Collecting overdue payments on WhatsApp in Colombia: hours and rules under Law 2300 of 2023

Collecting on WhatsApp works because the customer reads the message. For the same reason, Colombia’s Law 2300 of 2023, popularly called the “dejen de fregar” (stop bugging us) law, limits when and how often someone can be contacted about a debt. It was signed on July 10, 2023, took effect three months after its promulgation (article 10), and breaches are sanctioned by the Financial Superintendence and the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (article 9).

Which hours does the law set?

Day	Window allowed for collection
Monday to Friday	7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Saturday	8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Sunday and public holidays	No contact

The exception is in the paragraph of article 3: if the consumer wants to be contacted at other times, they say so expressly, through an instrument separate from the contract and signed after it.

How often, and through which channels?

Article 3 says that once direct contact is established, the consumer may not be contacted through several channels within the same week or more than once on the same day. Article 2 limits the channels to those the consumer authorized.

In practice, for collecting on WhatsApp that means:

1. Request and keep the channel authorization. The customer agreed to be messaged on WhatsApp, not just that you have their number.
2. At most one collection message a day. And if you already reached them through another channel that week, the law does not let you add WhatsApp as one more.
3. Inside the window. A reminder that goes out by itself at 9 p.m. is outside the law even if nobody sent it by hand.

What can you not do when collecting?

• Write to their references (article 4).
• Visit their home or workplace (article 6). The exceptions are microcredit and development, agricultural or rural loans with express authorization, and cases where there are no updated channels and messages cannot be delivered.
• Ask why they did not pay (article 7). You may offer payment alternatives suited to their situation.

What does not count as collection?

Article 8 exempts contacts that confirm transactions, that send information the consumer requested and fraud alerts. If the customer writes on a Sunday asking how much they owe, answering is requested information.

And WhatsApp’s own rules?

They stack on top of the law. If more than 24 hours have passed since the customer’s last message, Meta only allows writing with an approved template, and its messaging policy requires getting the person’s consent and honoring their block requests.

How Meteor does it

• Your country’s rule. In a Colombian account, Settings → Chat → Advanced has the rule labeled in Spanish “Horario legal de contacto · Ley 2300 de 2023” (legal contact hours). When it is on, broadcasts and follow-ups you initiate wait for the next opening: Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., never on Sundays or public holidays. Anything outside the window is postponed, not lost. And anyone tagged “No difundir” (do not broadcast) receives neither broadcasts nor follow-ups.
• If the customer writes, the Met answers. The rule limits what you start, not the reply to someone asking about their balance, just like article 8.
• The receivables task runs at the time you choose. The receivables automation lists overdue invoices in Alegra and schedules a reminder with an approved template. That scheduled reminder does not go through the country rule: pick a time inside the window and exclude public holidays yourself, because the recurring trigger does not tell them apart.
• Payment in the same chat. With Wompi, the Met creates a link in pesos to pay by PSE, Nequi, Bancolombia or card, and only treats the payment as done when Wompi returns it approved. The PSE and Nequi recipe shows the flow. If you already use Mercado Pago, the link is a Checkout Pro link.
• After two unanswered attempts, a person. The receivables automation tags the contact and hands it to the account owner instead of insisting.

What Meteor does not do: decide for you which channels each customer authorized, or whether your receivables count as collecting from a consumer. That stays with your business.

What this is not

This is not legal advice. The law is cited by number from its official text, accessed on October 28, 2026. If you run collections at scale or through a third party, review your process with a lawyer.