Brazil’s PIX is often cited as one of the fastest-growing instant payment systems anywhere. Since its launch in 2020, the system has become a common way for individuals and businesses to move money.
Discussion usually centres on speed, convenience and mobile user experience. Yet the rollout also depended on a set of structural decisions around participation, integration and use cases that influenced how institutions introduced the system to customers.
Young Pham, Chief Strategy Officer at CI&T, has spent more than three decades delivering digital banking and payments initiatives. Drawing on that experience, and CI&T’s role in building PIX, he reflects on what programmes at national scale reveal about delivery, and why early design choices often carry long-term consequences.
Who were the key players that shaped PIX during its early development?
YP: Banco Central do Brasil designed and launched the PIX infrastructure, but introducing something like that nationally involves much more than the central platform itself.
The central bank provides what you could think of as the bones of the system. Banks then build on top of that and decide how those capabilities appear inside their own channels.
Each bank still has to decide how PIX appears within its mobile apps and how customers will use it day to day. That means integrating internal payment systems and thinking carefully about which use cases to introduce first.
A lot of the delivery work happens at that level. Our work with banks focused on helping institutions connect the infrastructure to real customer journeys, working through integration, product design and how PIX would roll out across their services.
What did delivering something at national scale actually look like day to day?
YP: You have multiple institutions building towards the same launch window, each with their own systems, priorities and delivery timelines. Banks are integrating the infrastructure, updating internal platforms and preparing new services for customers at the same time.
A lot of the work sits in keeping those different streams moving forward together. From the outside it may look like a single system launch, but inside the programme there are many teams across the ecosystem working through integration and rollout.#
What did the rollout reveal about how people actually adopt new payment systems?
YP: A big part of the early conversation was around use cases – how organisations would actually apply real-time payments, whether that was business-to-business or consumer.
In the early days there was a lot of discussion around the business-to-business functionality of real-time payments, because companies moving money between each other in real time was expected to be a major benefit.
What really stood out later was the scale of consumer adoption. That became the big ‘aha moment’ once people started using it inside their banking apps. The growth happened very quickly – going from the first few thousand users to tens of millions in a relatively short period of time, much faster than earlier payment networks experienced.
PIX is often discussed for speed and user experience. From a delivery perspective, what else had to be right?
YP: Speed is only one part of the story. The bigger question is how people actually make and receive payments in everyday situations.
A lot of transactions begin with a request: a merchant asking to be paid, a bill being issued, or someone splitting a cost with friends. Banks then introduce those capabilities inside their own apps and services, which is how customers encounter the system for the first time.
In Brazil that led to things like QR payments and other digital payment experiences built on top of the real-time rail. Once those use cases start appearing in everyday transactions, people begin to use the system regularly.
At the end of the day everyone needs to move money. Real-time payment systems create a basic capability for that – not only for established banking customers but also for people who may currently sit outside the traditional financial system.
Looking back, at what point were outcomes around usability and inclusion effectively set?
YP: A lot of those outcomes are determined earlier than people expect. Once the core infrastructure and participation model are defined, banks start building services around those foundations.
Decisions around identity, payment initiation and access points tend to stay in place once the system is operating at national scale.
That’s why the early design phase matters so much. The way institutions connect to the system and introduce it inside their channels influences how different groups of customers experience it.
Those early choices tend to stay in place for a long time. Every generation brings a whole new mass audience into financial services, and their expectations around payments are different – no one should be playing catch up to these needs and behavioural shifts, but anticipating and integrating them into the build.
As other markets continue developing their own real-time payment systems, which lessons from PIX stand out most?
YP: One lesson from Brazil is how much the early structural decisions matter. The central bank provided the infrastructure, but the framework around participation, integration and use cases helped banks introduce the system in a consistent way across the market. That created the conditions for adoption to grow quickly once PIX became available inside banking apps.
Another point is that infrastructure alone doesn’t drive usage. Institutions still need to connect the capability to situations customers recognise – paying a merchant, sending money to someone they know, settling everyday transactions.
There are also practical benefits for governments and banks. Managing physical cash carries significant cost, so digital payment infrastructure can simplify parts of that system over time.
When those elements come together, the system becomes part of daily financial activity rather than just another payment option.
As the UK continues developing its real-time payments infrastructure, what lessons from Brazil feel most relevant?
YP: One thing I would say is: stay away from trying to solve every regulatory scenario upfront. When you roll something out nationally, if the goal is to think through every possible constraint before you begin, you can lose years doing that.
What matters more is regulatory oversight with a sense of sequence. Think about it in layers. Start with the underlying use case – access to people – and decide what guardrails you need around that first. Then, as usage grows and you start reaching different groups, including people who have been outside the banking system, you add the next layer.
I tend to describe that as chapters. I try to stay away from the usual digital transformation language around fail-fast. For banks, this is usually the better frame – you build the first chapter, learn from it, then build the next one.
If you try to create the perfect instrument on day one, whether that is the regulation or the technology built around it, it will take too long. And by the time you finish, you will probably be solving for the wrong thing.
One risk for established markets is moving too slowly while others move ahead. Countries across Latin America are already introducing similar real-time systems and thinking about how to leapfrog older payment models.