The interesting thing is that Visa's payment rails are cheaper than Pix. Pix charges businesses 0.22% to 0.33% while the Visa network rate is only 0.10% to 0.15% per transaction.

The main thing that makes card transactions more expensive is the merchant bank assuming chargeback risk, but that's because card payments are an entirely different transaction type. Pix is digital cash. You typically cannot get refunded for any reason. Cards are not digital cash. You can get refunded for fraud and unauthorized transactions.

Visa debit, maybe, but they're way higher for Visa credit.

> The interesting thing is that Visa's payment rails are cheaper than Pix. Pix charges businesses 0.22% to 0.33% while the Visa network rate is only 0.10% to 0.15% per transaction.

This is not factually accurate. Pix also has fraud controls built into the platform, and does fine doing far more volume than credit card rails in Brazil. It is an objective success, having avoided US financial service firms from skimming hundreds of basis points of total economic activity out of the Brazilian economy.

Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052371 - May 2026 (383 comments)

Brazil's Pix ‘much cheaper' than card payments, paper by central bank economists shows - https://www.reuters.com/article/business/brazils-pix-much-ch... - March 23rd, 2022 ("Brazil’s Pix retail instant payment system is “much cheaper” than card payments for merchants, according to a paper published Wednesday by the umbrella body of the world’s central banks, highlighting its growth potential for businesses after its vertiginous rise among individuals. The paper, which was co-authored by economists at the Brazilian central bank for the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), says Pix costs an average of 0.22% of a transaction’s value for merchants, whereas debit cards cost slightly above 1% and credit cards reach 2.2% in Brazil.")

Payment technology complementarities and their consequences on the banking sector: evidence from Brazil’s Pix - https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap152_c.pdf - December 2024

> In this paper, we employ an instrument and individual-level banking data in Brazil to examine the effects of a novel payment technology, Pix, on the use of other payment technologies and its impact on the banking sector. We find evidence that Pix increases use of the four most common payment technologies in Brazil among individuals and firms. Furthermore, our empirical evidence suggests that Pix contributes to an increase in the number of bank accounts, their use and access to credit, benefiting different types of banks. The findings indicate that the implementation of new payment technologies yields advantages not only for firms and individuals but also for the broader banking and payment industry.