113 articles
It usually happens on the worst possible day. You have rent due. A $5,000 payment just landed. You log in to withdraw it and see a message: “Your account has been temporarily limited.” No withdrawal. No transfer. No access to your own money. No clear timeline for resolution. For Colombian freelancers receiving USD through platforms […]
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You are a Colombian freelancer – developer, designer, copywriter, VA, consultant – and your clients are American companies. They pay in USD. You live in COP. The app you use to bridge that gap determines whether you keep 95% of what you earn or 90%. That 5% difference, on $4,000/month in income, is $2,400/year. Enough […]
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You just moved to Medellin. Or maybe Bogota. Or maybe you have been here for six months and you still have not figured out the banking situation because opening a Bancolombia account as a foreigner requires paperwork that would make a notary blush. Meanwhile, your clients need to pay you. They are ready to wire […]
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You landed a contract with a company in Barcelona. They want to pay you in euros via SEPA transfer – the standard European payment method. You are in Bogota. Your Bancolombia account does not have an IBAN. Their finance team has never sent an international wire and does not want to start now. This is […]
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You have a US client paying in dollars. A European client paying in euros. Rent in Medellin due in pesos. Three currencies, three different problems – and the worst possible solution is converting everything to COP the moment it arrives. Colombian remote workers are caught between local banks that barely support foreign currency and international […]
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You finished the project. You sent the invoice. Now you wait. Three days. Five days. You check Bancolombia again. Nothing. Then it arrives – minus $45 in incoming wire fees, minus whatever the intermediary bank skimmed, minus a conversion rate that somehow looks nothing like the one you saw on Google. This is the reality […]
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Payoneer has become the default payment platform for Colombian freelancers, and for good reason – it works with Upwork, Fiverr, and dozens of other platforms, it accepts clients from nearly every country, and setup is straightforward. But “works” and “works well” are different things when you look at what it actually costs. Let me show […]
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For years, the standard advice for Colombians needing a US dollar account was: fly to Miami, bring your passport and a utility bill translation, walk into a Chase branch, hope they say yes. The round trip cost $600-1,000 between flights, hotel, and time. And there was no guarantee the bank would open the account. In […]
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There are two numbers that matter when you convert dollars to Colombian pesos: the mid-market rate and the rate you actually get. The difference between them is where banks and payment processors make their real money – and most people never check. If the mid-market rate is 4,200 COP per dollar and your bank gives […]
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Colombia received over $10 billion in international transfers in 2024, making it the third-largest remittance recipient in Latin America. But not all of that money arrives efficiently. Between bank fees, FX markups, intermediary charges, and processing delays, Colombians routinely lose 2-8% on every international payment they receive. This guide compares every viable method for receiving […]
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