Brazil’s central bank is accelerating its effort to shake up the country’s clubby banking industry, using a pandemic-driven shift toward touchless payments to launch its own digital platform, says the Wall Street Journal
Their new youth-skewed payment system, dubbed Pix, was set up and is maintained by the central bank instead of private payments players, unlike similar systems in other countries.
Since its launch in November, Pix is already handling a larger share of digital payments than its private-sector alternatives, advancing the regulator’s goal of spurring competition and getting more Brazilians to use financial services.
The payment system already has more than 170 million registered users, and 7.8 million corporate accounts since its launch late last year. And In February, it made 275.3 million transactions, representing 71% of total transfers.
This article was written by Paulo Trevisani and Jeffery T. Lewis and originally published in The Wall Street Journal.