should PIX be offered to the world?

someone is wrong (or at the very least extremely naive) on the internet.

#author_luna #finance #politics #brazil

pictured: Brazilian Miku and the Brazilian Central Bank, made by me with nai

%at=2025-08-01T19:09:44.158Z

what is PIX? #

PIX is an instant payments system for Brazillian banks made by the Brazillian Central Bank (BCB). it became operational around ~2020 with explosive growth.

before PIX, Brazil had (and still has, they're still operating I believe) systems like TED and DOC where every bank is able (forced? I'm not sure) to connect to it and it would provide same-day or next-day money transfers between any bank account, across banks as well. if a bank wanted they could create instant payments but really only to their own customers, their systems allowing such, etc. in Brazil you could create your own private cross-bank instant system like there is in the USA (e.g Zelle) but you'd require adoption from hundreds/thousands of Brazillian banks. nowadays PIX is here so any practical possibility of a new private system happening in the country is gone.

PIX's explosion created so much pressure on all banks to adopt it that it's now ubiqutous. I buy most things with it (many shops offer discounts on PIX purchases!), send money to others with it, etc. it became a system that had hardcore penetration on the day-to-day life of most brazillians, I'd say. the system is attempting to grow year over year beyond just direct transfers, some of the things I'm hearing for future features are:

• using PIX instead of dedicated food voucher cards
• automatic PIX (cutting hard into credit card subscription model), I think that one is already rolled out
• PIX installments (also cutting into credit cards)
  • banks can offer "pay PIX using your credit card" which is more of a bank-specific feature
  • putting it in the system itself would coerce all banks to go along with it
  • more information from EBANX here (english link)
• and others...

market share #

data from the BCB as of August 2025 shows the following in terms of PIX:

• 159 Million individual citizens are registered
• 15.5 Million businesses
• 6 Billion transactions a month

data from the BCB (portuguese, slide 9) for the year of 2024 shows that, in terms of payment method penetration, in order:

1. PIX
2. Debit card
3. Cash
4. Credit card
5. Automatic debits
6. Others
7. Food vouchers

In terms of frequency (same source, slide 10):

1. PIX
2. Cash
3. Debit card
4. Credit card
5. Automatic debit
6. Food voucher
7. Others

EBANX (a payment processor targeting the LATAM region in general) projects PIX to win against credit cards in e-commerce settings by this year:

how does it work? #

not super relevant to arguments, but here for some random gringo's curiosity

it is effectively composed of two "systems" in the eye of the user:

• Identity Registry (DICT service)
• Money Transfers ("PIX")

both are called PIX but whatever. the way that it works with your bank is that you go to the relevant "PIX" tab in terms of UX and register your identity, that can be done via 4 primary methods:

• CPF (equivalent to US' SSN in terms of importance, but not the same number format)
• E-mail (bank sends you an email, you confirm it, then bank submits the info to the DICT system)
• Phone number (same as e-mail but SMS)
• UUID (a random UUID inside DICT references your identity into that bank account)

you (as a PIX user) can have multiple keys registered to yourself, all to various separate bank accounts. to do a payment to someone you just insert the relevant "identity key" to your bank app, specify amounts, give your password, and in less than 30 seconds (or in most cases less than 5 seconds) the money is transferred out of your account and into someone else's.

do other systems exist? #

in fact, yes! various other countries have implemented instant payment systems with various levels of capability, funding, market penetration, etc. this has been sourced by me asking my friends, so the list is non exhaustive (and so, I can't really make any claims of "PIX" being the most capable system). I'm also intentionally not going to go into specific market share research for each system, because I'm just one girl. for filtering purposes, I'm only listing things that are intentionally cross-bank (the "no cashapp, revolut" clause)

why am I talking about it? #

PIX has been suggested by random people online (yes, the whole reason I'm writing this is because someone is wrong on the internet) as a solution to the currently relevant censorship crusade through payment processors as a tool (also the "resources/sources" section from https://yellat.money/). I want to propose counter-arguments to such suggestions.

the post that spawned all this was like such (not exact text):

France and Portugal are using it, and it creates pressure on our government to make PIX a global solution.

first point with it: "France and Portugal are using it", really?

• Brasilturis elaborates on France, machine translated (pt->en):
  • "Brazilian tourists visiting Paris now have a new convenience: it is already possible to use Pix as a payment method in various stores in the French capital. The innovation, operated by fintechs like PagBrasil through VoucherPay technology, allows travelers to make purchases in reais with automatic conversion to euros — a solution aimed at making the process faster, more accessible, and closer to the reality of Brazilian consumers."
• Wise elaborates on the portugal situation, machine translated (pt->en):
  • "Yes, since the beginning of 2025, several Portuguese businesses have been accepting payments through PIX. Portuguese merchants using REDUNIQ (Unicre brand) as a payment solution have the ability to process PIX payments in their sales"
  • "PIX can work anywhere there is an internet connection, but only for transactions originating from Brazilian bank accounts or their equivalents."
  • for Portuguese citizens, there's MB WAY, PayPal, etc, but not PIX.
• by these accounts it's specific businesses letting the tourists use Pix. that's nowhere near "cross-bank instant payment system" to the level of the existing systems running (or being worked to run further, like WERO) in the EU.
• and most importantly, I do not think PIX is being integrated inside Mercosur
  • InfoMoney reported on specific Mercosur-related talks, IN 2023
  • I have not seen relevant news of the system being spread over the countries in our own economic bloc. having random stores support PIX isn't near government pressure enough.

second point: government pressure.

visa and mastercard's "moat" from my point of view is the long tail of single turnkey solution to hundreds of countries. both companies have presence virtually everywhere, so merchants and customers on the internet can just assume those brands exist as the "internet money" (which is very important to the current discourse of steam/itch/etc, because it's all about the e-commerce).

trying to sell PIX to other countries involves both countries being okay with it, and okay with a possible monopoly by Brazil for instant payments (NOTE: we did elect Bolsonaro, we can't just assume the government will stay "aligned" with our views forever) as Brazil would proceed to integrate the system with more countries.

if you ignore that and just treat Brazil as "the bridge between all countries" while inter-country, we're still talking about, at the very least, cross-border transactions between two fiat currencies, which involve:

• tax agreement between the countries. they should be okay in terms of trade
• conversion rates (do you do spreads so that someone earns a profit? what rates to use? etc)
  • visa/mc/amex do it via keeping cash pools on (almost?) every currency they operate in, often times being able to offer conversion rates as low as 0.1-1% above central bank
  • "Notably amex is quite bad at it compared to others and I use my mastercard whenever I'm outside of eurozone due to better FX rates"
  • information from ave
  • https://www.mastercard.com/global/en/personal/get-support/convert-currency.html
  • (in reference to someone else testing the calculator) "yeah, that 0.17% is partly from their own trading diverging from market's most efficient state, and a bit for their profits also"
• linking infrastructure together (who's gonna fund that?)
• what's the goal (if citizens between two far away countries were hooked into the system, would they actually transact more to justify the investment, or would they go to existing cross-border solutions like Western Union)
• what happens to fraud? AML?

the main thing here is that a "global PIX" involves an astronomical amount of money and coercion between Brazil and hundreds of other countries, just to effectively recreate a (still censorable by a singular government!) monopoly for efficiency's sake. it is not a solution that I am comfortable on positively showing to people, but PIX is a system that I am happy to use myself.

what's the solution, then? #

for the current problem, a proper solution is effectively unknown, if you want to have the instant speeds of systems like PIX at the current tech level of society you'll need a centralized system that keeps all transactions and makes sure everything resolves properly.

if you're okay with decentralization and adding a couple more minutes to every transaction, cryptocurrency remains as technology that already exists and can exchange monetary value between any two people in the world (but the on-ramp and off-ramp processes are shit, reliant on each country, not even talking about taxes. but if everyone is into the cryptocurrency and exchanges purely in it then it may make things simpler).

some cryptocurrencies operate at different block times and it'll depend on the risk profile of the merchant to see if they accept a tx in the mempool (instant) or when the confirmation comes out (e.g 20mins for Monero/XMR, which really is the only currency I would consider for this because of the privacy reasons. I would prefer to not have my bank statements out in the world).

others use different methods to derive value in their respective blockchains. Ethereum/ETH (which powers well-known stablecoins, namely USDT, USDC) has fully migrated to proof-of-stake (PoS, not to be confused with POS, point of sale) instead of proof-of-work (PoW), which gives it significantly better energy and cost efficiency compared to other PoW currencies.

another idea I heard from maddy while talking about the topic was create a direct competitor to Visa/MC under a decentralized corporate structure. each country would have a "franchise" of the network, and the main entity would just be there to make the franchises cooperate between each other. I do not know how well that would work, but at least at a very high level it'd require millions of dollars to kickstart just one franchise, then more funding to get trust from banks (and Visa/MC would absolutely try to strongarm competition away, but you may win as an incumbent brand by yelling at relevant governments about anti-competitive practices), connect everyone, deal with chargebacks, get trust from merchants, etc.

the pros of that approach is that if a country doesnt like something, it talks to the franchise and it doesnt become a global problem, which is akin to how Bluesky handles moderation, per-country moderation services for countries that want to be crybabies, including Brazil. the main global entity wouldn't hold the power, but not sure how well that would work (and how to prevent that entity from holding such power, corporate structure-wise).

Brazil has a fuckton of credit card brands but only visa/mc are international. why is that?

this is also very akin to how Wise and Western Union do business, each transfer can go through various on-off ramps on various local payment companies between the two currencies.

another idea (my own, unchecked) would be an "internet wallet" where you use a credit card to add funds to that "wallet" and you have to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL to not accidentally become a bank regulations wise, then you're fucked. I believe pixiv coban does this, and then you'd need to wire pixiv coban into your own site and I don't think thats possible with that system, its just for pixiv's own stuff.

in general, payment systems are absurdly complex. a "replacement" to visa/mc that fits perfectly would effectively replicate the problems that we got. if you're interested, Lextorias' video on the matter is pretty good as it gives a lot of context beyond the current issues with Steam and Itch (do you all remember FOSTA-SESTA????), and how at the very least US law can be changed.