Bre-B’s first year in Colombia: the challenge of building connected payment infrastructure

Colombia’s Bre-B has spent its first year doing what payment systems are supposed to do but often do not: making transfers between accounts at different institutions immediate and less awkward. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks watching the high-risk space, the useful part is not just speed; it is what interoperability does to reach, acceptance, and the economics of digital payments.

1. Bre-B launched in Colombia a year ago, and its core feature is interoperability between entities. Before that, transfers across different financial institutions could require more steps or waiting time. Now people can send and receive money immediately, without the bank or financial entity on the account acting as a barrier.
2. The Banco de la República says Bre-B has reached more than 36 million people with at least one registered key and passed 116 million keys in total. It has also processed 1.796 billion transactions, at a pace of 89 payments per second. That is the kind of volume that turns “instant payments” from a slogan into infrastructure.
3. One visible effect is the decline in cash use. According to the Banco de la República’s balance, cash transactions moved from eight out of ten to six out of ten. For merchants, that matters because lower cash dependence can improve transaction traceability and make it easier for smaller businesses to accept digital payments.
4. Dock says it has supported Bre-B’s evolution in Colombia together with Credibanco, which has more than 52 years of experience in the electronic payments market. The point here is not branding; it is that immediate payments need an underlying setup that can connect participants, process transactions securely, and let payment solutions work together.
5. Dock also points to its experience with Pix in Brazil as a reference point. The lesson it draws is straightforward: the impact of immediate payments does not come only from transaction speed, but from whether the wider ecosystem can operate in an integrated way. In practice, that is the part that determines whether the network becomes useful beyond the first wave of adopters.