Bloomberg Línea — The president of Brazil’s Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, will meet with the president of the cenbank of Colombia, Leonardo Villar, so the Andean country can “copy” Pix, the Brazilian instant payment model. The statement was given at an event of the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban) on Thursday.
“I have spoken with the president of the central bank of Colombia, which wants to do exactly like Pix,” said Campos Neto, who sees room to internationalize the Brazilian payment system.
“I think we can start internationalizing Pix in Latin America. Many Brazilian banks have branches in Latin America,” he said.
Pix, launched by Brazil’s Central Bank in 2020, has seen rapid adoption by Brazilians. By July 31, 2022, Brazil had more than 478 million keys registered. The keys are identifiers for each user, and each user can have up to three keys.
In Colombia, fintech Minka and ACH Colombia have created the Transfiya system, with the proposition of being a 24/7, real-time payment method, like Pix is.
In the region, Banco del Crédito de Perú launched an instant payments arm, Yape, in 2016. Also from a private initiative, Peru’s PLIN emerged in 2020 as a real-time payments proposition.
In Mexico, the Central Bank tried to implement a similar payments system, CoDi, which has not had the adoption of Pix in Brazil. And in Argentina, Transferencias 3.0 is the an interoperability system for instant debit payments. Yet, none of them has the massive adoption that Pix had.
“I could never do Pix in Brazil if the banks didn’t collaborate,” Campos Neto said. “The banks collaborated because it’s a win-win model, it generates financial inclusion and less physical money in circulation.”
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