Bold Review

Bold is a Bogotá fintech, founded in 2019, that sells card terminals (datáfonos), payment links, an online checkout and a free business account to small Colombian merchants. You buy the terminal outright, from COP 79,000 for the Bluetooth Neo to COP 399,000 for the Smart Pro with a printer. There is no rental, monthly fee or fixed-term contract. As of November 2026, merchants selling up to COP 10 million a month pay 2.69% + COP 300 on in-person Visa and Mastercard sales and 2.99% + COP 900 online, if they take next-day payouts into a Cuenta Bold. Instant payouts and payouts to other banks cost more. Every rate is quoted before IVA and tax withholdings. Bold.Co S.A.S. signs the merchant agreement as a payment aggregator. A sister company, Bold CF Compañía de Financiamiento, is the licensed acquirer and holds the deposit account. Bold CF is supervised by the Superintendencia Financiera and its deposits are covered by FOGAFÍN. The pricing is unusually transparent for the market and the app ratings are excellent. The merchant terms are the weak point. Bold can freeze a merchant's whole sales balance for an initial 180 days when a dispute or suspected fraud comes up, keep a reserve of 15% to 25% of monthly sales, and change rates on seven days' notice.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Bold’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Bold is

Bold is a Colombian fintech that sells payment acceptance and banking to small businesses. It started with a low-cost card terminal. Today it also sells payment links, an online checkout and payment button, QR payments, a point-of-sale system, electronic invoicing, a digital business account, savings products and credit. IFC's February 2024 announcement of Bold's Series C dates the company to 2019 and places it in Bogotá. Bold's About page says CEO José Vélez founded PayU Latam before founding Bold, and COO Ana Sandoval co-founded the company. The CTO, CXO and CFO are described as joining the founding team; IFC's release lists Vélez, Sandoval, Sergio Vergara, Jorge Ulloa and Enrique Ramírez as founders. Vélez told Semana in September 2026 that the company was set up in late 2018 and 2019 and launched its first terminals in 2020. The USD 50 million Series C was led by General Atlantic, with IFC and existing investors InQLab and Amador. In October 2025 Valora Analitik reported a further USD 40 million round led by General Atlantic, with Cóndor Inverlink, InQLab and IFC. These are investors, not disclosed owners, and Bold does not publish its shareholder structure.

Bold's homepage, as of November 2026, claims 600,000 businesses, more than 6.5 million transactions a month and more than COP 1 billón (one trillion pesos) in monthly sales. In September 2026, Semana reported that Bold processes close to COP 20 billones a year and holds about 7% of card transactions in Colombia. Both figures come from the company: the 7% share and the annual volume are attributed to CEO José Vélez. The homepage's 'more than' one trillion a month is a floor and is consistent with roughly 20 trillion a year. Bold also operates in Peru. In September 2025 it bought VendeMás, a payment facilitator that belonged to Niubiz, with about 30,000 merchant customers, according to LatamList, a deal note from the Peruvian law firm Rebaza, Alcázar & De Las Casas, and Valora Analitik. In September 2026 La República reported that Bold had the approvals to run the business under the Bold name, and Semana reported that Bold is seeking a financial licence in Peru.

Why we list Bold as a payment facilitator

The merchant signs with Bold.Co S.A.S. Bold CF's acquiring policy says Bold CF is the acquirer, and that Bold.Co S.A.S. links merchants to the payment system and processes their payment orders 'en su calidad de agregador y proveedor de servicios de pagos de Bold CF' (in its capacity as aggregator and payment service provider of Bold CF). The policy therefore states that merchants' contractual relationship is with Bold Pagos. Settlement flows from Bold CF to Bold.Co and then on to the merchant's account. Redeban is named as the acquiring processor. Bold's terms add that Bold chooses which acquirers to use and can act as aggregator, gateway or direct acquirer. Sign-up is digital and takes minutes, Bold sets and publishes the price, and Bold controls payouts and holds. That is the payment facilitator model, with a group company acting as the licensed acquirer.

What it costs

Bold publishes its full rate card on bold.co/tarifas. As of November 2026, every rate is stated 'antes de IVA y retenciones' (before IVA and withholdings). Rates depend on three things: your monthly sales tier, whether the money goes to a Cuenta Bold or another bank, and whether you take instant payouts. For the entry tier (COP 0–10 million a month):

• Next-day payout into a Cuenta Bold: in person, 2.69% + COP 300 on Visa and Mastercard, 2.99% + COP 300 on other cards, and 1.50% on wallets and QR Pro. Online, 2.99% + COP 900 on Visa and Mastercard, 3.29% + COP 900 on other cards, and 2.89% + COP 900 on PSE, Bancolombia and wallets.
• Instant payout into a Cuenta Bold: 3.29% + COP 300 on all cards in person, and 3.59% + COP 900 online.
• Next-day payout to another bank: 3.29% + COP 300 in person and 3.59% + COP 900 online. QR is not available without a Cuenta Bold.
• Foreign-issued cards: an extra 1% on the base commission.
• QR: QR Estándar 0%, QR Pro 1.50% (including the 4x1000 tax if you are not exempt) and QR Online 2.89%. Bold says QR sales are not subject to withholdings.
• COP 10–20 million a month: next-day rates into a Cuenta Bold are the same as the entry tier. Instant payouts fall to 2.99% + COP 300 in person and 3.49% + COP 900 online. Other-bank payouts fall to 2.99% + COP 300 on Visa and Mastercard and 3.29% + COP 300 on other cards in person, and 3.49% + COP 900 online.
• Above COP 20 million a month: Bold invites you to contact it for a special rate.

As an illustration, take a shop selling COP 8 million a month in 200 in-person Visa and Mastercard sales of COP 40,000 each. With next-day payouts into a Cuenta Bold, it pays 2.69% (COP 215,200) plus 200 × COP 300 (COP 60,000), a total of COP 275,200 before IVA, or about 3.4% of sales. With instant payouts, it pays 3.29% plus the same fixed fees, COP 323,200 before IVA. The COP 300 fixed fee weighs most on small tickets: on a COP 10,000 sale it adds 3 percentage points. Bold also notes that sole traders who are not registered for IVA can avoid the 1.5% ReteRenta withholding on card sales. Withholdings are tax prepayments, not Bold revenue, but they reduce the cash you receive.

Terminals cost COP 79,000 (Neo), COP 149,000 (Plus), COP 299,000 (Smart) and from COP 399,000 (Smart Pro), as listed in November 2026. The current pages do not say whether these prices include IVA. An archived June 2025 copy of Bold's online shop (tienda.bold.co) marked terminal prices 'Impuesto incluido' (tax included), but we could not load the shop today to confirm that still holds. They carry a six-month warranty. A terminal bought on bold.co can be returned within five business days of delivery, but only if you have not completed registration with it or started taking payments. A SIM terminal's mobile data is switched off after a month without transactions, and Bold charges a reactivation fee, which it says is published on its site. We did not find the amount.

Payouts

Bold's cheapest rates assume next-day payouts into a Cuenta Bold. The tariff page says the money arrives the day after the sale, before 10 a.m., and the account page says this includes weekends. The terminal pages say 'siguiente día hábil' (next business day), so the pages are not fully consistent. Under the Abonos inmediatos terms, instant payouts land in the Cuenta Bold within three minutes, or eleven minutes if you have a Cupo Bold loan. They are subject to Bold's risk checks and a daily maximum set from your sales. Once switched on, the instant rate applies to every sale, including those Bold holds for review, and Bold does not refund the difference. Payouts to another bank arrive one business day after the sale, after 2 p.m. If Bold cannot pay out for 180 days for reasons outside its control and cannot reach you, its terms let it reclassify the money in its accounts.

Holds, reserves and chargebacks

This is where Bold's terms deserve the closest reading. The payment-acceptance terms (version 1.1.1, published 13 November 2025, in force since 28 November 2025) let Bold block the sales balance and retain 'la totalidad de los montos allí depositados por un término inicial de 180 días' (the entirety of the amounts deposited there for an initial 180 days) when a dispute is notified or it suspects fraud. The payment system can extend that period. Bold may also build a reserve of 15% of your monthly transaction value, releasing each amount 90 days after its transaction. The reserve rises to 25% if you process more than 100 monthly minimum wages, if disputes exceed 1% of transactions, or if your activity is high fraud risk. Bold can also require guarantees, including promissory notes, and can debit your accounts anywhere in the Colombian financial system for sums you owe. If you do not answer a customer complaint in time, your sales balance is suspended until you do.

Bold represents you in disputes through its acquirer. Bold CF's acquiring policy asks for evidence within five business days. Bold says disputes take 45 calendar days on average, and the issuer can extend that. A lost chargeback is debited from your balance or Cuenta Bold and becomes an enforceable debt. Bold publishes no separate chargeback fee. Two protections soften this. Bold CF's policy says the issuing bank bears fraud chargebacks on in-person chip sales in Colombia. For online sales, the Garantía Anti-fraude covers fraud chargebacks up to a monthly limit that Bold sets and can change; the link page cites up to COP 10 million. The guarantee excludes in-person sales, non-delivery and quality disputes, and it applies only if you send complete evidence on time and follow Bold's security rules.

Contract terms

There is no fixed term. The general merchant terms say the contract 'tiene una duración indefinida' (has an indefinite duration), and you can end it whenever you wish by notifying Bold, provided you have paid what you owe. Bold can change the services, the contract and its rates on seven calendar days' notice by email or in the app. If you do not reject a change in that time, you are taken to accept it, and rejecting it ends the contract. Bold can suspend payment acceptance if you do not use it for 12 consecutive months. It can also suspend or terminate for a long list of reasons, including breach, in-person sales outside Colombia, selling things other than what you declared, an acquirer's or card network's request, or legal or reputational risk it identifies. On termination, Bold can keep money to cover obligations, suspected fraud and pending or potential disputes. Disputes go to 30 days of direct negotiation, then to the ordinary courts. Bold's prohibited list includes gambling, virtual assets and currency exchange, adult services, cannabis for medical or scientific use, unregulated lending and precious-metal mining, so Bold is not a high-risk processor.

The Cuenta Bold

The Cuenta Negocios is a deposit account from Bold CF Compañía de Financiamiento. Bold CF's licence from the Superintendencia Financiera became final on 1 August 2023, Valora Analitik reported, and Bold says its deposits are covered by FOGAFÍN. Bold's merchant terms are careful to say that money waiting in the sales balance (Saldo de Ventas) with Bold.Co is not a deposit and is not FOGAFÍN-protected. It is only protected once it reaches the Cuenta Bold or your bank. The account has no opening or monthly fee and includes a free Business Mastercard debit card. Legal entities get 100 free ACH transfers, then pay COP 2,900 + IVA each. A capped low-amount version allows up to COP 11,024,727. The uncapped ordinary version has no balance limit. Bold also advertises savings pockets at 10% E.A. and CDTs at up to 12.5% E.A. (November 2026); these rates can change. ATM withdrawals carry a per-transaction charge. Bold's account page claims more than 200,000 businesses use it, while Semana quoted the company in September 2026 as having more than 150,000 customers with a Bold account, so the figures do not agree.

Reputation and support

As of November 2026, the Bold app has 4.9 from 17,591 ratings on the Colombian App Store and 4.9 from about 15,300 reviews on Google Play. These ratings come from an app that also serves personal-account users, so they measure the app experience more than merchant disputes. Bold has an unclaimed Trustpilot profile with no reviews. We found no published sanction, enforcement action or lawsuit naming Bold.Co S.A.S. or Bold CF in searches of the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio, the Superintendencia Financiera and the press. Support runs through separate WhatsApp lines for Bold Pagos and Bold CF, email, a complaints (PQR) form, physical service points and the Bold Store at Carrera 11 # 93A-08 in Bogotá. As a supervised financing company, Bold CF also has a financial consumer ombudsman (Defensor del Consumidor Financiero) for account complaints. We could not verify support hours or response times.

Who should use Bold

Bold suits a small Colombian business, including a sole trader, that wants to own a cheap terminal, see exactly what it will pay, and accept cards, QR and payment links from one app with no contract. It works best if you are happy to keep your sales in the Cuenta Bold, because that is where the lowest rates, free QR and fast payouts are. It suits merchants who sell many small, low-risk tickets less well. The fixed fee bites on small sales, and the reserve and 180-day hold provisions could tie up a meaningful share of revenue for a merchant with any dispute history. Before signing, read the payment-acceptance terms, check which rate the app shows under 'Cuánto me cobra Bold', and decide whether instant payouts are worth their extra 0.6 percentage points in the entry tier (0.3 points in the COP 10–20 million tier).