Colombia, Venezuela to Resume Direct Bank Transfers

Direct Colombia Venezuela transfers could return before the end of 2026, after banks on both sides of the border began the technical work needed to reactivate the SWIFT connections that years of sanctions and financial isolation had frozen.

What is actually changing

Colombia and Venezuela are moving to reactivate international correspondent banking through SWIFT, the messaging network that lets banks in different countries settle payments directly. The stated goal is to restore direct transfers for trade, remittances and investment between the two economies.

For years, payments between them were routed through third countries, a workaround known as triangulation that added cost, delay and opacity. Restoring direct links would let a Colombian exporter and a Venezuelan importer move money bank-to-bank without an intermediary market in between.

The push was made public by Luis Felipe Quintero, president of the Colombian-Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, who framed the change as a turning point for a commercial relationship that operated directly two to three decades ago before politics and sanctions severed the channel.

Correspondent banking is the invisible infrastructure of international trade. When two banks hold accounts with each other, or share a common intermediary, a payment can clear in hours; when they do not, money must hop through a chain of third banks, each taking a fee and adding a day. Rebuilding that link is what the two countries are attempting.

The stakes are commercial as much as political. Before relations broke down, Colombia and Venezuela were significant trading partners, and businesses on both sides have spent years lobbying to rebuild the links. A working payments channel is the piece that turns political goodwill into actual invoices being paid.

Why the door has opened now

The immediate trigger, according to Quintero, is a decision by the United States State Department to lift certain sanctions, easing measures that had cut key Venezuelan institutions out of the global banking system. The relief benefits the Central Bank of Venezuela and entities in which the state holds more than 50% of capital.

Sanctions had been the main obstacle to correspondent banking, because international lenders feared exposure to penalties if they processed transactions tied to sanctioned entities. Removing that risk is what makes reactivation plausible rather than merely aspirational.

The context matters. Venezuela’s government is projecting economic growth of around 8% this year and oil output of 1.2 million to 1.3 million barrels per day, up from 700,000 to 800,000 in 2025, feeding expectations of heavier bilateral activity.

Relations between Bogotá and Caracas were severed for years and only began to reopen in 2022, when the two governments restored diplomatic ties and reopened border crossings. The banking channel is one of the last and most technically demanding pieces of that reconstruction to fall into place.

How the plumbing gets rebuilt

Reactivation is not a switch. Quintero stressed that although the SWIFT codes for the relevant banks already exist, they must be brought back into service through legal, technological and cybersecurity protocols that private banks in both countries are now working through.

That means compliance reviews, updated correspondent agreements and security testing before the first live transfer. The chamber’s expectation is that the initial transactions can be completed before the end of the year, though it framed the timeline as a hope rather than a fixed date.

Once live, the new arrangement is meant to support a full range of services for companies and individuals, including remittances, payments and the repatriation of profits, all conducted through regulated channels rather than informal networks.

Compliance is the hardest part. Banks must satisfy know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering standards, screen counterparties against any remaining sanctions lists, and document the source of funds. None of that disappears with the sanctions relief; it simply becomes possible to do within the rules.

Timing will also depend on close coordination between regulators and the network operator, since correspondent relationships must be registered, tested and monitored on both sides at once. That is painstaking work, but it is the kind of groundwork that, once done, is hard to reverse and cheap to maintain.

What direct transfers would unlock

The most concrete benefit is the end of triangulation. By removing the third-country leg, direct transfers cut the time and cost of moving money and improve competitiveness in cross-border trade. For the chamber, that is the core of the change.

Remittances are another target. Families split across the border have long relied on informal channels; a functioning correspondent system offers a traceable, lower-cost alternative. Investors, too, would gain a cleaner route to move capital and take profits home.

None of this guarantees volume overnight. But it lowers the friction that has shaped every bilateral transaction for years, and that alone changes the calculus for businesses weighing whether to trade across the border again.

The potential user base is large. A substantial Venezuelan diaspora lives and works in Colombia, and cross-border commerce along the frontier never fully stopped even during the years of rupture. A formal channel would pull much of that activity out of the informal economy and into the banking system.

Trade finance is another likely beneficiary. Letters of credit and guarantees, the everyday tools that let importers and exporters trust each other across a border, are far cheaper to arrange when banks can deal directly. Their absence has forced many firms into cash-in-advance terms that tie up working capital.

A wider commercial thaw

The banking move is one strand of a broader reopening. Avianca announced a new route to Maracaibo from 15 August, part of an effort to rebuild air links that once operated directly. As our regional coverage has noted, connectivity and payments are advancing in parallel.

The Colombian-Venezuelan Chamber has a busy calendar for the second half of the year. A delegation is due to make a technical visit to the Paraguachón border crossing between 19 and 21 August to assess logistics, and a business round is planned in Cúcuta on 14 and 15 October.

On the Venezuelan side, the government is weighing whether to open close to 300 state assets, from factories to machinery and buildings, to public-private partnerships, an initiative formalised in April. Financial normalisation also aims to repair ties with multilateral lenders, including around US$5 billion held at the International Monetary Fund.

Each of these steps is incremental, but together they signal intent. Airlines add routes when they expect passengers; chambers schedule business rounds when they expect deals; governments open assets when they want investment. The banking reconnection is the financial spine that would support all of it.

Risks and open questions

The plan carries real caveats. The timeline is a target, not a commitment, and correspondent banking depends on foreign lenders judging the compliance risk acceptable even after sanctions relief. Banks tend to move cautiously on any Venezuela exposure.

Policy reversibility is another risk. Sanctions relief granted by one US administration can be tightened by another, and correspondent relationships built now could be unwound if the political weather changes. Institutions will price that uncertainty into how fast they move.

For now, the direction of travel is clear even if the pace is not. Both countries want the direct link back; the open question is how quickly compliance, technology and trust can be rebuilt after years of near-total financial separation.

There is also the question of whether Venezuela’s own institutions can meet the operational and transparency standards that foreign correspondents require. Years of isolation have left gaps in systems and reporting that will take time and money to close, regardless of political goodwill.

Finally, scale will build slowly. Even once the first transfers clear, banks typically start with small, low-risk flows and raise limits only as confidence grows. A working channel in 2026 would be a beginning rather than a return to the volumes the two economies once moved between them, and the chamber has been careful to manage expectations about how fast business will follow.

This is reporting, not investment advice. Confirm current figures with official sources before acting.

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Related reading

• Venezuela’s slow return to the global financial system
• Colombia-Venezuela trade reopens along the border
• What US sanctions relief means for Caracas
• Avianca rebuilds routes between the two countries

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