Pix: A Flag Bearer for Real Time Payments

Banco Central do Brasil launched Pix, its real-time payment (RTP) system, in November 2020. Pix has a sophisticated technological infrastructure that was developed and is operated, managed and regulated by the central bank.

Pix has proved to be hugely successful and the central bank attributes this to a number of factors, including the standardisation of the user experience, the mandatory participation of the country’s largest banks, the fact that it is free of charge, the variety of use cases it allows, and also the timing of its launch, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

From the very beginning, the driving force of Pix has been its person-to-person (P2P) transactions, which are instant, quick and free of charge. Payments to retailers, both offline and online, have become popular, although use for e-commerce took time as the e-commerce platforms had to adapt their hardware and payment systems to accept the new method. Now that is in place, the majority of retailers, large down to small informal merchants, accept Pix.