RedcompraChile’s domestic debit acceptance brand. Transbank operates it, and it appears on cards issued by banks that usually also hold a Visa or Mastercard license. For years it was the only way to accept debit in the country. The shift to a four-party model and interchange caps set by the Comité de Tasas de Intercambio (0.50% debit, 1.14% credit, 0.94% prepaid since October 2023; the cut to 0.35% and 0.80% planned for October 2024 was suspended) opened its acquiring to competition.Transbank S.A. · since 1990
Global registry · Latin America · South America
Chile Payment systems
10 systems listed.
CurrencyChilean peso (CLP)
Domestic schemeRedCompra (Transbank)
RegulatorBanco Central de Chile / CMF
Leading payment methods
Cards (Webpay)A2A (Khipu)Wallets (MACH)Cash
E-commerce shares
Cards · 55%Account-to-account · 20%Wallets · 15%Cash · 5%Other · 5%
Webpay. Transbank’s card gateway, long an acquiring monopoly and a byword for online payment in Chile. Opening acquiring to competition (a four-party model since 2020) is reshaping the market.
CuentaRUT accounts (BancoEstado)≈15M
Competitive acquiringopen since 2020 (end of the Transbank monopoly)
South America’s most card-driven market, with high banking penetration, driven in part by BancoEstado’s near-universal CuentaRUT account.
Learn about this market. The guides and courses that cover it.
Payments in the Caribbean and Central AmericaPayments in Argentina, Chile, and UruguayPayments in Mexico and the AndesPayments in Peru, Bolivia, and EcuadorPayment success rates and what drives themCross-border acquiring around the worldAccepting payments in Argentina and ChileAccepting payments in Colombia and PeruPayments in Latin America: Pix, cash, and cuotasOpening a new market: the payments playbookCollecting payments for the public sectorCollecting fares on public transit
Card schemes
Clearing and settlement
Centro de Compensación Automatizado (CCA)Chile’s actual retail ACH: online transfers, deferred credits, and deferred debits. Official listings are often misleading here: Combanc is the large-value clearing house, and the CCA is the one that carries bulk transferencias electrónicas. Its opening to nonbanks gives Chilean fintechs their way into interbank settlement.Centro de Compensación Automatizado S.A. (a market infrastructure company whose clients are Chile’s major banks (Banco de Chile, BancoEstado, Santander, BCI, Itaú) and now fintechs such as Tenpo, Mercado Pago, and Fintual)
CombancChile’s large-value payment clearing house: it nets the orders received during the day into a single balance per bank, alongside the RTGS system (LBTR) operated by the central bank. An integrator handling large-value flows in Chile goes through this LBTR/CCAV pair, not a public instant rail, because none exists.Sociedad Operadora de la Cámara de Compensación de Pagos de Alto Valor S.A. (banking support company (sociedad de apoyo al giro bancario) owned by Chilean banks)
Wallets
CuentaRUTChile’s most widely held payment account and the country’s main driver of financial inclusion: more than half of Chilean debit card payments go through it. Any analysis of the Chilean market that ignores it overstates the private banks’ share and understates the true penetration of electronic payments.BancoEstado (a Chilean state-owned bank; the account can be opened with nothing more than the national ID number (RUT), with no income requirement) · since 200615.5 million customers at the product’s 20th anniversary, and more than 16 million users claimed in 2025, about 90% of Chile’s population over age 12 (BancoEstado / Diario Financiero, 2025)
MACHBANKThe former MACH prepaid wallet, now BCI’s digital bank: checking accounts, debit and credit cards, consumer loans, insurance, and domestic and international transfers. The path is instructive: without a public instant rail in Chile, the prepaid wallet could not survive as a standalone product and was folded into a full banking offering.Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI group’s digital bank brand; the app was previously called MACH)
TenpoBills itself as Chile’s first neobank: an account and a payment card managed from a phone, under CMF supervision. Like MACH, it was built on cards rather than an A2A rail, a direct result of Chile having no public instant rail.Tenpo (backed by the Credicorp group; registered with the Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF) as a payment instrument issuer)
Acquiring and processing
TransbankThe near-monopoly incumbent acquirer, ordered by Chile’s competition tribunal (Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia) to move to a four-party model. Its Webpay Plus gateway remains the benchmark for Chilean e-commerce. Understanding Transbank explains why Chile has high card penetration but came late to payment innovation.Transbank S.A. (owned by Chilean banks) · since 1989
Getnet ChileChile’s first large-scale alternative acquirer: POS Smart, Web Checkout, payment links, QR, and recurring payments (PAT). Its arrival is a direct result of the forced move to the four-party model: it is the company through which Transbank’s de facto monopoly on Chilean acquiring began to crack.the acquiring business of the Banco Santander Chile group, launched after Chile’s competition tribunal (Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia) forced Transbank to open the market
Other
LBTR ChileChile’s RTGS. The country settles large-value payments through LBTR and Combanc but long had no public instant retail rail. Hence the heavy use of near-real-time interbank “transferencias electrónicas” run by the banks themselves.Banco Central de Chile · since 2004
RedbancChilean ATM network and interbank switch, separate from Transbank, which handles merchant acquiring. A structural split worth knowing: in Chile, cash withdrawals and card acceptance are run by two different industry-owned companies.Redbanc S.A. (owned by Chilean banks) · since 1987