I completely agree with your take on Pix — as a Brazilian, I feel genuinely proud of this system. Transactions are incredibly fast, and easy to use.

What makes it so successful is that all Brazilian banks were required to adopt and integrate it. It works kind of like a simplified and centralized version of the Lightning Network. Everyone has at least one Pix key — often two or more — which can be linked to things like a document number, phone number, or even a randomly generated code. You can also change which bank is associated with each key at any time.

I believe the US isn’t too fond of Pix because it poses a threat to credit and debit card systems, which in Brazil are mostly dominated by American companies like Visa and Mastercard.