Immediate payments via bank transfers come into effect in 2025: what’s changing?

After the Bank of the Republic selected ACI Worldwide as the technological provider of interoperability services in immediate low-value payment systems (SPBVI) and announced that this model will come into effect in 2025, the country is preparing for the implementation of this new scheme, which promises to facilitate user transactions in the financial system.

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To prepare for its entry, the Bank of the Republic established guidelines that establish the rules and standards that must be met by the entities that administer immediate payments (SPBVI) that process payments or fund transfers, with the aim of promoting in the country a widely accessible, real-time and secure interoperable payment method.

This regulation brings important changes that users must take into account when paying and which include, among others, the following aspects:

• Interoperability: Citizens will be able to transfer funds or make payments in real time, regardless of the financial institution where they have their savings accounts or other types of payment methods, as long as these entities participate in a SPBVI.

• Characteristics of payment orders and/or immediate fund transfers: Payments or transfers will be made within a maximum time of 20 seconds. Transactions will have a simple and standardized customer experience for all participating entities.

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• Access technologies: Immediate payment orders and/or fund transfers require customers to use keys as identifiers for deposit products. These keys may be, for example, a cell phone number or email address. Likewise, immediate payment orders and/or fund transfers may also be initiated using a QR code.

• Directories: Each SPBVI must have a federated directory to store customer keys.

• Clearance process: Settlement of immediate operations will be carried out in deposit accounts at the Bank of the Republic.

• Customer experience and seal: The customer experience when carrying out immediate transactions will be clear, simple and standardized. This experience will be accompanied by a distinctive graphic, defined by the Bank of the Republic, which must be used by all financial institutions that offer payment orders and/or immediate fund transfers.

• Committee on Interoperability of Instant Payments (CIPI): CIPI is created as an advisory body with the purpose of maintaining a permanent dialogue with the payments industry and promoting the scalability of the system. The secretariat of this body will be in charge of the Banco de la República.

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• Regulation will be implemented gradually For this purpose, a transition regime and implementation phases are planned that will allow the SPBVI to adjust to the new operational structure of immediate payments.

To achieve interoperability of instant payments, the Bank of the Republic will develop and make available to the market two modules that will centrally support the structure of the ecosystem, benefiting across the board the SPBVI management entities, participants and users:

• Centralized Directory: It contains the keys or identifiers of the clients of the entire ecosystem and allows the interoperability of payment orders and/or immediate fund transfers when these are processed by financial entities that belong to different SPBVI.

• Operational Settlement Mechanism: Service provided in the deposit accounts of the Bank of the Republic offered to execute the settlement instructions of the operations sent by the SPBVI.

The construction of this regulation and operational structure of the interoperable instant payment ecosystem took into consideration the advances of the local industry, international experience, technical assistance from multilateral organizations, contributions from different actors during the Payment Systems Forum and public comments on the regulatory project.