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 05
Cross-border
Inbound and outbound remittance corridors, tourism flows, FX markup on retail cross-border, and the country's posture on stablecoin adoption. Corridor figures come from the World Bank RPW feed or the publishing central bank; both are cited when they disagree.
Remittance inflows
USD · 2024
Remittance outflows
USD · 2024
Inbound tourism spend
BRL · 2024
Outbound tourism spend
BRL · 2024
Avg. corridor cost
% · Q4 2024
Net receiver
Top inbound corridors
- United StatesUS$3.2B
via MTO
- PortugalUS$410M
via bank
- JapanUS$330M
via MTO
Top outbound corridors
- ParaguayUS$520M
via MTO
- BoliviaUS$280M
via MTO
Cross-border card
Card flow leaving and arriving
Cards issued domestically and used abroad reflect outbound consumer travel and cross-border e-commerce; volume acquired from abroad reflects inbound tourism and foreign online shoppers.
Issued volume spent abroad
BRL/year · 2024
Acquired volume from abroad
BRL/year · 2024
FX cost
What consumers pay above the interbank
Retail FX markup is the spread between the mid-market rate and the rate the consumer receives — the single largest friction point in small-ticket cross-border.
- FX regime
- managed-float
- Reference
- BRL floats since 1999 under BCB management; IOF tax on cross-border transactions being phased out 2024-2028
Source · Banco Central do Brasil
Full reference
Remittances
Net Position: receiver
Source: