Our partner Tiago Severo Gomes commented to Metropoles on the proposal under study at the Central Bank of Brazil to restrict access to Pix for banks and fintechs with cybersecurity weaknesses.
The context: over the past 12 months, losses tied to cyber fraud exceeded R$ 1.5 billion, with criminals exploiting the weakest links in the chain, technology providers and smaller participants, rather than the large banks.
The Central Bank's response shifts the focus from transaction behavior to the structure of the institutions themselves. In Tiago's assessment, the discussion marks a new phase: Pix has ceased to be merely an efficient means of payment and has become critical infrastructure of the Brazilian economy.
In practice
- The Central Bank is considering restricting or modulating access for institutions that fail to demonstrate minimum standards of cybersecurity, technology governance and third-party management, acting preventively and more quickly than current administrative proceedings allow.
- For banks and fintechs, the impact is significant: security, technology, auditing, incident response and vendor control become matters of regulatory survival.
- For consumers, the trend is positive, because it raises the protection of the system as a whole.
As Tiago sums it up: calibration will be essential to avoid market concentration and to preserve the innovation that made Pix a success story in Brazil.
