dLocal and Open English have introduced Bre-B as an immediate payment option for students signing up for online English courses in Colombia.
Bre-B is now accessible to students and corporate clients purchasing Open English subscriptions through participating Colombian banks and digital wallets, whether they use a Bre-B llave, a digital identifier, or a QR code. This simplifies the payment process by confirming transactions swiftly, thereby eliminating the need for credit cards or manual verification steps, allowing quick access to course content once enrolment is completed.
Bre-B has been seamlessly integrated into Open English’s current payment framework without altering the platform’s checkout procedures.
Overview of Colombia’s Payment Landscape and Bre-B Infrastructure
Launched by Banco de la República in October 2025, Bre-B is the first government-endorsed real-time payment system in Colombia. By this time, it had registered almost 100 million users.
Challenges exist in Colombia for subscription-based digital services due to limited credit card usage, high transaction rejection rates, and some dependency on offline processes. For an eLearning platform that relies heavily on recurring enrolments, these issues can impact checkout success rates and student retention. As such, real-time account-based payment methods like Bre-B offer a practical solution.
The Broader Partnership and Expansion Plan
dLocal and Open English have partnered for two years, during which they have expanded the coverage of local and alternative payment methods across several emerging markets. The collaboration currently supports payments in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Turkey.
Future plans include integrating BNPL options such as Pareto in Argentina and Pagaleve in Brazil, along with B2B and payout flows to support teachers, partners, and internal operations. This underscores their commitment to tailoring payment infrastructure to meet local consumer behavior across the markets where Open English operates.
For dLocal, enabling Bre-B is an example of its strategy to connect global merchants with new domestic payment systems in emerging markets as they become available.
