Panama has already normalized instant payments. Phrases like "Yappéame" (Yappy me), "send me a Yappy," or "do you take Yappy?" are part of everyday life. This isn't by accident: Banco General's platform boasts over 1.6 million users and operates across more than 28,000 businesses. But Yappy isn't the only player. Kuara connects Global Bank, Banesco, and MMG Bank (with Banistmo joining soon), Nequi operates via Banistmo, and Zinli is backed by Banco Mercantil.

In other words, the country has multiple instant payment streams running in parallel. The catch is that moving funds between them still breaks the promise of "instant."

Javier Carrizo Esquivel, General Manager of the Banco Nacional de Panamá, framed the target vision clearly during the presentation of the bank's 2025 Sustainability Report: any individual should be able to hold a bank account with one institution and a digital wallet with another, yet still transfer funds instantly regardless of the issuing provider.

Today, that isn't always the case. Yappy, Kuara, Nequi, and Zinli operate seamlessly within their own closed loops, but a Kuara user cannot send funds in real time to a Zinli user. To resolve this, the Banco Nacional is developing a public payment rail to complement the existing private framework. The goal is to connect not only the established banks in the current network, but also emerging fintechs, credit unions, and financial services firms that are currently left out of the loop.

The Banco Nacional is positioned to lead this effort under its Organic Law, which designates it as the governing authority of Panama's national payment system.

The other fundamental shift lies in the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system—the underlying engine processing instant mobile transfers. Originally operating on just three daily clearing windows, the system expanded to four and now runs five. This ensures a Friday transfer initiated as late as 5:00 PM settles same-day, rather than hanging in limbo until Monday morning.

The Banco Nacional's ultimate target is continuous 24/7 settlement, bringing every financial institution under the same always-on architecture. Moving from scheduled processing batches to nonstop operations represents the exact technical leap made by other regional markets as they transitioned from legacy batch processing to real-time transactional architectures.

Full interoperability is more than a convenience upgrade for existing account holders. For a significant portion of Panama's population, it serves as the gateway into the formal financial system.

With nearly 47% of the economically active population working in the informal sector (according to INEC data), every digital transaction processed via QR code or instant transfer—even for a street food vendor who previously accepted cash only—starts building an unprecedented transaction history. Over time, that digital footprint can become the initial credit profile for individuals who were historically excluded from traditional financing.

Consumer trust reinforces this shift: according to Mastercard's 2026 State of Digitalization and Financial Inclusion study, 87% of surveyed Panamanians trust digital payments to protect their money and data. That underlying trust is a primary driver behind the widespread adoption already enjoyed by Yappy and its competitors.

Panama is not the first country in the region to take on this challenge. Colombia went through it with Bre-B: in just five months following its launch, the system processed over 500 million transactions and surpassed 100 million registered payment keys, according to figures from Banco de la República.

That rapid growth was more than just a regulatory victory. Behind the scenes, banks had to connect infrastructure never originally designed for real-time operations, credit unions needed to open up processes historically isolated within their core systems, and engineering teams had to prove, under tight deadlines, that everything could perform flawlessly at scale.

Q-Vision Technologies supported key parts of that transition: connecting a legacy core banking system (AS/400) to a digital remittance platform without altering the legacy architecture, and transforming interbank payment infrastructure from batch processing to fully real-time transactions. This is, virtually step-by-step, the exact path Panama is embarking on with its public rail and its roadmap toward 24/7 RTGS operations.

When the Banco Nacional's public payment rail goes live, it will immediately connect banks, fintechs, credit unions, and financial institutions operating on fundamentally different architectures and business logic. Lessons from around the region—such as Colombia's implementation of Bre-B—demonstrate that this moment of mass connectivity is also when the risk of interoperability failures, security vulnerabilities, and compliance gaps is at its highest.

The critical question for every Panamanian financial institution is simple: when the public rail rolls out, will your infrastructure already be fully tested and battle-ready—or will you be testing it live in production alongside everyone else?

On September 10th, Q-Vision Technologies will host a session to discuss key developments in instant payments across Latin America and how Panama can get ahead as it prepares for full interoperability.

QA at the Speed of Instant Payments Thursday, September 10 · 11:00 AM (Panama Time)

Reserve my spot →

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