Remittances, the money sent by migrants to their families back home, are situated outside ‘traditional’ categories of space in several ways. Not only do these smallscale financial transactions span the transnational space beyond the nation-state; they also move largely outside the institutional spaces of the formal banking sector. Taking the case of financial markets in Mexico and building on recent empirical findings on the impact of migrants’ remittances on the financial sector of the receiving countries, this article explores how remittances may lead to a transformation of local spaces by reducing some of the market failures that prevail, especially in rural financial markets.