Yape and Plin: limits, differences, and how to get paid
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Yape and Plin have been interoperable since 2023: money moves from one to the other using just a phone number, free of charge, no matter which bank is behind each wallet. A small business doesn't need to sign up for anything — just publish the number that receives the money and ask the buyer for the operation code.
They're the two wallets used by half of Peru, and the most common confusion is thinking you have to pick one. You don't: whoever has Plin can pay into your Yape, and the other way around.
How they differ
| Yape | Plin | |
|---|---|---|
| Who's behind it | BCP | Interbank, BBVA, Scotiabank and others |
| How you send money | Phone number | Phone number |
| Cost for the user | Free | Free |
| Between the two | Interoperable since 2023, no added cost | |
Yape is the most used wallet in the country, with more than 15 million users. Plin isn't one single app but a network shared between several banks: if your bank isn't BCP, chances are your wallet is Plin, even if it doesn't show up under that name in your app.
How much you can send
The SBS set the cap at S/ 3,300 per operation (0.6 UIT) starting in March 2026. But that's the legal maximum, not necessarily yours: each bank applies its own, usually quite a bit lower by default.
This is the difference that causes the most trouble when charging for something expensive. An Interbank customer, for example, might have a cap of S/ 500 per transaction and S/ 2,000 per day, well below the legal maximum. If you're selling an item for S/ 800 and your buyer can't raise their limit on the spot, the sale falls through.
Two ways around it, worth having thought through before it happens:
- Charge in parts. Two operations back to back, within their daily cap. Clunky, but it works and it's what everyone ends up doing.
- Offer a bank transfer for larger amounts. It doesn't carry those caps, and past a certain amount buyers already expect it.
How to actually get paid with them in a business
No contract, no merchant sign-up, no sales commission needed. You publish your number, the buyer sends the money from their app and gives you the operation code. You confirm once you see it land in your account.
- Publish the number and the account holder's name. The number alone isn't enough: buyers want to see whose name it's going to before sending money to a stranger.
- Ask for the operation code, not a screenshot. A screenshot can be faked in thirty seconds; the code lets you match it against your own app.
- You confirm it. Neither Yape nor Plin notifies your website when money comes in. There's no automatic confirmation, so you're the one who marks the order as paid, by checking your account.
The most common fraud: an edited screenshot, or one from a different operation entirely. That's why the rule never changes — the buyer claims they paid, you confirm it arrived. Never the other way around.
What Yape and Plin don't do
There's no cart, no stock control, no way to know what each person bought. They're a money channel, not a sales one: they move the payment, not the order. That's why it's common to pair them with a catalog where the customer puts together what they want, and use the wallet only to collect the payment.
Get paid with Yape and Plin from your catalog
In MyShopLink you set up your payment methods with the number that receives the money, and the buyer sees them when placing the order, along with the amount and a field for the operation code.