Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas is bringing in Anchorage Digital to power its stablecoin ambitions. The partnership, announced this week, will see Coinpro — the crypto exchange owned by Grupo Salinas — tap Anchorage's stablecoin services for cross-border settlement operations. It's a concrete step for a company that runs one of Latin America's largest retail chains, Grupo Elektra, and has been quietly building out its digital asset infrastructure.
Why stablecoins for settlement
International money movement is slow and expensive when routed through traditional banking rails. Stablecoins let companies skip the correspondent-bank chain, settling in minutes on a blockchain instead of days via SWIFT. For a group with operations across Mexico, Central America, and the U.S., the savings add up. Carlos Dias Afonso of Grupo Salinas hinted the stablecoin channels could eventually reach beyond the exchange — deeper integration that would benefit Grupo Elektra's customers. That suggests a retail payments angle, not just institutional transfers.
The Anchorage role
Anchorage Digital is a federally chartered digital asset bank in the U.S., which gives it a compliance-heavy profile that Grupo Salinas likely needs for cross-border work with regulators. The exchange Coinpro gets a regulated partner for custody and issuance-like services without building the compliance layer from scratch. For Anchorage, it's another win in Latin America, a region where stablecoin adoption has been climbing fast as businesses look for dollar-pegged alternatives amid local currency volatility.
Dias Afonso didn't lay out a timeline, but the hint about Grupo Elektra's customers points toward a retail rollout — possibly allowing Elektra shoppers to hold or transact in stablecoins, or enabling remittances directly through the store network. That would be a big deal for a chain with thousands of locations across Mexico. For now, the immediate use is Coinpro's settlement pipeline. Expect more specifics on how deep the stablecoin integration goes in the coming months.
