Bre-B (Colombia's instant payment system, regulated by the Banco de la República and launched in 2025) works like this: the payer enters the recipient's key or scans a QR code, a payment has to be processed in at most 20 seconds on any day and at any hour, and each payment is capped at 1,000 UVB, about COP 12.1 million in 2026.
For a company, the useful questions are narrower than the press coverage suggests: who can be paid, how large one payment can be, what happens when a payment goes to the wrong person, and which rail takes over when Bre-B cannot. This guide answers them from the central bank's own circular. For the wider region, see Latin America payment rails compared; for the legal frame around stablecoins in the country, see stablecoin regulation in Colombia.
What does the circular require of every Bre-B payment?
The rules sit in Circular Reglamentaria Externa DSP-465 of the Banco de la República, Asunto 18, which governs the interoperability of immediate low-value payment systems. Section 3.1 defines when a transfer counts as immediate, and section 3.2 sets the ceiling. Every bank and payment company that joins Bre-B has to apply them.
What the Banco de la República's circular DSP-465 requires of an immediate payment, read on November 6, 2026.
Rule | What the circular says | Section |
How it starts | By entering a key or by reading a QR code | 3.1(b) |
When it can start | By the payer, on any day and at any hour | 3.1(c) |
How fast | Processed in at most 20 seconds; Anexo 5 measures it as 20 seconds for 99.5% of operations, calculated weekly | 3.1(d), Anexo 5 |
How much | At most 1,000 UVB (Unidad de Valor Básico, the unit of account the central bank uses for the cap) per payment | 3.2 |
Lower limits | A participant may set a lower maximum or other limits, such as a number of payments per day | 3.2 |
One key, one account | A key points to exactly one payment method, and a payment method can hold several keys | 3.4.1 |
Returns | A voluntary return can be requested within 30 calendar days | Anexo 4 |
Fees | The sections read set no fee for the payer or the recipient; the participants' fee schedules were not read | n/a |
The 20-second rule is a ceiling per payment under 3.1(d), but the circular measures compliance as 20 seconds for 99.5% of operations, calculated weekly, so a few payments can take longer. It describes the Bre-B leg only. A payout that starts from stablecoins also has a conversion leg before the peso moves, and the time that leg takes depends on the provider.
On Lumx, a payout to a Colombian recipient can run over Bre-B, which is an instant rail, so the transfer step follows the circular's clock. The rest of the off-ramp (stablecoin transfer, trade, fiat transfer) is tracked as it moves, through webhooks such as offramp.transferring_fiat and offramp.success.
Bre-B keys: how a recipient is addressed
A Bre-B key is the identifier the payer types instead of an account number. Section 3.4.2 of the circular lists five types: an identity document number (including the NIT, the Colombian company tax ID), a mobile number, an email address, an alphanumeric key that starts with @, and a merchant code assigned by the acquirer. The merchant code is offered only to merchants, so a company that is not a registered merchant uses one of the other four. Customers cannot edit what a key contains, and if a person changes a detail that is also their key, the bank has to make them redo the key.
Two consequences matter for a business. A recipient has to have registered a key before they can be paid, so the data you hold per supplier must include one. And because a key maps to one account, the payer sees a masked name before confirming, which is the cheapest check against paying the wrong person.
One reading point. The circular (3.3) classifies immediate payments in two groups, merchant payments, where the payee is a merchant, and person-to-person payments, between natural persons. It describes no company as the payer, and no company that is not a merchant as the payee. That is a gap in the text, not a ban, so ask your provider how its banking partner treats a company-originated Bre-B payment before you promise it to a customer.
On Lumx, a COP destination for a Bre-B payout holds the recipient's Bre-B key, and the rail is fixed on the destination when you register it. A COP account can also collect over Bre-B: the payer sends to the Bre-B key that comes with the account, and the deposit converts to a stablecoin on arrival, as the other currencies do.
The 1,000 UVB cap and what it does to an invoice
Section 3.2 sets the ceiling at 1,000 UVB per payment. For 2026 the Banco de la República's own Bre-B page puts that at COP 12,110,000, roughly USD 2,870 at current exchange rates. The cap binds every bank and every provider, so it is a property of the rail and not a Lumx limit or a competitor's. A participant can only go lower.
The arithmetic is what surprises payment teams. A COP 30,000,000 supplier invoice is about 2.5 times the cap, so it cannot leave as one Bre-B payment. Splitting it into three can look like structuring to a monitoring system, so a routine invoice may draw a compliance question. The sound answer is a different rail for large invoices: a domestic bank transfer over ACH Colombia, which pays to account details. For the same issue across all rails, payout limits and cut-offs by rail sets the figures side by side.
On Lumx, the rail's cap binds a Bre-B payout before any limit of the customer's own does.
On Lumx, a payout to a Bre-B destination above the cap is refused. It is never split and never moved to ACH Colombia, because the rail is fixed on the destination. ACH Colombia has no per-payment limit on Lumx, so register the recipient on it when invoices can cross the cap.
How returns work on Bre-B
A Bre-B payment moves fast, and the recourse after that is narrower than a card chargeback. Annex 4 of the circular lets the payer ask for a voluntary return within 30 calendar days, for three reasons only: the transfer went to the wrong recipient, the amount was wrong, or it was sent twice. The request can cover the full amount or part of it. The recipient's bank forwards it, and the circular calls the recipient's answer strictly voluntary. The recipient has 5 calendar days to answer, and if it declines or stays silent, the request closes.
A separate reversal procedure exists for sales in a non-present e-commerce setting, on grounds of fraud, an unrequested operation, non-delivery, a wrong product or a defective one, and it has to be filed within 5 business days. For a supplier invoice paid by key, the voluntary return is the route, so a wrong-recipient payment depends on the recipient's answer. That makes checking the key and the masked name before sending the real control.
On Lumx, a destination must be approved before it can receive a payout. A new destination goes through sanctions screening and a payee name check that the banking partners run, so the check sits at registration, before any money moves.
Bre-B, PSE and ACH Colombia: which job each rail does
Colombia has three rails a payments team meets, and they are not substitutes. Bre-B and ACH Colombia push money to a recipient. Any bank or payment company that joins Bre-B has to apply the circular, so the rail is reached through the participant you already use, and the circular's phases for the rollout were not read. PSE (Colombia's online bank-transfer network) lets a payer authorize a debit from their own bank, so it is a collection rail and never a payout rail. Brazil's Pix (Brazil's instant payment system, run by the Central Bank) and Mexico's SPEI (Mexico's interbank transfer system, run by Banxico) are the closest peers of Bre-B; the Pix guide and the SPEI guide cover those two.
The three Colombian peso rails a payments team works with, as of November 6, 2026.
Rail | Direction | Recipient addressed by | Per-payment ceiling | Fits |
Bre-B | Push, payout or collection | A Bre-B key or QR code | 1,000 UVB, about COP 12.1 million in 2026 | Invoices under the cap, any hour |
ACH Colombia | Push, payout | Bank name, account number and type, document, email | None on Lumx | Invoices over the cap |
PSE | Pull, collection only | The payer's own bank login | Not covered here | Collecting from a payer at checkout |
On Lumx, the COP rail is chosen per destination when you register it: Bre-B with a key, or ACH Colombia with account details. Collection runs over Bre-B or PSE. Lumx publishes no cut-off for ACH Colombia, so test it with a small payment instead of planning around a number.
Where I would set the rail for a Colombian supplier
I would set the rail when the supplier is registered, not when the invoice arrives. If a supplier's invoices have ever crossed COP 12 million, or might, I register that supplier on ACH Colombia from the start and keep Bre-B for the suppliers that bill small and often. My reason is that a payout run fails at the worst moment when it hits the cap mid-batch, and a fixed rail on the destination turns that failure into a decision made once, calmly, with the supplier's real invoice history in front of you.
When Bre-B is the wrong rail
Bre-B is the wrong rail for any single payment above the cap, whatever its other qualities. It is also the wrong rail when the recipient has no key and will not register one, because nothing in the rail lets you pay to an account number. And it is the wrong choice to promise to a customer before your provider has confirmed it, since a rail can be live and still not be enabled for your account.
It is also the wrong rail when you need recourse you control. The return procedure depends on the recipient's consent, so a business that needs recourse on error should send a small test payment first and keep the larger amounts on a rail where its own bank can recall funds.
What a Bre-B payout and a Bre-B collection look like on Lumx
Lumx is stablecoin payments infrastructure for businesses that move money between Latin America and the rest of the world: one API to collect, hold, convert, and pay out in BRL, MXN, COP, USD, EUR, and GBP or in USDC and USDT, over local rails such as PIX, SPEI, PSE, Bre-B, ACH, FEDWIRE, SEPA, and Faster Payments, with SWIFT and on-behalf-of payments and collections (POBO and COBO) in USD, EUR, and GBP, plus named virtual accounts, custodial wallets, and KYB/KYC built in.
A payout starts from the customer's custodial wallet. You register a COP destination with the Bre-B key and the holder details, the relationship between your customer and the recipient included, and wait for it to be approved. You then send an off-ramp, and its status moves from the stablecoin transfer to the trade to the fiat transfer to success, with a webhook at each step. See the global payments product for the flow and USDC to COP for the live rate.
On the collection side, a COP account is available to any customer and is active once the customer is approved. It is named in the customer's own name when the customer is Colombian; for other customers the holder shown is the banking partner, because the peso leg runs under that partner's sponsored program. On a COP payout from a non-Colombian customer, the recipient sees the banking partner as the sender. Lumx deducts no fee from the amount the recipient receives on a Bre-B payout.
Bre-B is live on Lumx and is being enabled customer by customer, so confirm it for your account before you promise it to a user. The coverage page lists the rails and currencies, and the peso conversion itself is explained in non-deliverable currencies and onshore payouts. If the dollar-to-peso step is new to you, start with what a stablecoin off-ramp is.
Methodology and sources
The circular was read in full on November 6, 2026, from the PDF the Banco de la República serves at banrep.gov.co: Circular Reglamentaria Externa DSP-465, Asunto 18, sheets of March 31, 2026, in the Junta Directiva bulletin of August 6, 2026. Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4.1 and 3.4.2, Annex 4 and Annex 5 are the basis for every rule above. Not read: the participant list, the phases of the rollout and the participants' fee schedules.
Not read: the Banco de la República's Bre-B explainer pages, which serve a bot wall to automated readers. The peso value of the cap, COP 12,110,000, comes from that page as read on November 1, 2026, and is cited by name without a link; the dollar figure is a rounded conversion. The launch is dated only as 2025 because the sources read disagree on the day.
Lumx behavior was read on docs.lumx.io on November 6, 2026: coverage, destinations, cut-offs, accounts, limits and transactions, plus the webhooks page. The Bre-B rows on those pages predate the rail going live for customers, so the Bre-B facts, the destination screening and the sender shown on a COP payout come from what Lumx confirmed.
Verified on November 6, 2026 against the Banco de la República circular DSP-465.
Verified on November 6, 2026. Operational context, not legal, tax, or investment advice.
Cover photo: Rasmus Andersen on Unsplash.
What is Bre-B?
Bre-B is Colombia's instant payment system, run by the Banco de la República and launched in 2025. A payer sends pesos to a recipient's key or a QR code and the payment must be processed in at most 20 seconds, on any day and at any hour, up to 1,000 UVB per payment. On Lumx, a COP destination can be set to pay out over Bre-B, and a COP account can collect over it.
Can a company receive money on Bre-B?
A company can hold an NIT key and be paid as a merchant. The circular does not describe a company that is not a merchant as a payee, or any company as the payer, so confirm with the bank before relying on it. On Lumx, a COP account collects over a Bre-B key, and the deposit converts to a stablecoin on arrival.
Can a Bre-B payment be reversed?
Only with the recipient's agreement. The payer can request a voluntary return within 30 calendar days for a wrong recipient, a wrong amount or a duplicate, and the recipient's answer is voluntary. On Lumx, the destination is screened and its payee name checked before any payout, so the check on the recipient happens before the money moves.
How much does Bre-B cost a business?
The circular sections read set no fee for the payer or the recipient, and the participants' fee schedules were not read, so ask your bank or provider. On Lumx, Lumx deducts nothing from the amount the recipient receives on a Bre-B payout.
Can you pay Bre-B from stablecoins?
Yes, through a provider that converts the stablecoin to pesos and pays out on Bre-B. The conversion leg takes its own time, and the payment over Bre-B is capped at 1,000 UVB. On Lumx, the customer's wallet funds an off-ramp to a Bre-B destination, tracked by webhooks until it succeeds.
