Embracing PIX Payments- The Latest QR Payments Standard in Brazil

In 2019, Brazil had the 4th highest number of smartphone users worldwide and doubled in the volume of mobile-commerce within a span of just 2 years, and with that, consumers now expect a simpler and smoother checkout process while shopping, be it online or offline. Keeping that in mind, Facebook, with the support of Cielo, Visa and Mastercard, launched WhatsApp Pay in mid-2020. But it was banned by the Central Bank of Brazil within a week of its launch since not all banks were included in the ecosystem and the processing fees incurred by businesses were very high.

Consequently, to address this growing demand, the Central Bank of Brazil itself rolled out a consolidated instant payment system for making money transfers. This system provides interoperability between all E-Wallets that use QR codes, thus making them compatible with each other and providing a better user experience. The PIX payment system was developed by considering a myriad of use cases, such as fully online payments, bill payments by scanning QR code, peer to peer transfer, in-store payments, mobile commerce, etc.

PIX facilitates transactions between different institutions without the need for any intermediaries, such as card schemes, acquirers or issuers, while transferring funds to the final beneficiary in real-time. As a result, the end-users and even businesses incur lower transaction costs, further encouraging Brazilians to opt for digital payments. Another objective of PIX payments is the financial inclusion of unbanked citizens, which even today represents about a quarter of the country’s population. PIX does not require you to have a bank account to carry out fund transfers, thus promoting migration to digital money.

As consumers still have a strong inclination towards in-store shopping, and many Gen-Z shoppers are following the trend of “Research Online Shop Offline”, merchants now must equip themselves to accept QR based payments, ensuring a truly omnichannel approach. 

Countries such as China, with its world-renowned WeChat Pay that implements dynamic QR-based payments, and India, with its recently launched BHIM that implements static QR for instant bank transfers or GPay by Google, already have a high volume of transactions performed via QR code. While Europe is still lagging behind, the European Council in the European Retail Payment Strategy (RPS) report hinted towards its intention to develop pan-European standards for QR codes. And very recently, Australia announced a launch of a national QR code payment scheme. It is now clear that more and more countries are investing in QR based instant payments. Hence the leading fintech companies and payment service providers have also begun to include this feature in their checkout solutions. With the full-screen display of YouTransactor’s latest mPOS terminal- uCube Touch, we want merchants to have one device that can accept all modes of payments, including QR-based payments.

 

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