Federal Agency Document cites payment system
The pix has been under the scrutiny of the US authorities since at least 2022.
Three years ago, the United States Commerce Representative Office (USTR) already revealed, in an official document, that the country was concerned about the impacts of the popularization of the Brazilian Instant Payment Platform, in use since November 2020.
“The United States are closely monitoring developments related to the electronic retail payment market in Brazil to ensure that the Central Bank [BC] Brazilian facilitates equitable conditions for all market participants, given the double role of BC as a PIX regulator and operator, a real -time retail payment service, ”said USTR in his annual report on export prospects.
In the document, USTR makes comments about what it classifies as “foreign trade barriers” with the potential to affect exports, investments and US e -commerce with 63 nations, including Brazil, plus the United Kingdom.
The 2022 edition of the report was the first – and unique – to nominally mention the PIX, although later documents have again mentioned the Brazilian financial system.
USTR is a federal agency that is part of the US Presidency Executive Office. Responsible for the development and coordination of international trade policy, the office made it public on Thursday (16), which established an investigation to investigate, among other Brazilian business actions, the government stimulus to the use of Pix.
According to USTR’s leading leader Jamieson Greer, the investigation was requested by President Donald Trump himself to investigate “Brazil’s attacks on American social media companies, as well as other unfair commercial practices that harm companies, workers, farmers and technological innovations” from the United States.
Competition
As Agência Brasil reported, analysts evaluate that criticism from the United States government can be explained by competition that the Brazilian, public and free electronic payment system makes the services offered by traditional credit card operators and WhatsApp Pay, even becoming an alternative to the dollar in some international transactions.
According to the Central Bank, last year alone, Pix moved about $ 26.4 trillion.
“Brazil has developed a means of payment that offers a number of advantages. Pix is agile, promoted a process of bank, inclusion of people who had no account. And is part of the competence and competition law to offer an ever better product,” said economist Cristina Helena Mello, from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), in an interview with Agência Brasil.
One of the possible reasons for Donald Trump’s late reaction is the possibility of US authorities to understand that by launching Pix in 2020, the Central Bank would have damaged the business plans of Meta, a company that belongs to Trump’s ally, which announced in June the release of the WhatsApp Pay functionality in Brazil.
At the time, the goal announced that Brazilians would be the first WhatsApp users to be able to send and receive money using pre-registered credit cards in the application.
A week after the announcement, the BC and the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) suspended the function, with the justification that it would be necessary to evaluate risks of the operation, potential risks for competition and ensure proper operation of the Brazilian Payment System (SPB).
“WhatsApp created a form of money transfer from people to people, but it was doing it outside the legal financial system. It was not integrating with our financial system. Therefore, it escaped the regulation of the Central Bank, which hurts Brazilian rules for monetary transactions,” added Cristina Helena, assessing that as the BC adopted at the time was correct.
Agência Brasil consulted the Central Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on USTR’s mentions to PIX and the Brazilian financial sector, but had no return so far.
