- In practice, a key for using PIX can be the user’s taxpayer registry number (known by the acronym CPF in Portuguese), cellphone number, or e-mail address;
- To date, 677 institutions are ready to start securely registering keys;
- But it’s important to point out that the key is a facilitator of transactions within the future system, but that it is not mandatory.
Brazil’s instant payments system, PIX, reached three million registered keys on the first day of registration, the country’s Central Bank informed on Monday.
One of the main projects of the Brazilian Central Bank to encourage greater competition among financial institutions, PIX will allow people to make bank transfers and payments 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In practice, a key for using PIX can be the user’s taxpayer registry number (known by the acronym CPF in Portuguese), cellphone number, or e-mail address. As users can’t use the same key in two different financial institutions, banks and fintechs such as Itaú and MercadoPago started a race to a kind of “pre-registration” of these keys in September.
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To date, 677 institutions are ready to start securely registering keys (here is the list of institutions already approved by the Central Bank, and those that are still in the middle of the process). This part of the process is going to take place until November 2.
It is still unclear whether Brazilian users really understood PIX. Several institutions have asked for the registration of keys through their applications and internet banking interfaces. Perhaps users will only understand the limitations implicit in PIX when using the system starting in November.
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By registering his or her keys beforehand, the account holder will have the convenience of this action being ready on November 16. It’s important to point out that the key is a facilitator of transactions within the future system, but that it is not mandatory, since it will be possible to also make operations by manually entering data or reading a QR Code. Besides that, users can register keys whenever they want, and also change institutions within PIX as many times as they want.
Asked about instability in the applications of some of the major banks in the country this Monday and if this may be related to an overload caused by the registration of keys, the Brazilian Central Bank stated that “the last information we had is that it is normalized now”, and that there is no deadline for registration.
Translated and co-writen by LABS
