BIS 2025 data: the dollar is on 89% of FX trades, MXN 1.6%, BRL 0.9%, COP 0.2%. Why liquid pairs quote tighter and how to use that when pricing payouts.
The US dollar is the most liquid currency in the world: it sits on one side of 89% of all FX trades, per the BIS 2025 Triennial Survey. Among Latin American currencies, the Mexican peso has 1.6% of global turnover, the Brazilian real 0.9%, and the Colombian peso 0.2%. Thinner currencies usually mean wider spreads on payouts.
That ranking isn't trivia. It explains why a payout to Mexico tends to quote tighter than one to Colombia, why size matters more in some corridors than others, and why almost every conversion routes through dollars.
Key takeaways
The BIS runs a survey of FX markets every three years. The 2025 edition collected data from more than 1,100 banks and dealers in 52 jurisdictions, for April 2025 (BIS press release).
Here are the currencies that matter most for payouts, from Table 4 of the survey:
| Currency | Share of FX turnover, April 2025 | Daily turnover | 2022 share |
|---|---|---|---|
| US dollar (USD) | 89.2% | $8,560 billion | 88.4% |
| Euro (EUR) | 28.9% | $2,773 billion | 30.6% |
| Japanese yen (JPY) | 16.8% | $1,610 billion | 16.7% |
| Sterling (GBP) | 10.2% | $981 billion | 12.9% |
| Chinese renminbi (CNY) | 8.5% | $817 billion | 7.0% |
| Mexican peso (MXN) | 1.6% | $153 billion | 1.5% |
| Brazilian real (BRL) | 0.9% | $90 billion | 0.9% |
| Chilean peso (CLP) | 0.3% | $24 billion | 0.3% |
| Colombian peso (COP) | 0.2% | $20 billion | 0.2% |
| Peruvian sol (PEN) | 0.1% | $9 billion | 0.1% |
| Argentine peso (ARS) | 0.0% | $1 billion | 0.0% |
Source: BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey 2025, preliminary results, Table 4, "net-net" basis. Shares sum to 200% because each trade has two currencies. The full data set is on the BIS statistics page for April 2025 FX turnover.
The gap is wild. The euro trades about 30 times more than the real every day. The real trades about 90 times more than the Argentine peso.
USD/EUR, by far. Table 5 of the same survey ranks pairs:
| Pair | Daily turnover, April 2025 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| USD/EUR | $2,033 billion | 21.2% |
| USD/JPY | $1,372 billion | 14.3% |
| USD/CNY | $781 billion | 8.1% |
| USD/GBP | $731 billion | 7.6% |
| USD/MXN | $140 billion | 1.5% |
| USD/BRL | $86 billion | 0.9% |
| EUR/GBP | $169 billion | 1.8% |
The BIS notes that the top ten pairs all involve the dollar, "reflecting its status as the world's vehicle currency." Notice how small the non-dollar pairs are. EUR/GBP, two major currencies, trades less than USD/GBP by a factor of four.
That's why most cross-border conversions route through dollars, even when neither side is American. Paying reais from euros is usually EUR to USD, then USD to BRL. A dollar stablecoin fits that structure: it is the vehicle leg, just on a blockchain. How to read an FX quote covers the notation for those cross rates.
Because the dealer's risk is lower. Three reasons:
A market maker charges for the risk of holding inventory. Less risk, smaller spread. What a market maker does in stablecoin payments walks through how that becomes the rate on your quote, and why on-ramp and off-ramp rates differ covers bid and ask.
No. Some currencies trade mostly onshore or on exchanges, and some can't be delivered offshore at all.
The real is the clearest case. The same BIS table lists exchange-traded BRL derivatives at $47 billion a day, 22.5% of exchange-traded FX turnover, behind only the dollar and the euro. So a lot of BRL trading happens in exchange-traded futures, which the OTC ranking above leaves out. For the Argentine peso, years of capital controls help explain the tiny figure.
For payouts, what matters is liquidity inside the country, at the moment of conversion, from a provider that can deliver local currency on a local rail. What a non-deliverable currency is explains the onshore and offshore split, and what a payment corridor is covers the other pieces of the price.
Illustrative example. A company pays out the equivalent of $100,000 a month into each of four currencies. The margins below are made up to show how liquidity can show up in price. They are not BlindPay prices and not market data.
| Payout currency | Illustrative margin vs market rate | Monthly cost on $100,000 |
|---|---|---|
| EUR | 0.30% | 100,000 x 0.0030 = $300 |
| MXN | 0.45% | 100,000 x 0.0045 = $450 |
| BRL | 0.55% | 100,000 x 0.0055 = $550 |
| COP | 0.80% | 100,000 x 0.0080 = $800 |
| Total | $2,100 a month, $25,200 a year |
The point isn't the specific numbers. It's that the same company, same provider, same month, can pay almost three times more in margin in one corridor than another, purely from the depth of the receiving market.
Two things follow. Thin corridors deserve more scrutiny on price. And size matters more there, because a large payout can eat through available inventory. How to test an off-ramp's liquidity depth gives a quote-ladder protocol for exactly that.
Use turnover to set expectations, then measure.
The BIS also flags that the April 2025 survey ran during "elevated FX volatility" after trade policy announcements. Volatility widens spreads everywhere, and thin currencies widen most. FX swaps vs stablecoins covers the funding side of the same market.
Every BlindPay payout quote returns commercial_quotation, the market rate, next to blindpay_quotation, the rate after BlindPay's margin, plus sender_amount, receiver_amount, and the fee lines (payout quotes). The gap between the two rates is the price of the corridor on that quote.
BlindPay pays out in dollars (ACH, wire, RTP, SWIFT), reais (Pix, PIX Safe, TED), Mexican pesos (SPEI), Colombian pesos (ACH Colombia), Argentine pesos (Transfers 3.0), and euros (SEPA) (bank accounts). BlindPay combines a monthly plan with per-transaction fees that vary by rail and network and are disclosed in the live quote before execute.
Request the same $10,000 payout quote into two currencies from the table, one deep and one thin, at the same minute, and compare the gap between commercial_quotation and blindpay_quotation. The payout quotes docs have the request body.
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