Payment gateways in Colombia: fees, payout times and how to choose one

The short answer

Wompi, Mercado Pago and Bold are three common gateways for small and mid-sized businesses in Colombia. Their published base online fees range from 2.65% to 3.59% per sale plus a fixed COP 700 to COP 900, before taxes and withholdings. All three accept cards and PSE. They differ in the fee per payment method, in how fast you get paid and in how well they connect to your store.

If your business is registered outside Colombia, check first whether the gateway can onboard you: these providers are built for Colombian merchants. Stripe, the default choice in the United States, does not list Colombia among its supported countries.

How Colombians pay online

Credit cards are only part of the picture. Many customers pay with PSE, a direct debit from their bank account, or with digital wallets such as Nequi and Daviplata. A checkout that only takes cards will lose sales. All three gateways in this guide offer PSE, and Wompi also lists Nequi, Daviplata, the Bancolombia button, QR codes and cash payments.

Official fees for Wompi, Mercado Pago and Bold

These are the fees each company publishes on its official page, checked on October 30, 2026. Amounts are in Colombian pesos (COP). Wompi and Bold publish them before VAT; Mercado Pago states that its fees do not include withholdings or taxes outside Mercado Pago. Depending on your tax registration, income, VAT or ICA withholdings may apply.

What a COP 100,000 card sale costs

Applying the published fees, before taxes and withholdings (Wompi and Bold add VAT on the fee):

• Wompi, Advanced plan: COP 3,350 (3.4%).
• Mercado Pago, paid out in 14 days: COP 3,590 (3.6%); instant: COP 4,090 (4.1%).
• Bold, Visa or Mastercard, next day into the Bold account: COP 3,890 (3.9%); instant or another bank: COP 4,490 (4.5%).

Stripe and Shopify in Colombia

Stripe lists Brazil and Mexico as its only Latin American countries, so a business registered in Colombia cannot sign up. On Shopify you can connect external gateways, but Shopify applies its own third-party transaction fees to payments processed through them, on top of the gateway fee. Include both in your numbers.

The costliest integration mistake

With PSE and with cards that require bank verification, the customer leaves your store to pay. If your store only creates the order when the customer returns to the result page, a closed tab or an in-app browser (common when buying from Instagram or Facebook) is enough for the payment to be approved while the order never exists. We have seen this in real stores. The fix is to save the order on the server before sending the customer to pay and to confirm it with the server notification the gateway sends (Wompi calls them events), verifying its signature.

Payment reversal under Colombian law

Article 51 of Colombia’s Consumer Statute (Law 1480 of 2011) requires reversing an electronic payment for an online purchase in cases of fraud, unrequested transactions, products not received, or products that are defective or not what was ordered. The customer has five business days to complain to the seller, return the product when applicable and notify the payment issuer. Keep proof of delivery and the transaction reference for every order.

How we work at PixelBot

We build online stores in Colombia and integrate gateways such as Wompi with server-side orders, signed event confirmation and stored payment references for reconciliation. If you are setting up online sales in Colombia, or think your store is losing orders, we can help you review it.