Pix, an instant payment method created by the central bank, turns five this Sunday and has already generated direct savings of R$117 billion for consumers and businesses, according to an update to a study by Movimento Brasil Competitivo (MBC).
The period from January to September 2025 highlights the speed of this development. During this period, Pix has accumulated savings of R$38.3 billion, an amount exceeding the amount recorded throughout 2024. From MBC’s point of view, two factors are driving Pix’s expansion, the continued decline in TEDs and the increasing migration of transactions from people to businesses for instant payment, whose fees are usually much lower than the debit.
Pix’s apparent expansion puts the system very close to the annual potential of R$40.1 billion, which was originally estimated for 2030 only. For MBC, reaching this level so soon reinforces the strength of Pix and the need to prepare the system for a new cycle of efficiency and modernization.
The study’s methodology compares how much the country would have spent if TED and debit operations had remained dominant and applies this difference to the true volume of transactions via Pix. The calculations use public data from the central bank and cumulative 12-month series to avoid seasonal distortions.
According to the study, each transaction executed via Pix avoids, on average, about 60 cents in costs to the financial system. Although modest in isolation, this value gains dimension when multiplied by the billions of payments made year after year.
According to MBC, the next five years will see a new cycle for Pix. The arrival of features such as Pix Automatic and Pix Installments and discussions about establishing an international Pix would expand the scope of the system and open new fronts of efficiency – especially in recurring payments, credit operations and transactions with other countries. New methods tend to generate new rounds of cost reductions, but they also bring commensurate challenges, such as the need to strengthen security, authentication and fraud prevention mechanisms.
“If the challenge for Pix was to scale in the first five years, then in the next five years it will be to maintain that scale through security and innovation. The central bank model was key to getting here, but systems that become national infrastructures, as is happening now with Pix, tend to move to more distributed governance arrangements. “It is not about changing the overall nature of the system, but about enhancing its resilience and ensuring that Pix remains at the forefront of the world,” says Rogerio Caioppi, executive advisor at MBC.
In the current arrangement, the Central Bank is focusing on the functions of regulator and operator of Pix which, from the point of view of the study, were fundamental to the fast and secure implementation of the system. However, for MBC, it will be necessary to discuss models that increase institutional flexibility, neutrality and the capacity for technological development.
International experiences reinforce this trend. Countries such as India (UPI), the UK (FPS), and Sweden (Swish) have adopted hybrid models, where central banks retain the regulatory role, but share the process with specialized entities.
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