Bre-B: what Colombia's Pix changes, and what it does not, for software vendors

A corporate customer in Bogotá approves the renewal of a software license and pays by transfer the same day. The money leaves their account in Colombian pesos and reaches the vendor in another currency, at a smaller amount than the contract projected. No step failed. The difference comes from two layers the market treats as one: conversion, which is the buyer's payment experience, and settlement, which is the path between that payment and the vendor's cash in a foreign currency. Two further items sit outside this text and are not quantified here: any withholding that may apply to the payment abroad, and the remaining costs of the remittance. Each one depends on how the transaction is classified and requires local validation.

Bre-B, the instant payments system Colombia put into operation on 6 October 2025, changes the first layer in concrete ways. It does not change the second. Anyone who treats the two as the same thing prices wrong, and the error shows up in the contract margin, not on the checkout screen.

The comparison with Pix helps explain the design, as long as it stops in the right place. Both systems use a key as the address and settle between institutions that join a common arrangement. What does not travel is the rule. The per-transaction ceiling, the maximum time and the use cases are set by the Banco de la República, and the Colombian design makes its own choices on each of those three points.

What Bre-B is

Bre-B is Colombia's interoperated instant payments system, led by the Banco de la República and in full operation since 6 October 2025, with 128 entities enabled on the first day. It connects the country's low-value payment systems and settles in real time, in accounts held at the central bank.

The rule came before the product. The system was born from a legal obligation, not from one institution's choice. Before it, instant payment in Colombia worked almost only inside each bank, and one network's QR code was not read by another. In 2023, 78.6% of adults preferred cash, according to the 2024 Financial Infrastructure Report cited by the Banco de la República in the historical note published on 2 March 2026.

The date matters for anyone reading material on the subject. Bre-B is neither a pilot nor a promise for 2026. By January 2026 there were 218 participating entities, 99 million registered keys and 370.4 million operations settled since launch. What does not exist yet is the use case that matters to a SaaS vendor, and that absence is the part of the story that changes the billing decision.

How Bre-B works inside

The Banco de la República operates two central components of Bre-B: DICE, the centralized key directory, and MOL, the settlement mechanism. The low-value instant payment systems, the SPBVI, connect to those two components and exchange messages in the ISO 20022 standard. Settlement happens in MOL, in accounts held at the central bank.

The division of labor is what makes the design legible.

DICE resolves the address. It turns a key, whether a mobile number, a document or a merchant code, into the account that will receive the money. MOL resolves the money: it debits and credits participants' accounts at the central bank itself, in real time. Neither one serves the end customer. The SPBVI does, the private system where the payer's institution and the recipient's institution hold their keys and process the transaction.

Both terms need to be pinned down, because this text uses both and they are not synonyms. Settlement, in the technical document's sense, is the debit and credit of participants' accounts at the central bank. Settlement, in the sense this article gives the word, is the second layer: the path to the vendor's cash in a foreign currency.

The architecture preserves the competition that already existed. Transfiya, Credibanco, Entrecuentas from Redeban, Servibanca and Visionamos remain distinct brands with distinct applications, and by January 2026 all five interoperated fully. The central bank kept the directory and the settlement, which are infrastructure assets, and left the relationship with the account holder where it was.

The obligation to interoperate came from article 104 of Law 2294 of 2023 (the 2022-2026 National Development Plan Law), which reached the SPBVI. Resolución Externa 6 de 2023, issued in October 2023 by the Junta Directiva of the Banco de la República, set the general regulation of the system and the implementation phases, and created the CIPI. In sequence, Circular Reglamentaria Externa DSP-465 specified the technical and operational elements. The February 2026 technical document carries the reference to the Resolución in section 5.1 and in note 27, which points to Boletín de la Junta Directiva 40 of 2023.

The choice of SPBVI also belongs to the entity. Each bank, cooperative or actor enabled by Decreto 1692 de 2020 decides which SPBVI holds its keys and processes its operations. Indirect participation lets an enabled entity settle in MOL through a direct participant's deposit account. It lowers the capital barrier, not the enablement barrier.

What the rule allows today

Based on the Banco de la República technical document of February 2026, Bre-B covers person-to-person and person-to-merchant payments and transfers, by key or by QR. A transfer cannot take more than 20 seconds, the amount per transaction has a ceiling set in UVB, and each participant may set lower limits. There are five key types and a single QR standard.

The accepted keys are document number, mobile number, an alphanumeric identifier generated by the entity and email, plus the merchant code for businesses. A key maps to a single account, and one account can carry several keys, which in practice gives the merchant more than one receiving address without requiring a new account for each.

The QR follows the EMV QRCPS standard, single across the system, and the user experience is standardized in the "Bre-B zone" of each channel. For the buyer, that means the pay button looks the same in bank A's app and in bank B's, which reduces the instruction each merchant has to give its own customer.

The ceiling is the part of the rule that decides B2B use. The limit per transaction is expressed in UVB, and each participant may set a lower ceiling. The technical document does not state the value of the UVB in pesos, and this text does not convert it. What can be said is that an annual corporate charge usually exceeds the ceiling of a retail transfer, and that a transaction above the chosen participant's limit does not go through there. Anyone who needs to receive amounts of that size depends on another instrument, or on more than one payment where the participant's rules allow it, with a fee on each operation.

Pricing follows the same layered logic. Transfers between individuals are offered at no cost to the end user. In merchant payments, the SPBVI apply tariffs differentiated by the size of the business. The cost of receiving is therefore not a constant of the system: it is negotiated in the relationship with the institution that hosts the account.

What the rule does not allow yet

E-commerce checkout, recurring and subscription billing, recaudos (third-party collection services), mass disbursement and payment initiation are not part of the scope in operation. The February 2026 technical document lists them as a future agenda, one that requires its own regulatory and operational guidelines. Bre-B does not replace the card at a SaaS checkout today. The rails that already handle local billing in neighboring markets, and how each one enters the checkout, are in Pix, SPEI and boleto: local payment for SaaS in LatAm.

Paying is not billing. That distinction resolves much of the confusion around the subject. A Colombian buyer can pay an invoice by key in seconds, provided the invoice exists and the amount fits within the limit. What does not exist is the checkout flow that creates the charge, confirms the payment and releases access to the software without human intervention. The recurring debit that sustains a monthly subscription does not exist either. Both sit on the list the regulator still has to detail.

The adoption numbers measured by the central bank show that the user base is already there, and that is why the absence weighs. Between 6 October 2025 and 31 January 2026, the system processed 370.4 million operations, moved COP 59 trillion and recorded an average ticket of COP 159,456. Half of the operations originated in low-value deposits, mostly digital wallets, and the other half in savings accounts. In January 2026 there were 99 million keys for 33.9 million customers, including 2.9 million merchants.

The consequence for the ISV (Independent Software Vendor, a software company that sells its product to other companies) is an asymmetry, not a gain. The instant rail became a habit for the Colombian consumer, and anyone who bills by manual transfer or by card link operates next to that habit, not inside it. The pressure on the billing experience is real. The conclusion that the checkout is solved is false, and the distance between those two sentences is where the pricing error lives.

Which layer the ISV actually sees

The layer the ISV sees sits after acceptance: who initiates the payment, when the recipient has the funds, in which currency the amount settles and who needs a local account. Bre-B answers the first two precisely. The other two depend on who the recipient is, and that is where the answer stops being automatic for a foreign vendor.

The first row describes the experience the Colombian buyer now has. The third describes the route the foreign vendor still uses to get paid. Between the two there is a currency operation that neither of them eliminates.

Cards and ACH settle on a deferred basis, with a lag between initiation and the recipient's access to funds, and the technical document records that difference in note 12 and in section 6.2. Bre-B settles immediately. That is the only timing advantage the primary source supports, and it holds for the recipient who has a COP account and a relationship with a participant.

The map of instruments by market, with what each country recognizes at checkout, is in local payment methods in LatAm. The useful reading is not which rail is more modern. It is which rail reaches the recipient the vendor has, and that question still has no automatic answer in Colombia.

Why an ISV without a local structure cannot get paid through Bre-B

Decreto 1692 de 2020 defines who may enter the system. The key is registered at the financial or cooperative entity where the recipient holds the account, and it links a savings account, checking account or electronic deposit. A vendor without a COP account and without a relationship with a participant has no key, and without a key it does not get paid through Bre-B.

Receiving through Bre-B therefore requires a COP account at a participating entity and a key registered on it. Participation remains restricted to entities enabled by Decreto 1692 de 2020, and an enabled entity may settle in MOL through a direct participant's deposit account, which lowers the capital barrier, not the enablement barrier. Whether a foreign vendor can be enabled as a participating entity, or enter through that indirect settlement, is a question the Banco de la República technical document of February 2026 does not answer.

The consequence is operational. It comes before any discussion of fees. The buyer may prefer the instant rail and still not be able to use it to pay someone who is not in the directory.

The currency end sits outside the system by design. MOL settles in pesos, between accounts held at the central bank, and that settlement ends the Colombian participant's obligation. Converting the amount into another currency and remitting it abroad is another operation, performed by whoever holds local authorization, with its own contract, documentation and cost. The mechanics of that step, from the FX operation to the vendor's account, are in cross-border settlement models. Calling both things receiving is what erases the vendor's margin.

An ISV does not integrate Bre-B either. It integrates a participant, or a provider that has one. The difference looks semantic and is not: whoever integrates the system needs enablement, governance and its own settlement; whoever integrates a participant negotiates a commercial contract and a service level.

Which operational decisions remain for the ISV

With Bre-B outside settlement, three decisions remain for the vendor: which currency to price in, who receives locally and how the contract handles the currency variation between the customer's payment and the vendor's receipt. None of them is technical. All of them show up in the contract margin.

1. Pricing currency. A dollar price forces the Colombian buyer's finance team to convert, justify an expense in a foreign currency and reserve budget for the variation. A peso price eliminates all three steps and hands the currency risk back to the vendor. The option that preserves both ends is a COP price with an adjustment clause indexed to a currency reference: the customer compares it against its own budget, and the vendor does not absorb the whole volatility of the period alone.
2. Who receives locally. Someone needs a COP account and a relationship with a participant. Three arrangements appear in practice: an entity of its own in the country, a distributor or reseller with local structure, or a channel that concentrates billing and tax document issuance. Each charges its price, as a fixed structure or as a fee per transaction. Below the volume that pays for the structure, an entity of its own rarely justifies itself. The comparative cost of each arrangement is in local currency in Latin America: what changes in the cost of selling.
3. Currency clause. The interval between the day the customer pays in pesos and the day the vendor receives in another currency is an open position, and the contract decides who carries it. A fixed conversion date, a published reference rate and a pass-through to the customer are the three common answers. Silence is also a choice, and it tends to be the most expensive one, because it pushes the risk to whoever has the fewest instruments to manage it.

The three decisions intersect. Pricing in COP without defining who receives locally creates a currency commitment nobody executes. Defining the local recipient without a currency clause leaves the margin exposed to the interval between payment and remittance. The arrangement only closes when the three answers are compatible with each other, and that is why the payment decision does not belong to the product team.

There is a fourth front this text does not quantify: the tax treatment of the software import by the contracting buyer and the currency classification of the remittance to the vendor. This text also leaves out any withholding that may apply to the payment abroad, the tax on the import of services, and the effect of who issues the tax document in the country. Each one depends on how the transaction is classified and requires local validation. The Colombian currency regime, with channeling, declaration and registration of the remittance, and the withholding at source on payment abroad were not analyzed in this text. No Colombian tax rate is cited here, and the reason is substantive: the classification of the transaction decides the burden, and that classification is made case by case.

Frequently asked questions about Bre-B

What is Bre-B? Bre-B is Colombia's interoperated instant payments system, led by the Banco de la República. It entered full operation on 6 October 2025, with 128 entities enabled on the first day. It connects the country's low-value instant payment systems and settles in real time, in accounts held at the central bank, by key or QR, with a 20-second limit per transfer and a per-transaction ceiling set in UVB.

Is Bre-B the same thing as Pix? No. They are two distinct national systems, each with its own central bank and its own rule. The similarity is in the mechanism: key as address, interoperability between institutions and immediate settlement. The difference is in the Colombian design, which fixes 20 seconds per transfer, a per-transaction ceiling set in UVB and five key types, and which does not yet cover e-commerce checkout or recurring billing.

Can a foreign ISV receive through Bre-B? Participation in Bre-B is restricted to entities enabled by Decreto 1692 de 2020, and access for a foreign ISV depends on an arrangement with a local participant. Receiving through Bre-B requires a COP account at a participating entity and a key registered on it, resolved in DICE. Without that arrangement there is no key, and without a key there is no Bre-B payment.

Does Bre-B work for e-commerce checkout today? No. E-commerce checkout, recurring and subscription billing, recaudos, mass disbursement and payment initiation appear as a future agenda in the Banco de la República technical document of February 2026, which requires its own regulatory and operational guidelines. Within that scope, the system covers person-to-person and person-to-merchant payments, by key or QR.

References and Further Reading

• Banco de la República. Bre-B: Sistema de Pagos Inmediatos Interoperado de Colombia. Diseño, Implementación y Perspectivas. February 2026. Technical document. Accessed on 20 October 2026.
• Banco de la República. Conozca Bre-B. Last modified on 7 January 2026. Institutional page. Accessed on 20 October 2026.
• Banco de la República. Bre-B, una breve historia del sistema interoperado de pagos inmediatos. Published on 2 March 2026. Historical note. Accessed on 20 October 2026.

The calculation that separates conversion from settlement

Bre-B solves part of the problem, and solves it well. The Colombian buyer transfers in seconds, by a key, in pesos, with settlement in central bank money between participants of the system. The system ends there. The foreign vendor remains outside that circuit, and the amount that reaches its cash passes through a currency operation Bre-B does not perform.

Anyone who measures the effect of the system by the checkout screen sees half the path. The other half is the one that decides the margin: who holds a COP account, who issues the document the Colombian buyer recognizes and who carries the currency end between the payment and the remittance. That is the question the Nexforce Marketplace answers for vendors that want to sell in Colombia without opening an entity in the country, with receipt in local currency and the currency end handled by whoever has structure in the market. The local billing arrangement changes the nature of the transaction for the buyer, who stops importing, and the tax analysis of that change remains outside the scope of this text.

Colombia's instant payment infrastructure was ready before the foreign vendor's receiving infrastructure. That order is the news, and it defines where the cost still lives.