What is happening with Citibank’s operation in Mexico?

Citibank has decided to split their operation in Mexico into two separate banking entities: Banamex (Banco Nacional de Mexico), focusing on enterprise and retail banking, and Banco Citi Mexico, focusing on the institutional segment. Stripe’s bank transfer product is based on a partnership with Banco Citi Mexico. The date of this transition is currently scheduled for December 2nd, 2024.

How will this affect Stripe?

Stripe’s bank transfer payment method is built using CLABEs that belong to CitiBanamex. As a result of the aforementioned split, Stripe Mexico will be facing some changes. Specifically, we will need to move our product to use a set of new CLABEs that belong to Banco Citi Mexico.

What is a CLABE?

CLABE is the Clave Bancaria Estandarizada, a unique number to identify account numbers in the Mexican financial system. Every CLABE has 18 digits that follow the same structure, “AAABBBCCCCCCCCCCCD” where:

• AAA: is a three digit code that represents the bank that owns the account number;;
• BBB: is a three digit number representing the branch where the account was opened;
• CCCCCCCCCCC: represent the specific account number within that bank and;
• D: is a single digit verifier that ensures the CLABE is correctly generated

How will this change my Stripe experience?

Over the migration phase, you will notice that the CLABEs Stripe generates for your payments will change over to belong to Banco Citi Mexico. After the separation goes into effect, the Account Numbers (ie CLABEs) used for Stripe’s bank transfers will have a new number reflecting the future bank identifier for Banco Citi Mexico, namely, from beginning with “002” they will now begin with “124”.

However, your overall use of Stripe will not change: the dashboard will remain the same, reporting will stay consistent, your ability to generate bank transfer payment intents will remain uninterrupted, etc.

How will this affect my customer’s experience?

Stripe will substitute CLABEs for your existing & active customer base on the backend. Specifically, we will remove the “old” CLABE and add a “new” one. So, starting on the migration date, any payment intent (e.g. Invoice) that you generate for your customers will automatically have the new CLABE. Any customer receiving a payment request from you will receive the new CLABE in the payment page.

We know that some customers save CLABEs to their bank portals, especially recurring users. For this reason, we suggest that you highlight the change to your customers and ask them to update your CLABE in their own banking portals for any payment sent from December 2nd, 2024 onwards.

What will happen if my customer sends money to an “old” CLABE?

If one of your customers mistakenly sends money to an “old” CLABE, the funds will be immediately returned to them, showing in their bank statement and banking app/ website. On your side, you will see the transaction status as “Incomplete” on your Dashboard.

If this should happen, you will need to remind your user to update the “new” CLABE and send the payment again.

How is Stripe helping businesses adapt to these measures?

We are working closely with Citibank to have an orderly transition with as much lead time as possible. We are in the loop on the details of the migration and are working to make this migration easier for all our users.

As our joint planning progresses, we will look for ways to make your migration process as seamless and transparent as possible.

What is the timeline for this migration? When can I hear more from Stripe?

The current date for the switch-over is December 2nd, 2024. Our joint work with Citi is ongoing and we continue detailing the specifics of this process.

You can expect to hear from us in the coming weeks as we continue to share more information and increase the frequency of communications as we approach the cutover date.