Payment Systems and Banking Operations

Cash is still widely used in Colombia, even among merchants that accept payment cards. Indeed, 60% of these merchants use dissuasive strategies to make their clients pay with cash. This shows that merchant service costs (MSC) for cards are not optimal in the sense of the Tourist Test. We…

The system’s first phase has been launched with innovations in the procedures to record international investment operations and transactions. It is safe, agile, and easy to access at: https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/operaciones-…

Guidance material on the new Foreign Exchange Information System is available to explain how the system operates, major changes introduced and resolve any doubts regarding access, accreditation and navigation. There is also a quick tutorial on the new Foreign Exchange Information System’s…

The Foreign Exchange Affairs and Settlements Department published the External Regulatory Circular DCIP-83 which contains the modifications introduced as a result of the new Foreign Exchange Information System implementation. Said regulation will replace the External Regulatory Circular DCIN-83…

This document studies the sources of liquidity used by financial entities that participate in the large-value payment system to meet their daily obligations. For this purpose, we design and implement an algorithm that breaks down the cash unit of these entities into different concepts of…

The Foreign Exchange Affairs and Settlements Department will launch the new Foreign Exchange Information System in September 2021 to gradually replace the Foreign Exchange Statistical System (SEC) used to transmit foreign exchange transactions. The new system will be available in three phases…

Mobile wallets replicate physical wallets on a mobile device, in which users can store different payment instruments (e.g., cards, transfers) to make mobile payments. As the mobile wallet is adopted, a mobile payment scheme emerges, with its users as elements in a network of…

Remember this! During the first semester of 2021, as part of modernization and digital transformation undertaken by the Foreign Exchange Affairs and Settlements Department, changes will be made in the procedures to record international investments, among others related to the Foreign Exchange…

Under the market discipline hypothesis, monitoring by interbank lenders may induce changes in either the price or availability of new interbank funds to borrower banks. However, the presence of interbank relationship lending has been evaluated based on the availability of funds…

Although Colombia has made significant progress in the access to transactional products offered by the financial system, their use by the public is still low, and merchants and consumers continue to use cash intensively. One of the reasons why Colombians prefer cash to…

This report concludes my mission in the Banco de la República de Colombia (BR). This mission took place in Bogotá on December 9-13, 2019.  It had three main objectives:

Cross-holding of securities in financial systems occurs when i) two financial institutions hold securities issued by each other or ii) more than two financial institutions hold securities issued by each other in a circular structure. Securities cross-holding is relevant for…

We present a general supervised machine learning methodology to represent the payment behavior of financial institutions starting from a database of transactions in the Colombian large-value payment system.

Based on the methodological advice of the Office for Economic Studies, the Office for Industrial and Treasury Affairs of Banco de la República (the Central Bank of Colombia) conducts a national survey on the provision of banknotes and coins and payment instruments (EPBMIP) every two years. The…

With the Payment Systems Report, every year, the Central Bank of Colombia provides a thorough overview of the local financial market infrastructure.

During the first semester of 2021, as part of modernization and digital transformation undertaken by the Foreign Exchange Affairs and Settlements Department, there will be changes in the procedures to record international investments. So, there might be some adjustments to the procedures…

Stable and strong lending relations among financial institutions have been credited as the mainstay of interbank markets and financial stability. They are an indicator of trust among financial institutions. From a network perspective, we measure how stable relations are in the…

In this article, we study the role of cash and electronic payments in the payment ecosystems of Colombia and the world, and the factors that determine their demand.

For these purposes, we address the following research questions: