Pix turns two years old and is the most used payment method in Brazil

Pix, the Brazilian Central Bank’s instant payment system, turns two years old on Wednesday (16).

From November 16, 2020 to September 30, 2022, 26 billion transactions were carried out through Pix in the Brazilian financial system, reaching R$12.9 trillion (US$2.42 trillion) transacted, according to a survey carried out by Febraban (Brazilian Federation of Banks) based on Central Bank numbers.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Brazil

The adoption of the payment system was meteoric in the country. In the first month of operation, Pix had already exceeded payments made through DOC (Credit Document).

In January 2021, the 24/7 payment system surpassed transactions through TED (Available Electronic Transfer), and in March of the same it surpassed payments with ‘boletos’ (bank payment slip). In May 2021, Pix surpassed all of the aforementioned payment methods.

In January of this year, Pix surpassed debit card payments and in February it surpassed credit card transactions, when it became the most used payment method in Brazil.

“In the last 12 months, we registered a 94% increase in operations with Pix,” said Isaac Sidney, president of Febraban, in a press release. According to Sidney, the transportation and logistics of banknotes can cost R$10 billion (US$1.88 trillion) a year, and Pix has reduced the need to use cash.

Leandro Vilain, director of innovation, products and banking services at Febraban, says that Brazilians have used Pix for lower-value payments and for everyday purchases.

According to the Febraban study with data from September, 43% of Pix users are in the Southeast region of Brazil, followed by the Northeast (26%), South (12%), North (10%) and Midwest (95) and 64% of users are between 20 and 39 years old.

Since November 2020, there are already 523.2 million keys registered in the Directory of Transactional Account Identifiers of the Central Bank. Each user can register up to three keys or use a random one. Random keys add up to 213.9 million, followed by keys by CPF (114.2 million), cell phone (108.3 million), e-mail (77.5 million). By October, 141.4 million Brazilians had already used Pix for their payments, according to Febraban.

With information from Bloomberg Línea