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Instant payments, explained

What did Pix get right about merchant acceptance?

Pix got the scheme side of acceptance right. Brazil's central bank wrote one rulebook, required the largest institutions to join1 and kept the payer side free2, so payers at the largest banks could pay merchants from their own banking app. A scheme cannot sign up a merchant, though. That work stays with the merchant's bank, and that layer decides how quickly a rail reaches the till.

· 5 min read · Ghenadie Cernei, Founder

This piece sticks to figures the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) has published itself. For the cost side of a public rail, see who pays for a public instant payment rail.

What the central bank standardised

The BCB designed, built and runs Pix. It set the rules for participants and required the largest banks and payment institutions to connect ahead of the launch in November 20201. Competition is one of its stated goals: a small bank or a new entrant joins on the same terms as the largest bank1.

Three choices matter most for acceptance:

  • Reach on day one. With participation mandatory for the largest institutions, the accounts most payers hold were reachable from launch1. A merchant did not need to ask which bank a customer used.
  • Price on the payer side. Banks may not charge individuals for sending or receiving Pix. They may charge businesses2. The payer never sees a fee at the till.
  • A scheme that keeps adding rules. MED 2.0, a refund mechanism for fraud victims that traces stolen money across several accounts, became mandatory in February 20263. Every participant has to implement it, so the protection is the same whichever bank the payer uses.

What the numbers say about the counter

In 2025 Pix carried 80 billion transactions worth R$35 trillion. 148 million people, about 86% of Brazilian adults, used it, along with 12.8 million companies4.

The acceptance figures are the more useful ones. In September 2026, 52% of Pix payments started from a QR code and 46.5% went from a person to a business5. A central bank rail became a mainstream way to pay merchants.

The same data has a counterpoint. Pix Automático, the scheme's recurring-payment feature, handled 8.9 million payments in September 2026, or 0.12% of all Pix5. The scheme defined the feature, but merchants use it only once their bank or provider builds it into their billing and signs them up. That last step is merchant acquisition, and a scheme does not do it.

The layer a scheme leaves to the merchant's bank

A scheme can standardise the QR payload, the message format, the participation rules and the dispute and fraud processes. It does not hold the merchant relationship. The merchant's bank is the A2A acquirer: it holds the licence, the scheme membership and the commercial relationship with the merchant.

For each merchant, that bank has to provide:

  1. A way to ask for money: a dynamic QR code at the till, a payment link in an invoice or a chat, or a request to pay where the rail supports it.
  2. Confirmation that the funds have arrived and belong to this sale, fast enough for staff to hand over the goods.
  3. Refunds, where the scheme allows them, initiated and tracked from the merchant side.
  4. Reconciliation by shop, till, cashier and shift, plus an end-of-day close.
  5. Integration with what the merchant already runs: the cash register, the online shop, the messaging channels.

Distribution matters too. A merchant who did not choose instant payments will not start using them because a new option appeared in a menu. Activation is a sale, and it is made by whoever owns the merchant relationship. Mandatory participation brought the payer banks in. Merchants still had to be signed up by their own banks.

How miaPOS builds that layer

miaPOS is an A2A acquiring platform: acceptance software that runs inside the bank's perimeter. It has been live in Moldova since 2024 and went live in Romania in 2026, on MIA and RoPay, both ISO 20022-native rails.

The split of roles follows the Pix logic. The scheme moves the money. The bank keeps its licence, its regulator and its merchant relationship. miaPOS generates the payment request, receives the confirmation and runs the merchant back office.

In practice:

  • Two ways to ask for money: a payload (QR code, payment link, NFC tag) and request-to-pay where the rail provides it.
  • Several ways to reach the merchant: the miaPOS app on hardware POS terminals and SoftPOS, online checkout, payment links, WhatsApp, Telegram via @miaposbot, and existing cash registers through Android Intent, a Windows CLI or the REST API.
  • Every transaction from every channel lands in one merchant back office, with shifts and Z-reports.
  • The merchant applies on the activation form and picks their bank; the bank activates the merchant.

A bank's risk team will find the details in the security model.

What Brazil shows is that a central bank can make a rail reachable from every large bank and free for payers. Getting it to the till is still each bank's job.

The rail is ready. Merchant acceptance is not.

Common questions

Why did Pix spread so quickly among merchants?

The Banco Central do Brasil required the largest banks and payment institutions to join1, so payers at the largest banks were reachable from launch, and individuals pay no fees2. By September 2026, 46.5% of Pix payments went from a person to a business and 52% started from a QR code5.

Does an instant payment scheme onboard merchants itself?

In general, no. The scheme sets the rules, the message formats and the QR standard. The merchant's bank, as the acquiring participant, signs up the merchant and provides confirmation, refunds where the scheme allows them, and reconciliation.

What does an A2A acquiring platform do for a bank?

It provides the merchant-side acceptance layer on an instant payment rail: it generates the QR code, link or request to pay, receives the confirmation and runs the merchant back office. The bank keeps the licence, the regulator and the merchant relationship.

A2A acquiring with miaPOS

Building instant-payment acceptance with your merchants? See how miaPOS works with banks.

For banks

Sources

  1. Pix: objectives and features. Banco Central do Brasil, accessed October 2026
  2. Resolution BCB No. 19 (Pix pricing rules, Portuguese). Banco Central do Brasil, 2020, as amended
  3. Resolution BCB No. 493 (Portuguese). Banco Central do Brasil, 2025
  4. Presentation by Governor Gabriel Galípolo at Febraban Tech (Portuguese). Banco Central do Brasil, 24 August 2026
  5. Pix open data portal. Banco Central do Brasil, accessed October 2026

Written by Ghenadie Cernei, Founder, Finergy. .

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