Colombia

Licensing, Authorisation & Market Access

Colombia's instant-payments interoperability framework rests on Article 104 of Law 2294 of 2023, the country's National Development Plan, which grants Banco de la Republica the statutory power to regulate interoperability among instant retail-value payment systems, domestically classified as SPBVI. This is a market-access-relevant detail: the authority governing interoperability sits inside a general economic-development statute rather than a dedicated payments-licensing act, meaning any future amendment to the interoperability mandate runs through the National Development Plan legislative vehicle. Operating under that mandate, Banco de la Republica has overseen Bre-B's transition from statutory design to full national operation, reaching 218 participating entities by January 2026 across five fully interoperating payment systems, with a sixth participant expected to join. The scale of participation — reaching well over two hundred entities within roughly a quarter of full operation — indicates that market access under the Bre-B interoperability framework has been broad rather than narrowly piloted, though the evidence available this cycle does not itemise the participant list by bank-PSP versus non-bank-PI/EMI status, a distinction that matters for assessing whether market access has been genuinely open to non-bank payment institutions and electronic-money issuers or has remained concentrated among traditional bank participants. Both claims underpinning this module's assessment carry content_tier classification as standing-brief material and are sourced to Banco de la Republica publications at source-tier one, the highest evidentiary tier in this cycle's register; the underlying claims are also coded bank_or_nonbank: both, indicating the statutory mandate and the interoperability scheme apply across bank and non-bank payment-service-provider populations rather than being confined to one class of institution. This is a national_federal regulatory-layer development, with Banco de la Republica as the central-bank authority exercising the mandate rather than a sub-national or scheme-level body.

Outlook

The market-access question to track is whether Banco de la Republica issues further interoperability regulation under its Article 104 mandate as Bre-B matures beyond its first full year of national operation, and whether future participant disclosures clarify the bank-versus-non-bank composition of the scheme's now more than two-hundred-strong participant base.

Payment Corridor Dynamics

Bre-B, Colombia's interoperable instant-payments system operated by Banco de la República and explicitly modelled on Brazil's Pix, reached full-scale interoperability on 6 October 2026. As of January 2026 the scheme counted more than 218 participating entities, comprising 26 banks, 153 cooperatives, and 4 SEDPEs (Sociedades Especializadas en Depósitos y Pagos Electrónicos), reflecting a participation base that spans both bank and non-bank payment-institution types from the outset. Alongside the interoperability milestone, Banco de la República updated the Bre-B regulatory framework to require clearer and more timely disclosure of the origin of technological failures and more precise user-notification protocols, an operational-resilience and consumer-transparency measure introduced as the scheme moves from a launch phase into full-scale operation.

The corridor's technical design documentation, published in February 2026, confirms that two further payment-scheme operators, Drixi (a Banco de la República vehicle) and Gou Payments (linked to Grupo AVAL), are expected to begin operating within the Bre-B ecosystem during 2026, which would extend the scheme's operator base beyond its initial roster of participants. The combination of full-scale interoperability, an expanding operator base, and tightened disclosure obligations marks Bre-B's transition from a launch-phase interoperable rail into a maturing piece of critical payments infrastructure for Colombia, carrying both bank and non-bank participation from the outset in a manner distinct from card-rail-centric corridors.

Outlook

Watch for confirmation that Drixi and Gou Payments have actually commenced operations as Bre-B scheme operators during 2026, and for any further regulatory measures addressing operational resilience as transaction volume grows following the full-scale interoperability transition.

Payment Corridor Dynamics

Colombia's Bre-B instant-payment scheme has scaled at a pace that marks it as one of the fastest national interoperable instant-payments rollouts observed. Live since 6 October 2025, the scheme reached 218 participating entities by January 2026, with five SPBVI operators fully interoperating at that point. By mid-2026, roughly five months after achieving full interoperability, Bre-B had processed more than 500 million transactions and registered over 100 million payment keys. This trajectory places Colombia among the more consequential instant-payments corridor stories globally this cycle, not for any single transaction-flow or cross-border dimension but for the sheer domestic adoption velocity of an interoperable rail spanning 218 entities. The scheme's expansion continues, with Drixi and Gou Payments expected to add two further SPBVI operators to the interoperating base during 2026, which would extend both the entity count and, plausibly, the transaction and payment-key totals further beyond their already-substantial mid-2026 levels. Banco de la República's parallel tightening of incident-disclosure and user-notification conduct rules for scheme participants should be read as a direct function of this scale: a payments corridor processing hundreds of millions of transactions across well over a hundred million registered payment keys generates materially higher stakes for any single technological failure than the same scheme would have at launch, and the regulator's 2026 conduct update reflects that shift in stakes.

Outlook

The corridor-dynamics story to watch is whether Bre-B's growth rate sustains as the participant base grows further with the addition of Drixi and Gou Payments, and whether transaction and payment-key totals continue to scale at a comparable pace through the remainder of 2026. Any slowdown in adoption velocity, or any technological incident testing the newly tightened conduct rules, would be the natural next data points for this corridor.

Payment Corridor Dynamics

Bre-B, Colombia's interoperable instant-payments scheme, reached full operation in October 2025 under the operational stewardship of Banco de la Republica, running on ACI Worldwide's processing infrastructure. Within five months of reaching full operation, the scheme had processed more than 500 million transactions and registered over 100 million payment keys, a scale of adoption that positions Bre-B as a genuine national payments utility rather than a pilot-stage initiative. The registered-keys figure is particularly significant because payment keys (simple identifiers such as phone numbers or national ID numbers linked to bank accounts) are the mechanism that allows instant, account-to-account transfers without exchanging full account details, and a base of over 100 million keys implies broad-based consumer and institutional enrolment across the scheme in a very short window post-launch.

The scheme's architecture is also evolving beyond its initial single-operator design. A second private instant-payments operator, Gou Payments, backed by Grupo AVAL, is currently in connection testing, while a forthcoming public operator, Drixi, is being brought online by Banco de la Republica itself. This move toward a multi-operator structure is a deliberate design choice by the central bank rather than an incidental development: it signals an intent to build competitive plurality and resilience into Colombia's instant-payments layer, avoiding a single-processor dependency as transaction volume continues to scale. For payments-sector participants, this corridor dynamic is best read as Colombia consolidating a domestically-controlled, central-bank-anchored instant-payments rail as the default channel for real-time transfers, with private operators layered on top of, rather than competing directly against, the public infrastructure.

The technical document underpinning these figures was published directly by Banco de la Republica in February 2026, giving this finding a Tier-1 primary-source anchor alongside corroborating T3 press coverage, which supports a High confidence rating for both the transaction-volume and multi-operator-expansion findings.

Outlook

The marker to watch over the coming cycles is whether Gou Payments completes connection testing and begins live processing, and whether Drixi's public-operator launch proceeds on the timeline implied by Banco de la Republica's February 2026 technical documentation. Continued transaction-volume growth at or above the pace observed in Bre-B's first five months of full operation would further cement the scheme's position as Colombia's dominant real-time payments rail.

Payment Corridor Dynamics

Bre-B, Colombia's interoperated instant retail-value payment system, came into full national operation on 6 October 2025. By January 2026, Banco de la Republica reported 218 participating entities and five fully interoperating SPBVIs, with a sixth participant, Gou Payments, expected to complete the interoperating set. This trajectory sits against a historically cash-dominant baseline: as of 2023 data, 78.6% of Colombian adults reportedly preferred cash, reflecting Colombia's low prior level of electronic-payment interoperability. Read together, the corridor-dynamics signal this cycle is that Colombia has moved from a cash-preference baseline toward a functioning, broadly-participated instant-payments rail within a compressed post-launch period, positioning Bre-B as a credible domestic equivalent to regional account-to-account rails such as Pix in Brazil and SPEI in Mexico. The claims underpinning this read are both sourced to Banco de la Republica at source-tier one and classified as high-confidence, giving this corridor-dynamics assessment a stronger evidentiary footing than lower-tier claims affecting other modules this cycle. Both claims carry instrument_type classifications of account-to-account and other respectively, consistent with Bre-B's structure as a bank-account-linked interoperable rail rather than a card-based or stablecoin-based payment instrument, and both are tagged jurisdiction CO with a national_federal regulatory layer, reflecting Banco de la Republica's central role as both scheme overseer and monetary authority.

Outlook

The next corridor-dynamics indicators to watch are whether Gou Payments completes its expected entry as the sixth fully interoperating participant, and whether participation growth continues beyond the initial post-launch uptake curve, which would confirm that Colombia's instant-payments corridor has moved from a launch-phase adoption spike to a durable structural feature of the payments landscape.

Product Innovation & Market Development

Decree 0368 marks a structural shift in Colombia's Open Finance policy, converting what had previously been a voluntary participation scheme into a mandatory regime binding the entire supervised financial system. Under the decree, the Financial Superintendence has up to six months to publish the technical standards that will govern data-sharing and access mechanics under the mandatory regime, and covered entities then have a further twelve months from that publication to enable access. Taken together, this sequencing gives the sector an eighteen-month outer horizon from the decree's issuance to full operational compliance, compressing what had been an optional, self-paced participation model into a fixed regulatory timeline.

This development sits within a broader 2026-2030 fintech-modernisation agenda targeting full interoperability across all payment operators in Colombia, including digital wallets and neobanks, not solely traditional banks. The agenda explicitly builds on existing rails — ACH Colombia and Transfiya — alongside the newly-scaled Bre-B instant-payments system, suggesting Colombian policymakers are treating Open Finance mandation and instant-payments infrastructure build-out as two components of a single coherent modernisation programme rather than as independent initiatives. For product and market-development teams, the practical implication is that data-access obligations under the mandatory Open Finance regime will need to be planned for on a similar timeline to continued instant-payments-rail integration work, rather than treated as a separate compliance track.

This finding carries Probable rather than High confidence: it is sourced from a single T3 secondary publication (Facephi Observatory) rather than a directly-reached Financial Superintendence or Presidential decree text, and the decree's precise technical content beyond the stated timelines was not independently corroborated this cycle.

Outlook

The technical-standards publication, expected within six months of the decree per the sourced timeline, is the near-term marker that will determine the substantive content of the mandatory Open Finance regime. The subsequent twelve-month access-enablement window for covered entities is the second marker, and together the two form the operative compliance runway for the sector through the next twelve to eighteen months.