What Is CoDi and How Does It Work?
CoDi (Cobro Digital, or "Digital Collection") is the payment platform Mexico's central bank, Banxico, built so businesses and individuals can pay and get paid using a QR code or the phone's NFC chip, without needing a card terminal or manually typing out a CLABE account number. It runs on top of the same SPEI infrastructure Mexican banks already use: when you scan the QR code or tap your phone, your bank's app automatically fills in the transfer details — account, amount, and reference — and you just confirm the payment.
For a business that already collects payments by bank transfer, card, or cash, CoDi is one more digital collection channel that cuts down on data-entry errors and speeds up checkout, especially at a physical point of sale.
How CoDi Payments Work, Step by Step
- The business generates a QR code (or an NFC tag) from its banking app, or from a terminal set up for CoDi, with the amount and reference for the charge.
- The customer opens their own bank's app, turns on the CoDi payment option, and scans the QR code or taps their phone on the NFC point.
- The customer's app shows the payment details — who is requesting it, how much, and for what — before asking for confirmation.
- The customer confirms the payment with their PIN or fingerprint.
- The bank processes the operation as a SPEI transfer, and the business gets confirmation within seconds.
The entire process happens inside the banking apps people already have installed: neither the business nor the customer needs to download an extra app from Banxico.
What Is CoDi vs. SPEI? The Difference
CoDi and SPEI aren't separate systems: CoDi is a payment-request layer that relies on SPEI to actually move the money. The difference is in the user experience:
- With a regular SPEI transfer, the person paying has to manually type in the exact CLABE, bank, and amount for the beneficiary.
- With CoDi, that data is already encoded in the QR code or NFC tag, so the payer just confirms instead of typing in numbers.
In other words, every CoDi payment ends up as a SPEI transfer — just with fewer manual steps and less room for error when collecting a payment. If your business already gets paid by transfer and needs to validate the SPEI receipts you receive, CoDi doesn't change that part of the process: each operation is still a transfer worth confirming against Banxico's CEP before you hand over a product or service.
Does CoDi Charge a Fee or Commission?
Banxico designed CoDi to be free for both the person paying and the person collecting, as confirmed on the official CoDi site: the operation itself doesn't carry a CoDi-specific commission, unlike what a card terminal typically charges per transaction. Each participating bank can still set its own account policies and terms, so it's worth checking with your institution before turning it on, but Banxico's original design for CoDi was explicitly built with no transaction cost for the end user.
How a Business Sets Up CoDi
To start collecting payments with CoDi, a business needs:
- A bank account at an institution that has CoDi enabled (most major banks in Mexico already offer it).
- To activate CoDi from that bank's app or business-banking portal.
- To generate collection QR codes from that same app, or integrate CoDi code generation into a point-of-sale system that already supports it.
There's no separate terminal to rent and no signup fee paid directly to Banxico: the whole process runs through the bank where the business already holds its account.
CoDi Adoption in Mexico: Where It Stands Today
Since it launched, CoDi has seen slower adoption than other digital payment methods in Mexico, partly because it requires both the business and the customer to have the feature turned on with their bank, and partly because it competes with deeply established habits like cash and card payments. Even so, it remains a live option for businesses looking to cut down on cash handling and avoid card-terminal fees, especially small and mid-size businesses with frequent in-person collections. Adoption has grown fastest in cases where the amount and reference barely change — recurring service fees, memberships, and small retail purchases — since those are the easiest to turn into a reusable QR code. Larger retailers have been slower to add CoDi to their existing point-of-sale setup, since it usually means updating checkout software rather than just plugging in a new card reader.
Combining CoDi With Other Digital Collection Methods
Most businesses don't collect through a single channel: they take payments by transfer, card, payment links, and, increasingly, CoDi. Keeping all of those methods connected to one system saves the collections team from checking five different apps to see what's been paid and what's still outstanding. That's where a multi-platform payments solution comes in: it centralizes payment confirmation for CoDi, SPEI, card, and other channels in a single dashboard, and it can connect to electronic invoicing workflows to stamp the CFDI as soon as a payment is confirmed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do I need to pay with CoDi?
Just a bank account at an institution that has CoDi enabled, and that bank's app with the feature turned on. No extra app from Banxico is required, and you don't need a physical card.
Is CoDi the same as any bank's payment QR code?
Not quite. A bank can show its own internal payment QR code, but CoDi is the standard Banxico defined so that any participating bank can generate and read that code, no matter which institution each person banks with.
What happens if I scan a CoDi code and don't trust the business?
Your bank's app shows you the payment details — who's requesting it, the amount, and the reference — before asking you to confirm. If anything doesn't match what you expected, you can cancel the operation and no money moves.
Does CoDi work for online payments, or only in person?
It was built for in-person payments with QR or NFC, but some businesses also generate CoDi codes for remote collections, sending the code over WhatsApp or email instead of scanning it at a point of sale.
How is CoDi different from DiMo?
CoDi works through a QR code or NFC tag that encodes the payment details; DiMo is a different Banxico service built for sending money using only the recipient's phone number, without sharing a CLABE. Both rely on SPEI under the hood, but they solve different collection needs.
If your business already collects payments by transfer and card and wants to add CoDi without losing track of what's been paid and what's still pending, at AISDC we build multi-platform payments integrations that centralize payment confirmation across every channel in a single dashboard, connected to your invoicing and collections process.