Accepting payments in Argentina and Chile. 7 chapters and a final quiz.

Chapter 1. Two neighboring markets, opposite plumbing.

Here, the Southern Cone means two neighboring markets, Argentina and Chile, whose retail payment infrastructure runs on different rails. Argentina collects through account-to-account transfers, triggered by a QR code that every app must be able to read. Chile collects by card, on an acquiring infrastructure long controlled by a single company, with no public retail instant rail. A checkout built for Argentina and moved to Santiago assumes that every app installed in Chile can read that code. No Chilean rule requires it.

Three questions that decide the setup

• Are you selling through a local entity? The answer drives everything else. Without an Argentine CUIT or a Chilean RUT (tax IDs), no local aceptador or acquirer will open a merchant account. Chapter 7 covers the tax consequences.
• Does your typical order need financing? In Argentina, paying in installments is a buying reflex. Chile has installments too, but they don't cost the seller the same. This is the most misunderstood difference between the two markets.
• How many days can you wait for your pesos? The gap between a PCT credited in seconds and a credit card sale at a large Argentine retailer, credited after 18 business days, is measured in points of margin.

Chapter 2. Wiring up pago con transferencia in Argentina.

Pago con transferencia, or PCT, is the official name for an immediate account-to-account transfer triggered at the point of sale or from a payment page. It falls under the Transferencias 3.0 framework, approved by the BCRA in Comunicación “A” 7153 of October 30, 2020, whose first phase took effect on December 7, 2020. Settlement runs over the transferencias inmediatas scheme and bypasses card networks entirely.

• Billetera digital: the app that sends the payment order on the customer's side. It must be on the BCRA's PSP register or be a financial entity, and it cannot refuse to read any aceptador's QR code.
• Aceptador: the company that signs up merchants, registers them in the scheme, and gives them their payment acceptance tools. It is your contractual counterparty. It must be supervised by the BCRA and registered as an agente de recaudación (tax collection agent) for national or provincial taxes.
• Administrador de esquema: sets the operational, technical, and commercial rules of its scheme, contracts with billeteras and aceptadores, and answers to the BCRA for their compliance.

{
  "pais": "AR",
  "instrumento": "PCT",
  "variante": "solicitud_pasiva",
  "identificador_transferencia": "IEP-2026-08-07-0000431",
  "cuenta_destino": { "tipo": "CVU", "clave": "0000003100010000000001" },
  "billetera_ordenante": "registro_bcra_0042",
  "aceptador": "acept_0117",
  "importe": 184500,
  "moneda": "ARS",
  "categoria_comercio": "pequeno",
  "precio_aceptador_pct": 0.0075,
  "acreditado_en": "2026-08-07T14:22:09-03:00"
}

Chapter 3. Reading Argentine pricing and payout timelines.

PCT pricing follows a regulated scale. The BCRA lets the aceptador charge the merchant between 0.6% and 0.8% of the transaction amount, regardless of merchant size. Part of that price flows back to the payer's account provider as tasa de intercambio, in a proportion that depends on the merchant category. The scale is public. What you verify is whether the aceptador contract falls within the published range.

• Initial classification is based on the previous month's recaudación in debit card schemes. After that, it is based on PCT recaudación. So a merchant can change category over time.
• A comercio pequeño pays nothing for its first three full calendar months, up to 1,000 UVA a month (UVA is an inflation-indexed unit), per currency and per aceptador. That tier carries neither tasa de intercambio nor processing fees.
• An aceptador that also participates in other schemes must quote you PCT pricing and terms separately from other instruments. The text explicitly names empaquetamiento and cross-subsidies.

Argentine card fees are often described as capped at 1.8% on credit and 0.8% on debit. Those figures come from a 2017 agreement and a phase-down schedule completed in 2021. Decreto 70/2023, published in the Boletín Oficial on December 21, 2023, replaced Article 15 of Ley 25.065, which set the cap. The two rates still serve as benchmarks in commercial negotiations, but no law now requires acquirers to stick to them.

Chapter 4. Cuotas on both sides of the Andes.

Installment payments, or cuotas, function as a credit product in both countries and drive purchase decisions. The difference between the two markets is who bears the interest. In Argentina, the merchant very often does, through a higher fee on each plan. In Chile, the cardholder does, at the rate set by the issuing bank, barring special arrangements. A retail price built on the opposite assumption absorbs a financing cost that nobody budgeted for.

net = price_incl_tax
      − acquirer_arancel               (contractual, uncapped since Decreto 70/2023)
      − cuotas_plan_cost               (zero if the cardholder pays the interest)
      − national_withholdings          (IVA and Ganancias, RG 4622/2019)
      − ingresos_brutos_withholding    (SIRTAC / SIRCUPA, Comisión Arbitral)
      − carry(accreditation_days)      (cash cost over the regulatory timeline)

Three classic mistakes:
  · comparing two offers on the arancel alone, without the value date;
  · treating withholdings as a cost when they are tax prepayments;
  · applying the “8 business days” timeline to a large company, which falls under 18.

Chapter 5. Transbank, Webpay Plus, and the abono calendar in Chile.

Chile's payment infrastructure splits interbank switching and merchant acquiring between two companies. Redbanc, founded in 1987 and owned by the banks, runs the ATM network and interbank switching. Transbank, founded in 1989, handles merchant acquiring and the domestic debit brand Redcompra. For two decades, Transbank's Webpay Plus gateway was synonymous with online payment in Chile. Acquiring opened up to other operators because of competition law, not the banking regulator.

The second lever for opening the market was pricing. The Comité para la Fijación de Límites a las Tasas de Intercambio has capped interchange at 0.50% on debit and 1.14% on credit and 0.94% on prepaid since October 2023. The final cut to 0.35% and 0.80%, planned for October 2024, was suspended on September 30, 2024, pending a review. An interchange cap doesn't open a market by itself. It fixes part of a new acquirer's costs in advance, so the business case for entry can be calculated before investing. In-person acquiring market shares recorded between 2023 and 2025 show that entry did happen.

Chapter 6. Collecting payments in Chile without a public instant rail.

Chile's settlement infrastructure consists of three systems, and none of them offers instant payments to the general public. Chile settles large-value payments through the central bank's RTGS system (LBTR), live since 2004, and through Combanc for high-value clearing. Retail payments go through the Centro de Compensación Automatizado (CCA), which carries transferencias electrónicas. A Chilean checkout built around an instant push payment therefore has no rail to run on.

Chapter 7. Invoicing locally and repatriating funds.

Between collecting a peso and having it available to the selling company, each country imposes its own obligations. In Argentina, the constraint is the foreign-exchange regime for companies. In Chile, it is tax and paperwork: every sale must generate an electronic document authorized by the tax authority. Pin these obligations down when scoping the project. Discovering them at the first payout means reworking a contractual structure that is already in place.

Argentina's foreign-exchange regime has loosened, but it has not gone away for companies. Comunicación “A” 8226, in force since April 2025, allows companies to transfer abroad profits from fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. Profits accumulated during the years of capital controls are treated differently. Dividends transferred abroad totaled US$2.6 billion in the first half of 2026, including US$1.015 billion in June alone.

• Check when the profits were earned before promising any cash repatriation. That is the test that separates what can leave from what stays.
• Contract for acquiring and repatriation separately. Collecting in pesos and converting into hard currency are two different businesses. A single contract often leaves pesos perfectly collected and perfectly stuck.
• Build the FX spread into the price, not the margin. Over a long billing cycle, the gap between the booking rate and the settlement rate is a line item in its own right.
• Don't acquire from abroad. An Argentine card used with a nonresident acquirer incurs the 30% percepción, a prepayment creditable against income tax (the Impuesto PAÍS stopped applying in January 2026). Conversion collapses before payment.

• Argentina, digital services: RG 4240/2018 designates the entity that processes the payment abroad as an IVA collection agent (agente de percepción). The customer sees an extra 21% line on their statement. The price you display is not the price they pay.
• Chile, goods sold remotely: since October 25, 2025, 19% IVA applies to distance sales of goods up to US$500. Nonresident sellers register under the SII's simplified regime and file monthly or quarterly.
• Registration shows at the border. Shipments from registered platforms are exempt from customs duties. The SII collected more than US$41 million in the first reporting period, from October 25 to December 31, 2025, on 23 returns (SII, January 2026).