Central America Nearshoring: What It Means for Collections

A US company that nearshores technical support or software development to Costa Rica or Guatemala signs a contract billed in dollars. But its vendor pays payroll in quetzales or colones, pays office rent in local currency, and calculates payroll contributions under a different country's labor law. The invoice sits in one currency, the vendor's costs sit in another, and the payment cycle between the two can stretch into weeks.

At Soulbit Academy we look past the nearshoring headline. Costa Rica and Guatemala have spent years building a services hub for US clients, with contact centers, shared services centers and software teams that bill in dollars. Soulbit is a payment and treasury rail for businesses that use stablecoins, not a bank or a legal advisor. This article looks at the phenomenon from the collections and treasury side, not the legal framework of each country, which we cover separately for Guatemala and for Costa Rica.

Why Central America became a services hub for US companies

Central America now captures a growing share of the services the United States used to source from Asia, for three reasons that reinforce each other: a shared time zone with the United States, preferential access under CAFTA-DR, and bilingual talent at a competitive cost.

The time zone advantage is the simplest to explain and the hardest to replicate from Asia: an analyst in Guatemala or Costa Rica works US business hours without a night shift.

CAFTA-DR, the free trade agreement between the United States, the Dominican Republic and five Central American countries including Costa Rica and Guatemala, devotes its Chapter 11 to cross-border trade in services. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, in 2022 the United States imported $14,600 million in services from the CAFTA-DR region and exported $10,000 million in services to it, a two-way relationship that already carries real weight.

Bilingual talent is the third factor and the only one measured in jobs: the services regimes of Costa Rica and Guatemala employ hundreds of thousands of people, with each country's figures in the section below.

The Inter-American Development Bank estimated in 2022 that nearshoring could add $78,000 million a year in additional exports from Latin America and the Caribbean, of which $14,000 million would be services; that is a 2022 projection, not a 2026 figure. Unlike nearshoring and payments: collecting from US clients in digital dollars, which covers the broader region, this article focuses on Central America and specifically on the services sector.

What kind of operation gets set up: BPO, shared services centers and software development

The operation that lands in Central America takes three forms: the contact center or BPO, the shared services center and software development. The first is the contact center or BPO, handling calls, chat and technical support for end clients in the United States, with a BPO with agents in four countries that unified its payroll as an illustrative case of this model at scale. The second is the shared services center, where a US company moves internal functions like accounting or IT support to its own team in the region. The third is software development, where Central American engineering teams work as a direct extension of a US product team.

Guatemala documents the third category in detail. According to AGEXPORT, the technology sector, which includes IT outsourcing known as ITO, accounts for 10% of the country's service exports, groups more than 85 exporting companies and generates over 45,000 direct and indirect jobs, with $155.7 million exported as of September 2025, 63% more than the same period in 2024.

Costa Rica documents a broader phenomenon that combines manufacturing and services under its free zone regime. According to Comex, citing PROCOMER data for 2024, 626 companies operated under the regime, up from 56 in 1990, with 197,038 direct jobs and 265,571 total jobs once indirect employment is added. The regime contributed 15% of Costa Rica's GDP and concentrated 74% of the country's foreign direct investment in 2024.

The two figures are not directly comparable: Guatemala's isolates the IT and ITO subsector, while Costa Rica's aggregates manufacturing and services under one regime. What they share is direction: both countries are growing the same type of operation aimed at US clients.

Indicator	Costa Rica (free zone regime, 2024)	Guatemala (IT/ITO sector, as of September 2025)
Companies	626, up from 56 in 1990	More than 85 exporting companies
Jobs generated	197,038 direct; 265,571 including indirect	More than 45,000 direct and indirect jobs
Weight in the economy	15% of national GDP	10% of total service exports
Exports or investment	$13,013 million in exports; 74% of the country's foreign direct investment	$155.7 million from January to September 2025
Recent growth	212 new companies between 2020 and 2024	63% more exports than the same period in 2024
Source	Comex / PROCOMER	AGEXPORT

The currency mismatch on the vendor's side of a dollar invoice

A Central American vendor that bills a US client in dollars does not eliminate currency risk, it moves it from accounts receivable to payroll and local fixed costs. The invoice arrives in dollars because the client is in the United States, but a contact center's or a development team's payroll, its heaviest cost, is paid in quetzales or colones under each country's labor law.

Does a US company's Central American vendor face currency risk even though the invoice is in dollars?

Yes, because the risk does not disappear, it moves. A company that bills and pays its costs in dollars carries no currency mismatch in its operating result. A Central American services vendor does, in the opposite direction of an importer: when the local currency weakens against the dollar, its margin improves, and when it strengthens, the margin compresses. The challenge is planning: the vendor's payroll budget has to be built on a projected exchange rate that rarely matches the rate on the day the invoice clears.

Timing adds to the problem. Dollar revenue arrives on the US client's collection cycle, which can run 30, 60 or even 90 days from the invoice date. Payroll, by contrast, is paid every two weeks or every month without exception. That gap between when the dollar comes in and when local currency goes out is, in practice, the central treasury problem of this business model, and it sits on the vendor's side of the relationship even though the US buyer never sees it.

Long collection cycles and bank fees: the friction that eats into a vendor's margin

A dollar invoice from Central America to the United States adds days through the chain of correspondent banks that processes each wire before the money reaches the vendor's account. The full breakdown of that chain, with the time and fees that accumulate at each step, is in how much does a SWIFT transfer cost in 2026.

As a cost reference, the World Bank calculates that sending money between countries costs an average of 6.36% of the amount on a $200 reference remittance, and close to 15% through a bank channel. That is remittance data, not a five-figure B2B invoice, and it is not comparable in scale, but the structure of the friction, transit days and fees without a clear breakdown, is the same pipe.

What turns a long collection cycle into a treasury problem rather than just an accounting one?

The fact that payroll does not wait for collections to clear. A shared services center with dozens of analysts has a fixed biweekly payment obligation regardless of whether the US client paid on time. When the collection cycle stretches, the vendor covers payroll with its own cash or a credit line while waiting for a dollar it already invoiced, an opportunity cost that rarely shows up in the income statement but shows up in cash flow.

How the collection cycle changes with stablecoins

The collection cycle changes when the invoice settles in a digital dollar instead of waiting on an international wire. Soulbit lets a Central American services vendor share a payment link or a QR code tied to the invoice; the US client pays in USDC or USDT and the transaction settles in minutes, with an on-chain identifier the vendor can reconcile without waiting for a bank statement. USDC is the digital dollar issued by Circle, backed by cash and US Treasury reserves, and USDT serves an equivalent function issued by Tether.

That balance in digital dollars, held with institutional custody, works as short-term treasury for the vendor while it decides when and how much to convert to local currency. And if the vendor's operation pays staff in more than one country, the same balance disburses payroll in a batch, as shown by the BPO case cited above, which consolidated its biweekly cycle into a single batch instead of four separate processes.

This does not remove the currency risk described earlier, because payroll is still paid in local currency. What it shortens is the leg the vendor controls: the time between the US client approving payment and the dollar being available, which drops from days to minutes and frees up working capital ahead of the next payroll date.

What Soulbit's V1 covers in Costa Rica and Guatemala, and what still depends on the local bank

Soulbit's V1 has a concrete limit in both countries: there is no local banking rail in either Costa Rica or Guatemala. The only local rail in the V1 is in Colombia. A services vendor in either country holds its balance in stablecoins such as USDC and USDT and in fiat in USD, EUR and GBP, and resolves the step to colones or quetzales through its own bank, within the exchange regime in force.

Need of a Central American services vendor	Does the V1 cover it?	How it is resolved
Collect from abroad in USDC or USDT	Yes	Payment links and QR codes tied to each invoice
Hold treasury in digital dollars	Yes	Business balance with institutional custody
Disburse payroll or supplier payments across countries	Yes	Recurring payroll and batch payments
Convert to fiat	Yes, in USD, EUR and GBP	OTC conversion by quote on request
Deposit in quetzales or colones	No	No local banking rail in Guatemala or Costa Rica; the V1's only local rail is Colombia
Cards, yield, a token or a native app	No	Outside the scope of the V1

The rest of the collection and treasury workflow is covered: collecting from abroad with payment links and QR codes, holding treasury in digital dollars with institutional custody, disbursing payroll in a batch, and converting to fiat by quote on request. Beyond the local rail, it also does not cover cards, yield, a proprietary token or a native app.

Central America is not one bloc: same model, different frameworks per country

Costa Rica and Guatemala share the same services-hub model, but not the same legal, exchange or tax framework. Guatemala regulates virtual assets through its anti-money-laundering law under Decree 15-2026, with the Superintendency of Banks and its Special Verification Intendancy as supervisors; the full framework is in stablecoins for companies in Guatemala: legal framework.

Costa Rica follows a parallel path with its own anti-money-laundering rule for virtual asset providers; that rule, the country's exchange regime and what the V1 covers there is in stablecoins for companies in Costa Rica: legal framework. Country-level operating detail is in the Guatemala crypto payments guide.

This article stays deliberately at the macro level: why the Central American services hub exists and what it means for collections. A US company managing a nearshore relationship can take away three points. First, dollar invoicing does not remove currency risk, it shifts it onto the vendor's payroll, which affects how reliably the vendor can absorb a payment delay. Second, the collection cycle is where the most improvement is possible, because it is the leg both parties can actually shorten. Third, the legal framework changes from one country to the next within the same region, so no operating decision should be made without checking the article for the specific country.