How does Yappy work for online payments?
Yappy pays from a bank account using a mobile number. Shoppers send money to people and pay merchants with just a phone number, and the money comes from the bank account they have linked to Yappy. When a user types a number, Yappy shows the recipient’s name so they can check it before sending.
Online stores use the Yappy payment button. A merchant needs a Yappy Comercial account. Fygaro’s setup guide shows the steps: in Yappy Comercial, the merchant opens Payment Methods, chooses the Yappy payment button, selects the account that will receive the funds, enters the store’s web address and generates a merchant ID and secret key for its payment provider or plugin.
At checkout the shopper is redirected to Yappy to confirm. A community Laravel package built on Banco General’s PHP library describes the statuses that come back: E when the shopper confirmed and the purchase is complete, R when the shopper did not confirm within the order’s five-minute lifetime, and C when the shopper cancelled in the Banco General app. Yappy does not send a notice for rejected orders, so the merchant must mark them itself after the five minutes.
Where and how do shoppers use Yappy?
It reaches almost half of Panamanian adults. Yappy had more than 1.5 million users in May 2025, about 45% of Panamanians over 18, according to La Estrella de Panamá. In 2024 it handled 487 million transactions: 431 million between people, up more than 20.4%, and more than 56 million with merchants, up 300% on 2023, La Prensa reported. Yappy moved about US$9.5 billion in 2023.
It is no longer only for Banco General customers. Caja de Ahorros joined in May 2025, alongside Banisi, Credicorp Bank, Davivienda and St. Georges Bank, and Banistmo added Yappy to its mobile app in October 2026, bringing the number of connected financial institutions to seven. Banistmo said the service reaches more than 600,000 of its customers.
Merchants accept it in store and online. Yappy Comercial, the merchant app from Yappy S.A., creates a dynamic QR code for each sale, shares static QR codes and payment links, manages the payment button and shows payments as soon as they arrive. E-commerce plugins exist too; Tilopay launched a Yappy app for Shopify in October 2025.
What rules and costs should merchants know?
Fees are set by Yappy and the merchant’s provider. The sources reviewed do not publish a standard merchant rate, so pricing should be confirmed with Banco General or the provider.
Refunds are limited. In April 2024 Yappy added an option to return money received by mistake straight away from the app. The sources do not describe a refund call in the payment button integration, so a merchant refund is usually a return transfer to the shopper.
Disputes have no set scheme. Each payment is confirmed by the shopper in their own app, and the sources describe no chargeback process for Yappy, so order and delivery records are the merchant’s evidence if a shopper complains.
Outages happen. On 19 May 2025 Yappy had intermittent problems for about an hour, and Banco General advised customers to use online banking, ATMs or credit cards in the meantime.
How would Omno handle Yappy?
- One checkout: Yappy would appear in the Omno hosted checkout next to cards, wallets, local methods and crypto, with the redirect to Yappy handled on the page. Merchants with their own payment screens would use Direct Links on their own buttons.
- Routing rules: The merchant would set rules that send USD payments from Panamanian shoppers to a connected provider that supports the Yappy payment button. Omno connects through those providers; it is not an acquirer and does not hold funds.
- Cascading: In the hosted checkout, if the chosen provider is unavailable or rejects the request before the shopper is redirected, the payment would move to the next provider in the rule until one accepts.
- Status: The order would stay pending until Yappy reports the result, and the final status would reach the merchant by webhook, with unconfirmed orders closed after Yappy’s five-minute window.
What should merchants plan for?
Treat silence as a failure. Yappy does not notify rejected orders, so close any order without a confirmation after five minutes.
Keep a second method. Cards or another method should stay on the page for shoppers whose bank is not connected to Yappy and for outages.
Plan refunds. Without an integrated refund, returns need a transfer back to the shopper, so record their phone number and the original order.
Set up Yappy Comercial before launch, with the receiving account and credentials for the provider.