The Mexican market: size and growth
Retail e-commerce in Mexico reached 941 billion Mexican pesos in 2025, growing 19.2% over the previous year, according to AMVO's Estudio de Venta Online 2026. With that figure the country entered the global top 10 of the channel, and e-commerce accounted for 17.7% of total retail.
The buyer side confirms the trend: AMVO reports 77.2 million people shopping online, and the study highlights that 88.2% of Mexican internet users already buy online. Demand is no longer the obstacle; the obstacle sits on the small-supplier side.
- 941 billion MXN in online retail sales (2025)
- +19.2% year-over-year growth
- 17.7% of total retail now happens online
- 77.2 million digital buyers
- Source: AMVO, Estudio de Venta Online 2026
The gap: very few microbusinesses sell online
While demand grows at double digits, small supply lags behind. According to INEGI figures, only about 4 out of 100 microbusinesses in Mexico sell online, versus roughly 30% of SMEs overall. Most neighborhood businesses still operate only at the counter and through direct messages.
That gap explains why the market stays concentrated: a large share of Mexican e-commerce flows through a couple of marketplaces, according to sector reports. For a small business the reading is direct: demand exists, it is centralized in a few storefronts, and opening your own storefront is what most competitors still have not done.
- Microbusinesses selling online: ~4% (INEGI)
- SMEs overall selling online: ~30%
- Online sales concentrate heavily in marketplaces
- The missing link is the neighborhood business without its own catalog
The region confirms the direction
Mexico is not an isolated case. In Brazil, the sector association (today ABIACOM, formerly ABComm) reported e-commerce revenue of roughly 235 billion reais in 2025 with projections near 258 billion for 2026. Across Latin America, e-commerce grows at double-digit rates on top of an enormous base of small businesses that still have no web presence of their own.
For anyone selling in the region the message is the same in every country: the buyer is already online, and small-scale competition is not. Arriving early in a market where demand grows and local supply is scarce is the classic advantage of whoever moves first.
- Brazil: ~R$235 billion (2025), ~R$258 billion projected (2026)
- Sources: ABIACOM (formerly ABComm) and sector press
- Regional pattern: growing digital demand, scarce local supply
Trend 1: WhatsApp as the digital counter
The first trend is one you already live: conversational selling. Millions of businesses in the region serve customers through WhatsApp without their own catalog, and buyers increasingly ask to see products, prices, and stock by message before visiting or transferring money.
The natural evolution is moving from improvised chat to an ordered flow: a catalog with a cart on your own link, a structured order arriving in your chat, and human confirmation as always. The channel is not replaced; it gets organized.
Trend 2: AI lowers the entry barrier
The second trend explains why the gap is starting to close: artificial intelligence removed the most expensive part of opening your own channel. What used to require a designer, a developer, or weeks of setup now starts with a description of your business and an editable base generated in minutes.
The cost of testing collapsed: creating and publishing a store can be free, and the real investment concentrates where it always should have, on the product and the service. For most micro businesses, the question is no longer whether they can afford a store but which products to publish first.
Trend 3: payments adapt to the small business
The third trend is payment flexibility. The dominant model among small sellers remains transfer and cash on delivery, and it works. Integrated payments advance in stages: on MiniTiendAI they are optional, with 1% per confirmed payment plus the provider fee, and the pilot is limited to Mexico with verified accounts.
The practical advice does not change with trends: charge the way you charge today, organize your catalog and orders first, and adopt new payment methods when volume justifies them.
What to do with these numbers: the one-week plan
Numbers only matter if they become decisions. The minimum plan for a neighborhood business: pick your 10 to 20 highest-turnover products, build the catalog with photo and price, publish your own store for free with WhatsApp orders, and share the link where customers already are: bio, statuses, groups, packaging.
Then measure the simple things: which products get the most questions, which get added together, which doubts repeat. Use that to fix descriptions and prices. The market grows at double digits; the question is not whether the channel keeps growing, but whether your storefront will be ready when your customer looks.