Panama City Breaks Ground with Crypto Payments for Public Services
Under the leadership of Mayor Mayer Mizrachi Matalon, Panama City is taking a major step toward embracing digital currencies, becoming one of the first cities in the region to allow crypto payments for government services.
Everything from taxes and fines to permits and municipal fees will soon be payable in assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, and USDT.
Rather than waiting for national lawmakers to resolve their ongoing debates over digital asset regulation, the city has found a way to legally implement crypto at the local level.
It’s doing this through a clever workaround: partnering with a local bank that automatically converts crypto payments into U.S. dollars—the only currency officially recognized for public sector transactions in Panama. This way, residents interact with the government in crypto, while the city continues to comply with federal finance laws behind the scenes.
This municipal-level innovation stands in stark contrast to the slow-moving national crypto legislation, first introduced in 2022 and still tied up in the Senate. Lawmakers remain divided over key aspects of the proposed bill, particularly the central bank’s role and concerns about potential constitutional conflicts.
The most recent draft attempts to regulate exchanges and digital wallets under strict AML and KYC policies, while also setting up a legal foundation for blockchain use in sectors like finance, legal services, and tokenized securities.
Panama City’s bold move could turn up the pressure on federal lawmakers by showing that crypto can be integrated into public systems without legislative overhaul. It may also serve as a proof of concept for how cities can modernize financial interactions without disrupting legal norms.
City officials have yet to confirm which wallets or service platforms will be supported in the rollout, but detailed guidance is expected in the coming months before the system is fully implemented.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
