The massive growth in digital payments in Brazil has reached yet another milestone.
As of the end of 2024, Pix, the country’s government-backed system that enables citizens to exchange funds seamlessly via their mobile phones, has become the country’s preferred method of transactions, surpassing cash, credit cards, and traditional interbank electronic transactions.
According to numbers from the Banco Central do Brazil, 76.4% of the country’s 211 million population now use Pix, followed by debit cards at 69.1% and cash at 68.9%.
“Pix has transformed the Brazilian economy; it expanded financial inclusion, formalized part of the informal economy, and gave the government greater visibility into transactions,” explains Reginaldo Nogueira, national director at the Brazilian Institute of Capital Markets (Ibmec).
“It’s not just a payment innovation; it’s a structural reconfiguration of how money circulates and how the state collects revenue,” he adds. According to the Brazilian Banking Federation, there were 68.7 billion Pix transactions in 2024 alone, a massive 52% increase from the prior year, reaching roughly $5 trillion in value.
The massive uptick was due to increasing person-to-business transactions via the system, which recorded a 90% year-on-year jump in 2024, according to a study by Matera Research.
Pix recorded its largest one-day volume on December 20, 2024, when the system handled 252.1 million transactions.
“The central bank’s digitalization agenda, led by Pix, is in full swing and transforming how Brazilians make payments,” said Rodrigo Teixeira, director of administration at the central bank. The central bank aims to expand PIixs functionalities into the credit side, incorporating features such as installment payments and enabling future Pix transactions to be accepted as collateral in lending transactions.
Pix is also growing on the stablecoin side, with the central bank recording a massive increase in Tether (a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar) transactions over Pix this year. Courtnay Guimarães, head of Digital Assets at Bradesco Bank, explains, “With a crypto account and Pix, anyone can convert funds in real time, gaining access to up to 180,000 assets globally.”
