MercadoLibre stack. In other words, Mercado Pago is not abandoning crypto. It is narrowing its definition of what crypto products are worth maintaining.

Reuters report on Mercado Coin's discontinuation

Why the Mercado Pago Mercado Coin shutdown matters

The signal is strategic, not cosmetic. Reward tokens sounded attractive in the 2021–2022 crypto cycle because they blended user retention, speculation, and platform engagement into one product. But stablecoins are much easier to explain, price, and integrate. Mercado Pago's own trajectory shows that shift. Reuters reported in August 2024 that the company launched Meli Dolar in Brazil as a dollar-linked stablecoin available through the app, adding it to a crypto lineup that already included bitcoin, ether, and Mercado Coin. By March 2026, Reuters said the company's focus had been on Meli Dolar since 2024, and that detail does most of the analytical work here. Mercado Pago appears to have concluded that a stable, dollar-referenced instrument is more useful than a proprietary reward token for users and more defensible as a long-term product for the company.

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Reuters on Meli Dolar's launch

The context starts with how Mercado Coin was built

Mercado Coin was always a very specific kind of crypto product. When Reuters covered its launch in August 2022, MercadoLibre said users in Brazil would receive MercadoCoins as cashback for purchases, use them for future purchases, or trade them on Mercado Pago. Reuters also reported that the token followed Ethereum's ERC-20 standard, launched at an initial value of $0.10, and was first rolled out to 500,000 Brazilian clients before an expected expansion across the company's roughly 80 million users in Brazil by late August 2022. That launch logic made sense at the time. Competition in Brazil's e-commerce market was rising, and a platform-owned crypto reward offered a way to deepen engagement while packaging the company as innovative. But reward tokens work only if they remain compelling both as loyalty instruments and as liquid assets. Stablecoins do not need to satisfy both tests. They just need to be stable, usable, and easy to access.

Reuters on Mercado Coin's 2022 launch

Who is affected and what changes for users

The direct impact falls on Brazilian Mercado Pago users who still hold Mercado Coin balances. Reuters said they now face a short conversion window: sell the token, spend it on MercadoLibre, or let the app convert it automatically to reais after April 17. That deadline matters because it closes the book on Mercado Coin as a continuing platform asset rather than leaving it in long-tail maintenance mode. The broader impact is reputational and operational. MercadoLibre is one of Latin America's biggest digital commerce and fintech players, so its product choices carry weight beyond its own app. When a company of that scale kills a reward token but keeps building around a stablecoin, it sends a message to regional fintechs: users may still want crypto access, but they do not necessarily want a branded internal coin unless the utility is extremely strong. Proprietary tokens promise differentiation. Stablecoins promise simplicity. In consumer finance, simplicity usually scales better.

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What to watch next

The next question is not whether Mercado Coin returns. It almost certainly will not. The real question is how far Mercado Pago pushes Meli Dolar and other mainstream crypto products across its regional footprint. Reuters said in 2024 that Meli Dolar launched in Brazil and that Ripio would act as exchange and market maker for the stablecoin transactions. Reuters also said in 2026 that Mercado Pago's focus on Meli Dolar now spans Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. That points to the more durable thesis: Mercado Pago still sees crypto as part of its product suite, but likely as a payments and savings layer rather than a loyalty-token experiment. If that is right, Mercado Coin will look less like a failed crypto project and more like an early test that helped the company decide what kind of digital asset users actually need.

related stablecoin strategy story

Mercado Pago is not exiting crypto. It is getting more selective about which crypto products deserve space inside a mass-market fintech app. In this cycle, that appears to mean fewer branded tokens and more stablecoin rails.