Pix Automático: a game-changer for Recurring Payments

Close to celebrating its 4 year anniversary, Pix, the world’s second-most used instant payment method developed by the Central Bank of Brazil, is preparing for its biggest launch yet: Pix Automático, a recurrence feature streamlining billing processes and subscription payments.?

Scheduled to go live on June 16, 2025, Pix Automático is an exclusive solution for making scheduled payments from people to businesses highly anticipated by merchants: it will enable companies to reach customers who don't have access to credit cards, expanding their total addressable market to a contingent of more than 150 million people, the current number of Pix users.?

With Pix Automático, merchants can eliminate the need for periodic customer interaction, reducing churn while providing an uninterrupted, user-friendly payment experience, leading to higher retention rates and fewer missed payments.?

Going beyond the technical capabilities of this new recurrence feature, Pix Automático consolidates Pix as a P2B payment method, turning it from a gateway to Brazil's huge consumer market to a powerful tool for attracting new customers (to give you an idea, 95% of people who made their first purchase at one of the EBANX's partner online stores paid it with Pix), retaining them, and increasing revenue.?

According to EBANX's insights, businesses using Pix have already seen a 16% boost in revenue and a 25% increase in customer base. As Pix Automático launches, those numbers are set to climb even higher, especially in sectors like streaming, SaaS, and digital media.

The potential of Pix Automático is truly amazing, even more so because its launch comes at a time when P2B transactions have almost doubled the share of monthly Pix transactions, jumping from 22% to 40%, and when we are seeing a global boom in recurring payments in verticals such as streaming, SaaS and digital media, a trend we are also experiencing in Brazil. So we have a very suitable market scenario for this launch, in addition to Pix's popularity with consumers and the simplified integration and payment process for companies. (Fabio Scopeta, CPTO of EBANX)

How Pix Automático works

The great thing about Pix Automático is its frictionless approach: users will be able to authorize future Pix transactions with a simple QR code scan or by providing their banking details. After setting it up, payments will be automatically processed at the specified frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or annually), minimizing missed payments and improving customer satisfaction.?

The Central Bank of Brazil has designed four different authorization journeys. The authorization journey is the way in which the merchant will offer the Pix Automático to its customer, according to previously defined parameters (such as the debit date, the periodicity of the recurring transaction, the amount of the transaction, fixed or variable, and the retry rules). Users must accept the offer once for recurring transactions to be made.?

Each authorization journey meets the specific needs of different business models. It can be used by flexible pricing models, allowing recurring payments within a pre-agreed range, by fixed pricing models, or by combining a one-time payment with a subscription, and it is up to the merchant to decide which journey to adopt.

1. Notification Journey This is ideal for merchants that have the customer's bank account information. The Pix Automático request is sent directly with push notifications.
2. QR Code Journey Simple subscription models, where customers are billed regularly with no need for manual payment.
3. QR Code & Instant Payment Journey One-time purchases combined with subscription services allow customers to make an immediate purchase and set up recurring payments in one step.
4. Pix Automático Opt-In Journey One-time payments with Opt-In subscriptions, where customers can have the option of performing regular manual payments or signing up for a subscription.

Ready now for Day 1

As an early adopter of Pix Automático, EBANX has been closely following the Central Bank of Brazil's timeline and is already prepared to start integrating global merchants with the new recurring feature.?

Since October 1st, EBANX provided early access to all the technical documentation needed for integration with EBANX's API for Pix Automático. And, from December 1st, EBANX's partners will be able to start backend development and test their integration in a simulated environment, ensuring they’re ready to roll by June next year.

All the specs on EBANX's API for Pix Automático can be found here .?

Looking ahead

Since its launch in November 2020, Pix has been on an upward trajectory with few parallels. Currently, Pix is used by 154 million people and 15 million businesses, having transacted more than USD 2 trillion in the first half of this year alone.?

The only real-time payment system as large in terms of number of transactions, volume and users is India's UPI, another prime example of how payment innovation is driven by rising markets – for comparison, Pix today accounts for 14% of all instant transactions made in the world, while UPI accounts for 46%.?

Like UPI, Pix has also played an important role as an enabler of financial and digital inclusion: According to the Central Bank of Brazil, it integrated 71.5 million users into the financial system in its first two years of operation. Now, it should have a similar impact by allowing millions of consumers to access recurring payments, which in practice means connecting with services and products that were not available before.?

Finally, while Pix Automático is an important new step in the process of financial and digital inclusion promoted by the instant payment method, it is not the only development on the roadmap spearheaded by the Central Bank of Brazil. Other innovations in Pix are expected to further enhance the success of the system, including payments via mobile proximity, with installment payments, for foreign accounts, and made with the consumer being offline.?

That's all for now, see you!