Latin America · GDP rank #8
Brazil
BR · BRL @ 0.1990/USD
Pix has done to Brazilian retail payments in five years what took UPI ten in India and never happened at all in Europe. The Banco Central do Brasil runs the rail directly, mandates participation for every licensed PSP above the 500k-customer threshold, and built Open Finance on top — the most aggressive instant-payments programme of any G20 central bank. Cards continue to grow in absolute terms but lose share; cash has retreated into the informal economy; Drex stays a wholesale tokenisation pilot with the BCB signalling no obvious retail use case while Pix fills that space.
Tab 02
Consumer payments
How consumers actually pay: the share of cash, the stock and flow of cards, the scheme split at checkout, which mobile wallets matter, and how broadly POS acceptance reaches.
Every figure is authored against a named publisher — click the ⓘ anywhere to open the source panel with the underlying URL and access date.
Cash share of POS volume
% · 2024
Debit card share
% · 2025
Credit card share
% · 2025
Mobile wallet share
% · 2025
Payment mix
At the point of sale
The shares below are POS volume (count of transactions), which reads differently from POS value. For the value-share read, see the card-economy grid underneath.
Share of POS
- Cash22%
- Credit card22%
- Debit card19%
- Instant / A2A35%
- Mobile wallet46%
- BNPL4%
- Other2%
Cash behaviour
- ATM network
- 145,000
- Avg. ATM withdrawal
- R$360
- Cash share · value
- 9%
- Cash share · volume
- 22%
Source · Febraban
Scheme share
Which networks clear the card volume
Scheme share is the split of general-purpose card purchase volume — not issuance, not count of cards. A high domestic share (e.g. UnionPay, RuPay, ELO) means a large share of card flow never touches a global scheme.
Domestic scheme owned by Banco do Brasil, Bradesco and Caixa. Strong in payroll and public-sector issuance.
Share of card volume
- Visa45%
- Mastercard38%
- Amex2%
- Other2%
- Domestic Scheme13%
Debit card transactions
transactions/year · 2025
Debit volume declining as Pix cannibalises low-ticket POS spending; Q1 2026 debit spend −2.4% YoY at R$236bn (ABECS).
Debit card spend
BRL annual · 2025
Credit card transactions
transactions/year · 2025
Q1 2026 credit spend +12.8% YoY at R$810.2bn (ABECS).
Credit card spend
BRL annual · 2025
Average debit ticket size
BRL · 2025
Average credit ticket size
BRL · 2025
Mobile wallets
Where wallets actually land
User counts are the best single scalar for wallet reach, but they understate usage intensity in markets where one super-app carries multi-digit trillions of renminbi or rupees. For flow, see the rails tab.
Active users
- Mercado Pago52M
Q4 2025
- PicPay35M
2025
- Nubank NuConta115M
Q1 2026
- Apple Pay21M
2024
- Google Pay26M
2024
Notable wallets
Mercado Pago
Largest consumer wallet in Brazil by MAU. Pix-native; payroll, investments and credit layered on top of the wallet base.
MercadoLibre Investor Relations
PicPay
PicPay
Nubank NuConta
Largest private financial institution in Brazil by customer count. Embedded wallet, Pix, credit and investment products.
Nu Holdings
Apple Pay
ABECS
Google Pay
ABECS
Full reference