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This is a story about a dumb American traveling in Mexico (me), a con man’s attempt to hustle pesos from tourists and the limitations of traditional banking.
It begins with a broken ATM.
Recently I traveled to Mexico City. I know less Spanish than the average toddler. On my very first day in Mexico, at the ATM, I inserted my card … and the machine swallowed it. I pressed the red cancel button. Nothing. I pressed more buttons at random. Nothing. I spoke to a lady inside the bank, who couldn’t understand a word I was saying (not her fault), and after we found a translator, she explained that this ATM was out of order, and that if I understood Spanish, I would have read the warning message on the screen. (Again, this is also on me. We’re in Mexico, and it’s my fault I don’t speak the language.)
I’d have to contact my bank, Fidelity, to get a new debit card mailed to me.
I would be in Mexico for the next two weeks, and clearly I’d need more cash. So I called Fidelity to cancel my card and send me a new one.
Problem 1: Fidelity says they would happily send me a new card, but I would need to call a different company, Visa Emergency Card Services, to have a new one sent. Fidelity handles my checking, but apparently they outsource things like debit cards.
So, I call Visa.
Problem 2: Visa tells me they need to authorize that I’m actually a Fidelity customer, and this could take some time. So I wait. In the meantime I can’t get cash.
I hear nothing from Visa for two days. I still have no cash aside from the pesos that a friend lent me.
Again he apologizes, and he essentially agrees with me. I want to underline that every individual I spoke to was competent and courteous – this isn’t their fault. (I should add that I’ve generally been a happy Fidelity customer; their customer service is normally top-notch. And I contacted Fidelity a few weeks later to ask if they would like to comment for this story; outside of an email apology that looked a bit like a form letter, they declined.)
Now here’s where bitcoin enters the story.
Kidding. I don’t know that cryptocurrency – at least with today’s infrastructure – would have cracked my problem. Taco stands in Sayulita do not accept bitcoin or shiba. And this is not El Salvador. Perhaps I could have used something like LocalBitcoins to swap bitcoin (I own some) for pesos. Maybe that could have worked.
But I do know that when people in the U.S. say, “crypto makes no sense, because my credit card works just fine,” that’s only part of the story. Yes, it works “just fine” when everything runs smoothly. It works “just fine” if you don’t mind paying the fees, whether directly or indirectly. It works “just fine” when no other countries are involved. But when that bubble is pierced? The banks can’t even talk to themselves.
Now this is where the con man enters the story.
I’m down to my final 50 pesos. That’s the equivalent of about $2.50.
I have one last move to make.
I head to a gringo tourist bar, and I order a beer with my last 50 pesos. (Luckily, beers are cheap.)
It’s a Saturday afternoon. College football is playing. I spot a tipsy American woman who’s cheering for Oklahoma. So now I’m cheering for Oklahoma. I went to college at The University of Texas; Oklahoma is our sworn enemy.
“Go Oklahoma!” I yelled.
Soon the lady and I are chatting. We’re flirting. And now I feel like a con man. “So, I have a crazy question,” I said, smiling, “but I’m wondering if you can help me…”
I tell her my plight, or at least a highly condensed version, and I ask her if I can Venmo her U.S. dollars in exchange for pesos. She agrees. Soon I have a stack of 1,000 pesos, I feel flush with cash, and later I repeat the same trick with another tipsy American tourist. Thanks to this mini-breakdown of the banking system, I’ve turned into a pathetic peso-hustler.
More flirting, more hustling, more pesos. Soon I can buy all the tacos and beers I want. And two weeks after I landed in Mexico, literally the day before I fly back to the United States, once it is no longer needed … DHL delivers my new debit card.