Pix, blockchain and financial inclusion

Perhaps one of the most important lessons in the debate on financial technology is happening in Brazil, and it did not begin with a cryptocurrency.

It began with Pix.

Created by Brazil's Central Bank and launched in 2020, the instant payment system quickly changed the way Brazilians transfer money. Its significance, however, goes beyond the convenience of sending funds in a few seconds.

Pix has become a relevant case for an international discussion: public infrastructure and private innovation do not have to be adversaries.

Data presented by the Central Bank in its 2025 Financial Citizenship Report help gauge the phenomenon. In December 2023, 74% of the adults analyzed who were enrolled in the Cadastro Único, the federal registry for social programs, had registered at least one Pix key, and 72% had made at least one payment with it during the year.

This figure is particularly important because it measures adoption among low-income people.

The invisible infrastructure

To the user, Pix looks simple.

A key, a few seconds and the money has arrived.

But that simplicity depends on institutional decisions.

The State created rules and infrastructure. Financial institutions developed products on top of it. Companies built the system into their services. Millions of citizens decided to use it.

This arrangement dismantles a false dichotomy that keeps recurring in the technology debate: either the State innovates, or the market does.

Pix shows a third possibility.

Public authorities can build basic interoperable infrastructure and let private actors compete over services and experiences on top of it.

And where does blockchain come in?

Here it is important to avoid exaggeration.

The success of Pix does not prove that blockchain is unnecessary.

Nor does it prove that everything should work like a blockchain.

They are technologies with different architectures and goals.

For domestic payments denominated in reais, Pix solved problems that many blockchain-based proposals promised to solve: round-the-clock availability, speed and low cost for the user.

It would be intellectually odd to ignore that.

But public networks offer different properties.

They allow native digital assets to exist and be transferred without each participant needing a direct relationship with a single central institution. They also enable programmability, settlement of certain digital assets and interaction between applications built on shared protocols.

The productive question, therefore, is not “Pix or blockchain?”.

It is: which infrastructure best solves each problem?

Inclusion is more than opening a wallet

Another caveat is needed.

In the technology world, financial inclusion is sometimes measured by the number of people able to open an account or install a digital wallet.

That is not enough.

A financially included person needs to be able to use services safely, understand basic risks and have real conditions to take part in the economy.

A blockchain wallet does not automatically produce inclusion.

If users have to pay unpredictable fees, do not understand custody, are exposed to scams or must convert their funds through expensive intermediaries, technical access exists, but economic inclusion may remain limited.

The same reasoning applies to traditional financial services.

Access is only the first layer.

Infrastructure as public policy

The Brazilian case suggests a particularly interesting discussion for a left concerned with innovation.

Not all digital infrastructure needs to be owned by a large company.

And not all innovation needs to be carried out directly by the State.

There can be a public layer, open to different participants, on which companies, cooperatives and developers build services.

In some contexts, open protocols can add another dimension to this ecosystem.

This requires abandoning two symmetrical fantasies.

The first is imagining that the State will always be technologically incapable.

Pix shows the opposite.

The second is imagining that public systems can anticipate every future form of innovation.

The history of the internet and of open-source software also shows the opposite.

Adding, not replacing

Brazil's financial future may not require a choice between public infrastructure and open networks.

Perhaps the question is how to combine their best features.

On the public side: universality, stability, scale and institutional accountability.

On the side of open protocols: interoperability, experimentation, programmability and new forms of digital ownership.

Not every combination will work.

Some will not even be desirable.

But there is a principle worth preserving: financial technology should be judged less by the narrative that accompanies it and more by the concrete problems it can solve.

Pix has shown that well-designed infrastructure can change the economic habits of millions of people.

Blockchain still needs to show, case by case, where it can produce comparable social gains.

That is not an argument against it.

It is the standard that any relevant technology should have to meet.