Yappy for Businesses in Panama: Requirements, Fees and How to Get Paid

Yappy Comercial is the business version of Yappy: instead of receiving transfers into your personal account and checking your phone to see whether the money arrived, your business gets its own profile, its own ways to get paid and a separate history. There’s no monthly fee: you pay a commission on each payment, and nothing if you don’t get paid.

The figures and requirements in this guide are the ones Yappy publishes on its own site, checked on September 22, 2026. Yappy sets its fees and can change them: the current rate is on its fees page, linked at the end.

The two paths: personal or business account

If your business runs on a personal account, the requirements are:

• Being of legal age.
• Having at least one savings account at Banco General.
• Having a Clave card or Visa Debit card.
• Having social media profiles that back up the business activity.
• An activity that complies with Yappy’s rules and values.
• If you’re a foreigner, the business’s operating notice (aviso de operación).

Registration takes about ten minutes, because it asks for information about the business, and then there’s an approval period of 24 to 48 hours.

If your business runs on a business account in the company’s name at Banco General, it’s activated from Banco General’s business online banking, in the Administration section, with the administrator profile. It takes three to five minutes and approval is immediate.

The published requirements mention Banco General, but the help center talks about connecting the account of the «selected bank». If yours is at another bank, confirm with Yappy before assuming anything.

What each payment costs, in dollars

The fee is 1% plus ITBMS on the payment, with a minimum of USD 0.02. With Panama’s general ITBMS rate of 7%, it looks like this:

You charge	Approximate fee	You keep
USD 10	USD 0.11	USD 9.89
USD 25	USD 0.27	USD 24.73
USD 100	USD 1.07	USD 98.93

It’s debited once a day, adding up the fees of all that day’s payments. Worth telling your accountant: your statement will show the full payments and, separately, a daily debit with the fees.

The four ways to get paid

1. Yappy Directory. Your business shows up in Yappy’s search and the customer pays you from there. Use the same name you have on Google and on your website, so people find you without asking.
2. Static QR code. You download it, print it and display it at the counter. It works for any amount: the customer types how much they’re paying.
3. Dynamic QR code. You generate it in the Yappy Comercial app for each sale, with the amount already filled in. The customer just approves. It’s the one that avoids the «how much was it?».
4. Yappy Payment Button, to get paid in an online store. According to Yappy itself it’s going through a discontinuation and update process: if your site needs it, ask first which version is current.

When the money arrives, and what to check

The payment shows up instantly on the Yappy Comercial dashboard with the status «En tránsito» (in transit); when it’s sent to your account it changes to «Procesada» (processed). The money is credited in a batch, scheduled for the next day, with a maximum of two business days.

Two things worth keeping in mind:

• The history only shows three months back. If you keep your books by hand, download or note down your payments every month.
• Yappy can’t credit payments to a blocked account. If your bank blocks the linked account, payments have nowhere to go until you sort it out with the bank.

Three easy mistakes to avoid

• A printed QR code nobody tested. Before printing a hundred, scan it with two phones and make a test payment.
• A directory name nobody recognizes. If your business goes by a different name on Yappy, on Google and on your storefront, customers hesitate before paying.
• Forgetting the fees when setting prices. On low-margin products, 1% plus ITBMS comes out of your profit on every sale.

Yappy on your website and your WhatsApp

Letting customers know you accept Yappy before they write to you saves a question in every conversation: put it on your website, on your Google Business Profile and in your WhatsApp catalog, with the exact name customers find in the directory.

If what you want is to get paid online, that’s already a store, and whether it makes sense comes before the payment method → when you need an online store. And if you’re a foreigner and still missing the operating notice, that’s the step before → Panamá Emprende and the operating notice. Making clear which payment methods you accept is part of any website we build.

Official sources

• Yappy Comercial requirements — Yappy, in Spanish.
• Yappy Comercial help center — fees, settlement times, ways to get paid and profiles, in Spanish.
• Fees and charges — Yappy, for the current rate, in Spanish.
• Yappy Comercial terms and conditions — Yappy, in Spanish.
• ITBMS general rules — DGI, for the 7% general rate, in Spanish.