Main idea

Pix, the instant payment system set up by the Brazilian Central Bank, can be described as an instant transfer with a QR code. The description is accurate and misses the point.

With nearly forty-two billion transactions over 2023, Pix has become the country's dominant means of payment by number of operations. The threshold crossed isn't a threshold of adoption, it is a threshold of nature: the beach vendor and the doctor use the same means, whereas in France those two worlds don't get paid the same way. What links two economies that nothing else links is no longer a banking product, it is a social protocol.

The distinguishing sign is this: you no longer need to ask whether the other person accepts it. A tool is offered; a common language is presupposed.

Why it matters

For a product arriving in such a country, a means of payment that has become a language isn't an integration to prioritize in a list: it is a condition of entry. Its absence doesn't read as a missing feature but as an inability to speak.

And it gives a criterion for telling apart, in a market, the means of payment to support from those to ignore: the question isn't market share, it is whether the usage cuts across worlds that have nothing else in common.

Nuances and limits

Dominance is measured here in number of operations, not in amounts: a means that is everywhere in small payments can remain marginal in value exchanged.

And a common language remains reversible: what public infrastructure installed, a public decision can move.

Open questions

• At what threshold does a means of payment tip from tool to common language, and is that threshold a figure or a diversity of users?