Latin America · GDP rank #40
Colombia
CO · COP @ 0.0002380/USD
Bre-B went into full-scale operation in October 2025 and within seven months has cleared more than 600 million transactions across 35 million registered users and 103 million aliases — the fastest stand-up of a Pix-style instant rail outside Brazil. Nequi (Bancolombia spin-out, 26 million registered users) and Daviplata (Davivienda, 19 million) define the consumer-wallet duopoly. The United States is the dominant remittance origin, the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia regulates non-bank PSPs under Decreto 222/2020, and the SEDPE (Sociedad Especializada en Depósitos y Pagos Electrónicos) charter is the operative fintech-deposit vehicle.
Tab 03
Rails & infrastructure
The instant rail, the RTGS spine, the card switch, the direct-debit scheme, and the country's CBDC stance. Each rail is reported with operator, launch year, and 2024 flow so the relative scale across rails is readable at a glance.
CBDC status is deliberately granular: live, pilot, preparation, live stalled, and sceptical, no pilot are different things.
Banco de la República has published research papers on potential CBDC design since 2022 and participated in Project Jasper-style cross-border experiments. No retail pilot is running and the central bank's stated position post-Bre-B is that the case for a retail CBDC is materially weakened by the new instant rail. Wholesale tokenisation experiments continue.
Instant payments
Bre-B (Sistema de Pagos Inmediatos Interoperado)
The instant leg typically carries the vast majority of retail consumer flow in modern payment systems — and sits in direct tension with card networks and wallets for the same transactions.
- Operator
- Banco de la República
- Live since
- 2025-10-06
Transactions · 2024
txns/year (annualised from Q1 2026) · Q1 2026
Run-rate annualised from the 370m transactions reported through January 2026 plus subsequent growth to ~500m through early April.
Cleared value · 2024
COP/year (annualised) · Q1 2026
Participating institutions
institutions · Jan 2026
Alias registrations
aliases · Q1 2026
Rail features
- ▌24/7/365 instant credit transfer with sub-15-second finality
- ▌Five interoperating SPBVI low-value clearing systems (ACH Colombia, Redeban, Credibanco, Visionamos and Banco de la República's own)
- ▌Phone / email / national-ID alias addressing (Llaves)
- ▌ISO 20022 messaging native to the rail design
- ▌Merchant-presented QR and request-to-pay scheduled for 2026 H2 rollout
RTGS
Real-time gross settlement
The RTGS spine clears high-value interbank flow — including the settlement of the instant-rail cycles and card-network net positions. Transaction count is modest; cleared value is enormous.
Transactions · 2024
txns/year · 2024
Cleared value · 2024
COP/year · 2024
Open banking
Regulatory and technical posture
- Regime
- Open Finance under Decreto 1297/2022 — SFC supervisory framework
- Live Since
- 2022-07-25
Registered open-finance participants
participants · Q4 2025
Monthly aggregator API calls (industry estimate)
calls/month · Q4 2025
Full reference