📱 How Pix was born in Brazil

“Pix belongs to Brazil” has become a rallying cry among Brazilian politicians — and especially within the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration — since the US targeted the country's instant payment system by threatening 25% tariffs on a range of Brazilian exports over allegedly unfair trade practices.

Having reached widespread usage in just a few years — it is now the most common peer-to-peer payment method in Brazil — Pix has also quickly become a source of national pride. Tapping into that sentiment has become a way to capitalize on a politically sensitive subject, as Lula learned in 2024, when a disinformation campaign claimed the government planned to tax Pix, causing his approval ratings to fall.

Far-right senator and presidential hopeful Flávio Bolsonaro — who has been trying to distance himself from the US tariffs that he and his family actively lobbied for — has released an AI-generated jingle claiming that “Pix is Bolsonaro's,” in reference to the system's launch in 2020, while his father, Jair Bolsonaro, was president.

However, Pix was created and is regulated by…

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