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Financial institutions that participate in Brazil’s Pix instant payment system must now offer their customers the ability to set up recurring payments, using a feature known as Pix Agendado.
On Monday (October 28), a mandate on the introduction of Pix Agendado from the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) came into effect.
Prior to this week, Pix Agendado was offered by financial institutions as an optional feature, but the BCB may impose fines if it is not made available to customers.
Pix Agendado, also known as “Scheduled Pix”, allows payers to set up recurring payment instructions with either businesses or individual payees.
The mandate for offering Pix Agendado was communicated to firms in July last year, when the central bank also published new operating rules for a similar feature: Automatic Pix.
Unlike Pix Agendado, recurring payments via Automatic Pix are set by the receiver, rather than the sender.
Another difference is that, to use Automatic Pix, the recipient must be a legal entity rather than an individual.
Finally, upon receiving a recurring payment instruction from a recipient, the payer must give his or her consent to authorise the instruction.
The BCB said that Pix Agendado and Automatic Pix have key differences that make them “complementary” services for making recurring payments.
Automatic Pix is expected to benefit merchants such as schools, colleges, gyms, condominiums, social clubs, health plans, streaming services, news sites and financial services companies.
“For the receiving user, Automatic Pix has the potential to increase efficiency, reduce the costs of collection procedures and reduce default,” said the BCB.
“Cost reduction is expected because the operation is independent of bilateral agreements, as is currently the case with direct debit, and uses the infrastructure already created for Pix to operate.”
The BCB had originally planned to mandate both Pix Agendado and Automatic Pix at the same time, but in July this year it pushed back the mandate for Automatic Pix to June 2025.
New rules on security, transactions limits
The delaying of the mandate for Automatic Pix is likely due to the BCB’s introduction of new rules on security and transaction limits across the Pix ecosystem, which come into effect on Friday (November 1).
As per a BCB resolution, a new transaction limit of BRL200 ($35) will be introduced for all transactions made via new devices, alongside a daily limit of BRL1,000 ($173).
For transactions exceeding these limits, the access device must have been previously registered by the customer.
“This measure minimises the likelihood of fraudsters using devices other than those used by the customer to manage keys and initiate Pix transactions,” said the central bank.
“This will make it more difficult to commit fraud in which the malicious agent obtains, through theft or social engineering, credentials, such as login and password, from an account user.”
To ensure the security of funds used in Pix transactions, the resolution also requires firms to use a fraud surveillance solution that is capable of identifying transactions that do not fit the customer’s typical usage habits.
Firms must also provide, through an electronic channel that is widely accessible to customers, information about the precautions that customers should take to avoid fraud.
Finally, Pix participants must check, at least once every six months, whether any of their customers have been flagged in a BCB security database for potentially fraudulent behaviour.
“Participants are expected to treat these customers differently, either by terminating the relationship or by using a different time limit to authorise transactions initiated by them, and by blocking incoming transactions as a precaution,” said the BCB.
