- Brazilian central bank chief predicts digital currencies will replace credit cards.
- Pix, Brazil’s digital payment system, outpaces credit cards with 8 billion transactions.
During an event in Miami, the President of the Central Bank of Brazil, Roberto Campos Neto, announced his vision for the financial landscape. He anticipates that digital currency platforms like Pix, Brazil’s instant-payment application, will ultimately replace credit cards and other traditional financial instruments, BNN Bloomberg reported.
Pix, launched by the central bank in 2020, has already surged in popularity, surpassing credit and debit cards as the preferred payment method in Brazil. With more than 8 billion transactions in the first quarter of this year, it has become an integral part of the nation’s financial ecosystem.
This digital payment system, integrated into banking applications and easily accessible on smartphones, is used by over 141 million individual Brazilians and almost 13 million businesses. In October, Pix set a record with a staggering 163 million transactions daily.
Campos Neto reveals that the Central Bank of Brazil is actively pushing forward with new ideas, with two companies developing digital wallet platforms. The country is also working on creating a digital currency and an open finance system that would allow individuals to share credit information with various banks.
Paving the Way for the Digital Payments
Despite his visionary outlook, Campos Neto acknowledged that some of his concepts, such as an “offline wallet” for accessing and transferring money without an internet connection or phone signal, have not been adopted as quickly as he had hoped.
The success of Pix in Brazil has captured the interest of policymakers in neighboring countries like Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay, who are eager to enhance their digital payment options. Brazil’s central bank representatives have even met with their counterparts to explain the platform’s development. Besides that, the Federal Reserve in the United States is following Brazil’s lead with its FedNow payment service, and international organizations like the Bank of International Settlements are studying Pix.
