Payment Processing · Industry
In the second quarter of 2026, people and businesses in Brazil made 22.9 billion Pix payments. In the same three months they made 11.8 billion payments with credit, debit and prepaid cards combined. Those figures come from the Banco Central do Brasil's own payment statistics, and the gap is widening: in the same quarter of 2025 the ratio was 1.7 to 1, and in 2024 1.4 to 1.
Not all of that is shopping: Pix began as a way to send money between people, and plenty of it still is. But the central bank's latest Pix management report says 43% of Pix transactions in 2025 went from individuals to businesses, up from 6% in 2020. For a merchant in Brazil, or one selling to Brazilians from abroad, Pix is no longer the alternative payment method. This guide sets out what accepting it costs, read from each provider's own pages on 7 October 2026, and what a merchant gives up by taking it.
Pix is run by the central bank, which sets the rules but not the price. Its regulation lets payment providers charge for a purchase made with Pix only to the business receiving it; individuals pay nothing to send. There is no interchange, because no card issuer stands between the customer's bank and the merchant's, so what a merchant pays is simply its provider's price.
That price is low because there is less underneath it. A card payment carries interchange to the issuing bank and scheme fees to the network; a Pix payment moves directly between bank accounts and settles in seconds. Our explainer on foreign card fees breaks a card's price into those layers.
Three of the providers reviewed on this site publish Pix and card prices for Brazilian businesses side by side. On a R$100 sale:
On those published prices, Pix online costs a Brazilian merchant roughly a fifth to a quarter of what an immediately settled credit card does, and in store at Mercado Pago about a tenth. The gap narrows if you accept slower card settlement, which lowers the card price. It widens for a merchant who absorbs the cost of interest-free instalments (parcelado), which many Brazilian shoppers expect on a card and which Pix does not offer natively: Mercado Pago lists 6.91% for a sale split into two instalments on its Point machine, rising to 19.50% for twelve, on top of the processing fee.
A business outside Brazil cannot connect to Pix directly. It needs a provider that collects the payment in Brazil through a locally licensed partner and pays it out abroad. Stripe's documentation says its partner, EBANX, appears as the recipient and on the customer's bank statement, with the merchant's name in the payment's identifier. The reviewed providers that publish a price, on a US$100 sale:
Those three are not on the same basis. Stripe's figure includes its conversion fee; dLocal's leaves the exchange cost to whoever is pricing in the foreign currency; Paddle's includes the tax and compliance work that a merchant of record does. What is consistent is that at each of them Pix costs the same as or less than a card.
Adyen (A-) lists Pix at US$0.13 per transaction plus a volume-based fee it does not publish, and its documentation says a merchant needs a local entity in Brazil to accept Pix through it, which rules it out for most foreign sellers. EBANX (B-), Rapyd (B-) and Nuvei (B) document Pix but publish no price for it.
Brazil levies IOF, a tax on financial transactions, on foreign-exchange operations. Decree 12,499 of 2025 sets it at 3.5% on card purchases abroad and on other foreign-exchange payments for goods and services; it does not name Pix, but Stripe and Paddle both treat a cross-border Pix purchase as subject to it. Stripe's default is that the customer pays it on top of the price, and it offers suggested checkout wording saying so; a merchant can choose to absorb it instead. Paddle also passes IOF to the customer. Either way, a Brazilian paying a foreign seller pays about 3.5% more than the price on the page unless the seller absorbs it, which is worth knowing when you set Brazilian prices.
A card payment can be disputed through the customer's bank for a range of reasons, from fraud to an item that never arrived or did not match its description. Pix has no equivalent for a commercial dispute. Its return mechanism, the Mecanismo Especial de Devolução or MED, covers well-founded suspicion of fraud, operational failures, and Pix Automático charges made outside what the customer authorised. The central bank's own guidance lists “desacordos comerciais”, disputes about the product or service received, among the cases it does not cover.
That is not the same as no risk. A customer who says a payment was fraud can ask their bank for a return within 80 days. Funds in the receiving account can be blocked as soon as the claim is made, and if it is upheld the money is returned from whatever balance is there. Since 2 February 2026, under the version the central bank calls MED 2.0, banks must also be able to trace, block and return stolen money beyond the first account it landed in. Stripe's documentation says a merchant cannot contest such a Pix dispute: if its partner accepts the return, Stripe removes the funds from the merchant's account. Refunds the merchant chooses to give are separate; Stripe allows them for up to 90 days.
For a seller used to card disputes, that changes the arithmetic of what our guide to chargeback fees by processor covers. A buyer unhappy with a product cannot simply reverse a Pix payment, so the merchant carries less of the commercial risk, and the customer carries more. Fraud claims can still pull money back, and there is no representment process in which to argue.
Until June 2025 a business could not collect a recurring Pix payment itself; a customer could only schedule their own fixed repeat transfers. Pix Automático, which went live on 16 June 2025, lets a customer authorise a business once to collect recurring payments from their account. The central bank's rules allow it only for receiving businesses whose Brazilian company registration (CNPJ) has been active for at least six months; a foreign seller using Stripe or Paddle does not need one, because the receiving business is their Brazilian partner. Stripe's documentation describes the flow for accounts outside Brazil (its Brazilian accounts cannot use it): the customer's bank sends a notice three days before each charge, with the exact amount and an option to cancel. Paddle offers it for subscriptions and caps the mandate at 1.5 times the renewal price.
One feature gets more attention than use. Pix por aproximação, paying by tapping a phone, exists, but the central bank's own report says its use “still shows no clear growth trend”. It puts that down to the feature being limited to Android phones, few banks offering it in their own apps, only one major digital wallet supporting it, and little awareness among customers and shops.
In June 2026 the US Trade Representative concluded a Section 301 investigation of Brazil's trade practices whose findings criticised the central bank's handling of Pix, and from 22 July 2026 the United States imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Brazil, with exemptions. A separate Section 301 action on forced labour added further duties on Brazilian products from 24 July 2026. Both are duties on goods crossing the border. Nothing in either action restricts a US business from accepting Pix, and the providers above still offer it.
Pix is one of several national account-to-account systems now taking share from cards. Our guides to pay by bank in 2026, India's UPI merchant fee and the Netherlands' move from iDEAL to Wero cover the others.
