Brazil’s Wildly Popular Instant-Payment System Is Going Global

Brazil’s instant-payment system has quickly become a hit at home, with more than 160 million users since it was launched by the central bank in late 2020. Now the plan is to take it global.

As policymakers from the Group of 20 Nations meet in Sao Paulo this week, Brazil’s central bank is discussing how to make cross-border payments faster and cheaper. It considers its own free-transfer system, known as Pix, as part of the answer.

Pix now surpasses credit and debit cards as the preferred method of payment in Brazil, sparking interest across Latin America, Europe and Africa, ...