[3] Banamex gradually introduced several financial product innovations to the Mexican market including the first credit cards in 1968[4] and an ATM banking system in 1972.

[6] During a severe economic crisis in 1982, then Mexican president José López Portillo announced a major devaluation of the peso and nationalized all private banks in Mexico.

It had 720 branch offices, 31,797 employees, assets of $26.2 billion and a customer base of four million people making it the largest financial group in Latin America at the time.

The December 1994 macro-devaluation of the Mexican pesos and the ensuing significant increase in domestic interest rates coupled with a dramatic economic recession, caused Banamex's and much of the rest of the privatized banks to essentially become insolvent.

[3] In order to avoid the potentially catastrophic effects of generalized bank bankruptcies, the Ernesto Zedillo administration decided to rescue the troubled banks through a government fund (Instituto de Protección al Ahorro Bancario or IPAB, later called Fondo Bancario de Protección al Ahorro or Fobaproa).

[3] In October 2014, the New York Times reported that employees had taken millions of dollars in kickbacks from vendors and that the bank's security section had purchased recordings of private conversations from third parties, with no apparent business justification.

The U.S. subsidiary didn't last long and was shut down in 2015 after a 6-year investigation into Citigroup's and Grupo Financiero Banamex' money laundering scheme by the U.S. Department of Justice.