DolarApp Colombia Review: A Cash App Style Card for Bills, Travel, and Safer Spending

• 💳 You get a secured credit-style DolarCard backed by your balance, which can behave better for deposits and reservations than many debit setups.

• 🧾 You can pay hundreds of bill categories in-app, which fits how life actually runs in Medellín when you juggle utilities, internet, and mobile.

• 🔐 You can lock the card instantly, use 2FA, and rely on tokenization and in-app approvals for certain online payments, which targets common fraud paths.

• 🌎 It supports multiple countries including Colombia and Brazil, with Brazil-specific card options that match local rails.

• 💸 If you want fewer ATM runs and less cash exposure, a controlled card-and-bill-pay workflow usually beats “carry less and hope.”

If you’ve lived in Colombia for more than about ten minutes, you already know the problem isn’t figuring out how to pay, it’s figuring out how to pay without carrying a brick of cash to a Gana, texting a friend for help, praying your foreign card doesn’t randomly decline at the exact wrong moment, or rolling the dice online and hoping your card info doesn’t end up floating around Telegram a week later.

That’s where DolarApp starts to make sense, not because it’s flashy, but because it feels familiar in a way most financial tools here don’t, meaning it works more like Cash App in the US, except it’s actually built for how money moves on the ground in Colombia, including all the unglamorous stuff no relocation blog talks about, other than mine obviously.

Cash App took off back home because it stripped money down to the basics, where you load it, send it, swipe it, and don’t think about it again, and DolarApp is chasing that same idea, except instead of being tied only to the US banking system, it’s powered by stablecoins and lets you load funds in ways that actually matter if you earn in dollars or already live partly in crypto, including ACH, USDC, and USDT.

Now here’s the Medellín reality check, because this is where most people get burned their first few months, since your normal US banking habits don’t translate cleanly, your bank back home starts flagging everything as suspicious, ATM fees quietly pile up, and you end up doing constant mental math every time you pull out pesos while your income or savings sit somewhere else, which leads to that messy mix of cash, transfers, and cards that never feels fully under control.

DolarApp cleans up all these financial confusions by pairing the account with a DolarCard that works like a secured credit card backed by your balance, and that detail matters more than people realize, because Colombia still treats credit and debit very differently, especially when deposits or temporary holds come into play for things like rentals or reservations.

If you use the ATM here, a DolarApp card will help you to end that STUPID dance of exchange rates, ATM fees and that fear of "is my information safe in this ATM". Here's a real world example - Earlier this week, I had to get cash, and I went to a Davivienda ATM, When I use my USAA or Bank of America debit card, I always get the conversion question, it didn't happen here. I used my USAA card to pull out the minimum and declined the conversion, and the exchange rate I got for the DolarApp was 3755/1, with USAA it was 3697/1. So while it was marginally better, but I was also not charged an ATM fee.

This in addition to the credit card aspect is also why it works better in real life, like when you’re renting a car for a Santa Fe de Antioquia weekend and need to put a deposit down without calling your US bank from a noisy counter, explaining where you are, and hoping someone on the other end decides to be helpful, instead of standing there cycling through three cards while everyone politely pretends not to stare.

Once you actually live here, the real value shows up in the boring stuff, because nobody needs another travel card, they need something that handles regular life without friction, and that’s where DolarApp earns its keep by letting you pay bills directly in the app, covering utilities, internet, and mobile services, so you’re not juggling portals, payment windows, and transfer limits across half a dozen platforms.

And yes, paying your EPM or Claro bill inside an app is always better than standing in line at a Gana, no matter how normalized that experience becomes.

In practice, that means the bills Medellín residents deal with every month, like EPM, Vatia, and whichever phone carrier makes sense for your neighborhood, whether that’s Tigo, Movistar, or Claro, stop feeling like separate little admin projects and start feeling like something you knock out in a minute while making coffee, which is what most people expected from their Colombian bank the first time they opened an account.

There’s also a quiet bonus if you move around, because if you spend time in Brazil or like having that option open, DolarApp supports Brazil too, and it separates how cards work there with Global and Local options, which is the kind of clarity most people only get after making expensive mistakes with Brazilian cards and taxes.

Brazil runs on PIX, full stop, and DolarApp doesn’t treat that like a side feature, because if you don’t understand PIX, Brazil is going to be a frustrating place to handle money, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Where this really hits home for Medellín, though, is security, because the riskiest money moments here aren’t dramatic, they’re routine, like the taxi that suddenly can’t break a 50 mil bill, the packed bar where your card disappears for longer than it should, the ATM run that makes you feel way too visible, or the steady background noise of small scams aimed directly at foreigners.

Security shouldn’t be marketing talk, it should be control, and DolarApp focuses on things that actually matter day to day, like in-app two-factor authentication, the ability to freeze and unfreeze your card instantly, and tokenization so your real card number isn’t exposed every time you pay online, plus the option to use a virtual card number that’s separate from the physical one in your wallet.

Another HUGE thing you can do is if you happen to have a Bancolombia account, you can transfer money into there without issues with money transfer services. I use it to help with my transferring my mortgage payment there. There are transfer limits on this, and it depends on use, but check out the help center for more on that.

For online payments, many transactions also require in-app approval using a 3D Secure style flow, which matters in Latin America where fraud keeps climbing and mobile attacks are common, because cutting out weak links like intercepted SMS codes removes an entire category of problems before they start.

Zooming out, there’s also a bigger shift happening, because Colombia is clearly pushing toward faster, more digital payments and less dependence on cash, and that change is already showing up in how people expect to pay for everyday things, whether newcomers are ready for it or not.

So before you default back to cash again, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question, do you want your money plan to be about carrying less and hoping nothing happens, or about controlling more, meaning fewer ATM trips, tighter card controls, and less exposure when something inevitably goes sideways.

Try It For Yourself

It's a free app, and you can sign up for it, quickly and easily. Use my signup link and you'll get the ATM card free and we get a little credit for sending you over to them.

https://www.dolarapp.com/referrals/arr?referralCode=stevehamilton_GE8

I have a video below about it, and if you have questions, email us, and I'll help you out. Also check out my video below!