Wompi Review

Wompi is a Colombian payment gateway and payment aggregator owned by Bancolombia, part of Grupo Cibest. It is run by WOMPI S.A.S. in Medellín. This review covers Wompi Colombia. The Wompi brand also runs in El Salvador, Panama and Guatemala, but those services have their own terms and pricing. A merchant opens an account online and accepts most of Colombia's common payment methods through one checkout: credit and debit cards, PSE bank transfers, Nequi, the Bancolombia button and QR, Daviplata, cash at Bancolombia correspondents, Puntos Colombia, and buy now, pay later. As of October 2026 the main plan costs 2.65% + COP 700 + VAT per successful transaction, whatever the method, and international cards cost nothing extra. Since 30 September 2026, QR payments cost 1% + VAT. In-person card payments, including contactless payments taken on a phone, cost 1.98% + VAT, a rate Wompi says it has kept. There is no fixed contract term or monthly fee. Payouts arrive the next business day, but only to a Bancolombia or Nequi account. Sending money to another bank goes through Wompi's paid payouts service. The merchant terms only accept businesses and individuals domiciled in Colombia. They also let Wompi hold funds for up to 180 days over fraud alerts or chargebacks, and keep a reserve of up to 15% of sales from higher-risk or higher-volume merchants. Wompi is large and owned by Bancolombia. It reported about COP 50 trillion processed in 2025. The few public user reviews are poor, though, and mostly about declined payments and support.

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

What Wompi is

Wompi is a Colombian payment platform that lets a business accept the country's main electronic payment methods online, through payment links and in person. It is run by WOMPI S.A.S., based in Medellín, and the site footer describes it as a subsidiary of Bancolombia S.A. Recent press releases call it the payment platform of Grupo Cibest, Bancolombia's holding group. This review covers Wompi Colombia only. The same brand is used in El Salvador, where Bancolombia's Salvadoran bank Banco Agrícola offers it, and wompi.com also lists Panama and Guatemala. Those services have their own terms and pricing.

Wompi was running publicly by July 2019, when an archived copy of wompi.co already showed payment links, a virtual terminal, a web checkout and rates from 2.65% + COP 700. The technology behind it came from Vlipco S.A.S., a Medellín fintech; company directories list Vlipco as the earlier name of WOMPI S.A.S., under the same tax ID. In November 2021 Bancolombia agreed to buy the 52.3% of Vlipco it did not already own, for COP 10.52 billion (about USD 2.7 million), taking it to 100%. Its SEC filing described Vlipco as providing the technology for Wompi's operation. Directory listings date the company's registration to 2011, but that is the legal entity, not the Wompi product.

The company reports considerable scale. Grupo Cibest said in January 2026 that Wompi processed about COP 50 trillion (50 billones) in 2025. It also reported more than 13 million unique payers and more than 40,000 businesses using it actively each month, a 150% increase on 2024. In a September 2026 release it put registered businesses at more than 85,000. These are the company's own figures, and the releases do not say exactly what each one counts. In a February 2026 interview with La República, CEO Alejandro Toro said only 10% of transactions were by debit or credit card. The rest used alternative methods such as PSE, Nequi and transfers.

Why we list Wompi as a payment facilitator

Under its standard plan, Wompi is what Colombian rules call a payment service provider acting as an aggregator (agregador). Its merchant terms say acquirers authorise it to sign merchants up to the payment system, supply the acceptance technology, process transactions, collect the sale proceeds into a Wompi account as the merchant's agent, and pay out the net amount. The acquirers named in the terms are Bancolombia S.A. and Akua Colombia Acquiring S.A. The merchant signs Wompi's Reglamento de Comercios, not a merchant agreement with a bank. Wompi approves accounts online, sets the payout schedule, and controls limits, holds and reserves. In the site's taxonomy, that is the payment facilitator model.

Wompi also has a Gateway plan, in which it acts only as the technology layer for merchants who already have acquiring and collection contracts with Bancolombia, and funds go directly from the bank to the merchant. That is a secondary product for larger merchants. The terms do not allow a merchant to use the Gateway and aggregator services at the same time. The terms also say Wompi is not a financial institution, does not take deposits from the public, and that a Wompi account is not a bank account.

What it costs

• Plan Avanzado: 2.65% + COP 700 + VAT per successful transaction, as of October 2026, for credit and debit cards, PSE, Nequi, the Bancolombia button, Daviplata, cash at correspondents, SU+Pay and buy now, pay later.
• QR payments: 1% + VAT per successful transaction from 30 September 2026, down from 2.65% + COP 700.
• In-person card payments, including contactless card and wallet payments on the merchant's phone (Tap to Phone in the Wompi app): 1.98% + VAT, with no difference between domestic and international cards. Grupo Cibest's 30 September 2026 release says Wompi kept this rate; it is not on the pricing page.
• International cards: no additional cost, per the pricing page.
• Puntos Colombia plan: the standard rate plus 1.44% of the sale when the customer earns points by card or PSE, per the pricing page. A March 2026 help-centre article gives 4.43% + COP 700 + VAT instead, so confirm before activating.
• Gateway plan: no Wompi commission; the merchant pays the rates negotiated with the bank.
• Payouts to other banks (Pagos a Terceros): COP 1,849 + 0.4% + VAT per payment, or monthly plans from COP 210,000 + VAT.
• No monthly fee, and the Wompi app is free to download and use, per Wompi's help centre.

VAT is charged on Wompi's fee, not on the sale. At Colombia's 19% standard rate the effective cost is about 3.99% on a COP 100,000 sale and about 7.3% on a COP 20,000 sale, because the COP 700 fixed fee weighs heavily on small tickets. That makes the 1% QR rate worth steering in-person customers towards where it fits. The terms add a few points worth knowing. The fee is charged on the full transaction amount, including taxes. Wompi may charge some or all of the fee on unsuccessful transactions. Refunds can carry a charge on top of the fee, which is not published. Chargebacks, reversals and any fines or penalties arising from your sales are deducted from your income. The terms also say Wompi will raise its prices at the end of each year of service by at least the consumer price index (section 6.4.10; the payouts service has its own clause tying increases to the index, 8.4.7). Even so, the headline 2.65% + COP 700 is the same figure Wompi showed in 2019. Price changes need 15 calendar days' notice.

On card sales under the aggregator plan, Wompi's help centre lists tax withholdings on top of the fee: 1.5% income-tax withholding, 0.2% ICA withholding and 15% VAT withholding. The exact amounts depend on the merchant's tax registration. These are advance payments of the merchant's own taxes, not costs, but they reduce the cash that arrives.

How it works

A business or individual registers online, completes the onboarding form and identity checks, and waits for activation. A new account cannot take transactions until it is active. Merchants can then share payment links or a QR code over WhatsApp, social media, email or SMS, or embed Wompi's web checkout or widget. Wompi also offers plugins for ecommerce platforms and a REST API with card tokenisation for recurring charges. The API works in Colombian pesos. A sandbox is available for testing. The Wompi app turns an Android or iPhone into a contactless card reader, and Wompi also supplies physical card terminals under separate sale or rental contracts.

The same Wompi account can pay suppliers, staff and customers through Pagos a Terceros. That service handles bulk files or API calls, and pays to any Colombian bank, to Nequi and Daviplata, and to Bre-B keys (aliases on Colombia's instant-payment system). Wompi says it has processed more than COP 2 trillion in payouts for more than 700 clients.

Payouts, limits, holds and reserves

On the aggregator plan, Wompi's help centre says approved transactions are paid out the next business day, though some credit card transactions can take up to 72 hours to appear. The merchant terms allow up to five business days from approval. They also say a new merchant's first payout may, at Wompi's discretion, wait until 30 calendar days after its first transaction. Automatic payouts go only to a Bancolombia savings or checking account in the merchant's name, or a Nequi account for individuals. Wompi's help centre says Bancolombia is currently the only bank enabled for payouts. A merchant that banks elsewhere has to leave funds in the Wompi account and send them on through Pagos a Terceros, at COP 1,849 + 0.4% + VAT per transfer. Funds left unclaimed for 180 days are paid out automatically.

Each merchant gets a per-transaction cap and a rolling 24-hour cap, and has to ask Wompi to raise them. Wompi can refuse. The terms let Wompi hold income for up to 180 calendar days over fraud alerts or chargebacks, or when a cardholder requests a reversal or the merchant's fraud rate exceeds 2.5%. Held funds earn no interest. Wompi can ask the merchant's bank to block funds already paid out while it investigates a chargeback, fraud alert or operational error. At its discretion it can keep a reserve of up to 15% of income for merchants in high-fraud-risk activity or with more than USD 50,000 a month in volume, released within 90 calendar days. For card-not-present sales, the terms put fraud and chargeback liability on the merchant, who has five business days to supply evidence when asked.

Contract, cancellation and eligibility

There is no minimum term and no early-termination fee in the Reglamento de Comercios (version V4-2026). The relationship is indefinite. A merchant can request cancellation, but the aggregator account closes only after pending payouts are made, chargebacks are resolved and any debts are settled. Wompi can cancel, deactivate or suspend an account at any time, at its discretion and without compensation. It can also report merchants who owe it money to Colombian credit bureaus, charge interest at the maximum legal rate and pass on collection costs. A suspension stops services and payouts during an investigation of up to 180 days. Wompi can change the terms on 10 days' notice for existing merchants. Colombian law applies, and disputes go to the courts of Medellín.

Wompi only serves merchants domiciled in Colombia, and the payout account must be in the registered merchant's name. That matters for foreign businesses: a company selling into Colombia from abroad cannot open a Wompi account without a Colombian entity. For Colombian exporters paid by credit card, Wompi files the foreign-exchange declarations as the merchant's agent, and the merchant must keep customs documents to support them. Restricted sectors include gambling and betting, webcam and OnlyFans-type content, medicinal or scientific cannabis, crypto trading, currency exchange, precious metals and gemstones, arms and scrap metal.

Reputation and complaints

Public user reviews are few and mostly negative. As of October 2026, Wompi's Trustpilot page (wompi.co) showed a TrustScore of 2.5 from five reviews, and all five were 1-star. Trustpilot's score adjusts for small samples, so the score and the star split differ. The reviews, dated December 2024 to September 2026, describe high decline rates with unclear reasons, a payment rejected for exceeding a daily limit on an account with no prior sales, a dashboard menu that did not work, and support handled by a WhatsApp bot. No replies from Wompi were shown. The Wompi merchant app on Google Play in Colombia was rated 3.0 from 192 reviews, with 100,000+ downloads and an update on 25 September 2026. Recent reviews complain of crashes and login bugs. We found no lawsuits or regulatory enforcement actions naming WOMPI S.A.S.

Set against that, Wompi is owned by Bancolombia and processes very large volumes. Its terms commit to 3-D Secure for Visa and Mastercard, and its site states PCI DSS Level 1 certification. The complaints are typical of an aggregator that onboards quickly and then manages risk through limits and declines. A business should expect to ask for higher limits before a big sales period, and to keep documents ready for verification requests.

Who it suits

Wompi fits a Colombian small or mid-size business, especially one that already banks with Bancolombia, that wants PSE, Nequi, Bancolombia transfers, QR, cash and cards through one account with a published price and no monthly fee. It is particularly practical for WhatsApp and social-media sellers using payment links, and for shops that can push customers towards 1% QR payments or take contactless cards on a phone at 1.98% + VAT. Merchants with low average tickets should model the COP 700 fixed fee before committing. Merchants who bank elsewhere should budget for transfer fees. Larger merchants with existing Bancolombia acquiring can use the Gateway plan, where Wompi charges no commission.

It does not suit a foreign business without a Colombian presence, which cannot sign up, or merchants in the restricted sectors listed above. Merchants who cannot tolerate funds being capped, held or reserved at the provider's discretion should read the Reglamento de Comercios before signing up.