Mariola de la Piedra Quelle explains how Grupo GELSA’s TodoPay wallet and Bre-B integration serve Colombia’s cash-heavy gaming market
Ahead of SBC Summit 2026 in Lisbon, Payment Expert speaks with Mariola de la Piedra Quelle, CMO of Grupo GELSA – Paga Todo, about payments infrastructure in Colombia’s gaming market.
Cash still accounts for close to 78% of Colombian transactions, and de la Piedra Quelle discusses how PSPs, operators and regulators can build smoother routes between cash habits and digital products.
She covers TodoPay, the company’s gaming-native wallet, which has processed over 50,000 prize payouts in six months, alongside Grupo GELSA’s early adoption of Bre-B, Colombia’s new instant payment rail, and what it means for deposit and withdrawal speed across the market.
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Read the full interview below.
With cash still driving close to 78% of Colombian transactions, where do PSPs do the most useful work bridging cash habits to digital play?
I often lead this conversation with a contradiction at the heart of the Colombian Market: 96% of adults have at least one banking product, but nearly 78% of payments still happen in cash, with most of its population earning weekly (even daily) incomes and minimum wage, but I believe the challenge is often misunderstood. The gap is not ignorance: it´s habit, trust, relevance and proximity.
The goal is not eliminate cash, it’s to create smoother transitions between cash and digital experiences and that´s where PSPs and Retailers come in. One of our greater advantages at Grupo Gelsa – Paga Todo is having the most robust physical network in mid-Colombia with over 2,400 own points of sale and over 10,000 allies.
These locations act as “trust builders” and we need to ensure money flows fast and simple. Customers can start their day using cash, gradually move to digital wallets for lunch, move to online purchases and self-service experiences at break, and migrate back to cash just before getting home at the day´s end.
Not only PSPs, but Operators, Regulators and Financial Institutions, play a critical role when bridging habits: they all need to simplify onboarding, reduce friction, support multiple payment methods, and make cash-movements feel intuitive and seamless.
The winners will be the providers that help operators create hybrid journeys rather than forcing customers into fully digital behaviours overnight. That´s what we are aiming to offer with TodoPay, the first gaming-native virtual wallet of Colombia, where in 6 months we have delivered over 50.000 prize-money deposits.
What’s a healthy deposit success rate in your market, what kills it, and how much can smart routing realistically claw back?
Customers don´t measure payment success rates. They simply remember if the transaction worked, was fast, and they could define what to do with it immediately… or not! In my point of view, for digital-first product anything below 90% success rate starts creating trust issues… once customers experience failed deposits, particularly in gambling ecosystems where immediacy matters, they abandon the transaction all together and punish you.
What kills it? I could easily list them: bank-side frictions, session timeouts from too long OTP flows, mismatches in player data (ID vs payment information) and infrastructure stability in peak hours.
Smart routing can certainly improve performance, but I don´t think routing alone solves the problem. Operators, PSPs, Banks and product teams all share responsibility. Even a few percentage points of improvement can have a meaningful impact.
Now that Bre-B is live, is GELSA integrating it, and how is an instant rail shifting what players expect from deposits and payouts?
Instant rails, money movements and transactions are the new normal in payments. Bre-b represents a huge step towards Colombia´s payment ecosystem evolution and of course at Grupo Gelsa – Paga Todo we made it a priority to integrate it in TodoPay, we were early adopters… its enabled through Powwi, Gelsa´s licensed financial entity, so this isn´t a roadmap item for us: it´s live infrastructure.
We´ve had Bre-b live for some months now and it´s no surprise we have already paid over 50,000 prizes in TodoPay and 80% of the funds come back into the ecosystem and become a new bet or payment.
Instant payment rails don´t just change infrastructure, Bre-b is reshaping the velocity and baseline customer expectations. Once people experience their money moving in seconds, waiting feels like a huge disappointment. Customers now expect immediacy, transparency, certainty and seamless experiences that melt into their daily lives.
How much of your payments infrastructure do you run in-house versus hand to PSPs, and what decides where that line falls?
We operate a hybrid model defined by strategic control and regulatory specificity. We believe operators should own the customer experience while leveraging specialized partners for areas where scale, security, regulatory and technological expertise are critical.
At Gelsa – Paga Todo we focus on understanding customer needs, designing journeys, managing products and orchestrating experiences. We decided to enroll Powwi, our holding´s financial institution, as an additional partial PSP, and provide infrastructure, connectivity, operational resilience and regulatory requirements for TodoPay, the first gaming-native virtual wallet in Colombia, now serving over 30.000 clients in under 6 months with over 50.000 prizes and a no-hassle daily financial product.
Then with Amigos Paga Todo, our loyalty program and customer base, combined with our physical cash collection network, third- party PSPs for card processing and KYC allies, we designed our own infrastructure that allows us to customize experiences and ensure trust for our customers.
It was a strategic decision, we have been for over 20 years Paga Todo, it translates to “Pay It All”, and with the most robust physical network in mid-Colombia and over 400 solutions available to consumers, we only lacked a financial product that made one of Bogota´s most known retails, simpler and up-to-date.
Now 80% of prize money keeps rotating within the ecosystem, only 20% being used for other expenses outside our portfolio, such as sending a wire to your kid, or paying for lunch!
Withdrawals are the moment a player decides whether they trust you. What does a genuinely fast payout require in Colombia, and what tends to break it?
100% agree that payouts are trust moments. Customers may tolerate some friction when depositing, but they are far more demanding when receiving their money. Fast payouts require strong integrations, reliable customer identification processes, fraud controls, and all without delays and large-scale operations.
The ideal experience is simple: the customer should know when the money is coming and getting it when promised, fast.
Does payments performance feed retention and acquisition directly enough that you’d treat a smoother cashier as a marketing asset rather than a back-end cost?
Absolutely! Payments have often been viewed as an operational function, but today they are part of the customer experience strategy. Marketing can invest heavily in acquisition, branding and engagement, but if customers encounter friction when they try to deposit, a withdrawal prizes, or can´t complete a transaction much of that investment will be lost.
A smoother cashier improves conversion, increases customer satisfaction, supports retention, and strengthens trust… resulting in the best loyalty tool… it’s a growth KPI. Our strategy is clear going forward: customer value creation is a standalone strategic axis – and payments experience sits smack in the middle of it. That´s marketing material, to be faster, more reliable, we have to be true to our “pay it all” brand promise.
As crazy as it sounds, when a customer barely notices a new experience but use it frequently, it´s because its working exactly as expected: naturally.
Payment methods rarely copy-paste across LATAM, so what travels from Colombia to other markets, and what has to be rebuilt every Time?
What travels: the architecture thinking. The principle of meeting players at their existing financial behaviours. The insight that cash will coexist with bancarization. The wallet-as-loyalty model and the regulatory framing.
What has to be rebuilt: Being locally relevant. Latam has a complex reality, not only each country has its own customs, languages, words and ways, but within a country you have many variations as well. Still, customers increasingly want simplicity, speed, security, transparency and to feel understood.
Colombia´s quest for interoperability, regulation, inclusion, cooperation and agility are an example not only for Latam but for the world. And Paga Todo´s TodoPay is the Business Case for embedded finances.
We heard, we looked, we designed, we developed, we stumbled but got up and now, our customer´s happiness and NPS improvement show it. Still, customers drive our innovation, but continuous monitoring and iterations, and never settling help us improve ourselves and our technology and solutions. Every time.
Held in Lisbon from 29 September to 1 October 2026, SBC Summit is one of the world’s largest gatherings of betting and gaming professionals.
The event will bring together 40,000 attendees from across the industry for three days of learning, networking, and discussion, alongside a major exhibition featuring leading brands from around the globe.
For more information and tickets, visit sbcevents.com/sbc-summit.
