Central Bank Chief: Brazil’s Banks Do Not Lose Money With Pix

The head of Brazil’s central bank is refuting the idea that banks lose money with the country’s Pix instant payment system.

As Reuters reported Friday (Aug. 12), Roberto Campos Neto spoke at an event hosted by banking lobby group Febraban, where he said Pix had impacted revenues to some extent, because it doesn’t charge the transfer fees the way banks did.

However, the system offers new services, raises the volume of transactions, and cuts cash costs for banks, he argued.

Pix, owned by the Central Bank of Brazil, has been a major success, Reuters said, recently surpassing the volume of credit and debit card transactions in the country.

The system, which has been called “a government-built version of Venmo,” was unveiled at the end of 2020 and quickly ballooned in popularity, due largely to its simplicity and ease of use.

See also: How Brazil Serves as a Payment Innovation Blueprint for Latin America

As PYMNTS reported in April, 60% of Brazilians report using it on a regular basis, and 2021 saw more than 8 billion transactions logged on the platform.

Another indication of its popularity is the fact that 59% of Brazilian consumers said they had given up on an online purchase due to a lack of digital payment options. Just 18% said they did not see the appeal of instant payments in online shopping.

Campos Neto said central bankers from other countries have asked how Pix was implemented and told him their own banks would never collaborate.

Read more: Brazilian CBDC Aimed at Innovation

“In Brazil, they collaborated and that’s why we have Pi,” he said. “Banks understood that, in the end, it’s a win-win model.”

Meanwhile, Campos Neto said he would like to see the central bank digital currency (CBDC) model being created in Brazil in operation in 2024. He said it will promote new business and foster interaction between physical and digital money.

The bank had planned to begin testing the digital coin later this year but has since pushed it back to 2023. Fabio Araujo, an economist at the central bank, has said the project is mostly aimed primarily at financial innovation instead of real-time payments.