Earlier this month, the Office of the United States Trade Representative launched a formal investigation into Brazil’s trade practices, targeting a particularly beloved and widely used electronic payments platform: Pix.
Digital payment services in Brazil, including Pix, might be discriminatory and restricting U.S. commerce, the USTR said. Unfair trade conditions could be harming American companies, said the agency, possibly referring to the inability of Silicon Valley giants like Google Pay and Apple Pay to expand their digital wallet market in Brazil.
“These companies never managed to gain a strong foothold in Brazil,” Daniel Santos Kosinski, a professor of economics at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, told Rest of World. Because Pix is free to use, it “is an extremely capable competitor and tough to beat.”
Amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Brazil over tariffs, Donald Trump’s administration has set its sights on the popular payments platform, which has kept Big Tech firms at bay. The USTR investigation aims to not just increase the competitiveness of American companies but also allow them to gain access to valuable consumer data and force Brazil — which has a strong relationship with China — to align more closely with the West, experts said.
“I can’t say tech companies orchestrated this dispute, but there are specific interests behind it,” Christopher Garman, managing director for the Americas at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm, told Rest of World.
Pix, a project developed and managed by Brazil’s central bank, is “a public, cheaper system that reduces transaction costs without the same level of security investment required in the private sector,” said Garman.
The USTR press office did not respond to a request for comment from Rest of World on its investigation into Pix.
Pix is used by about three-fourths of Brazil’s population, or around 160 million people. In contrast, about 6.6% of Brazilians use Apple Pay and 9.7% use Google Wallet, compared to 24% and 11.5%, respectively, in the U.S., according to a 2024 report by PYMNTS Intelligence, an analytics platform.
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Since its launch in 2020, Pix has changed Brazilian consumption habits. Rebeca Neves da Luz, a medical student at the University of São Judas Tadeu, told Rest of World she had stopped using debit and credit cards.
“With Pix, I don’t have to carry cards or worry about losing them,” Neves da Luz said. At one point, she considered using Samsung Pay but eventually decided against it. “I feel more comfortable supporting a national system rather than a foreign one.”
Pix reached 63.8 billion transactions in 2024 — a 52% increase from the previous year, according to a recent survey by the Brazilian Federation of Banks. Pix overtook debit card transactions in January 2022 and credit cards in February 2022; it now dwarfs transactions via credit cards, debit cards, bank slips, wire transfers, prepaid cards, and checks combined.
Part of the reason why the U.S. might be seeking to penetrate the Brazilian payments markets is to gain access to consumer data and purchasing behavior, according to Santos Kosinski.
“Big Tech’s core business is collecting massive data sets about people and society,” he said. “Brazil’s Central Bank won’t sell your data for targeted advertising — a potential profit source for companies like Meta.”
For some digital law experts, like Luiz Augusto D’Urso, who specializes in cybercrimes, the Trump administration’s larger focus is Brazil’s General Data Protection Law. Modeled along the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the law imposes strict guidelines not only on Big Tech companies but also payment platforms, financial institutions, and others with regard to data collection and processing.
Pix challenges the global financial innovation model, which is largely led by the private sector, Gisele Truzzi, a digital law expert at Truzzi Advogados, a private law firm based in São Paulo, told Rest of World. “This raises debates on public digital goods,” she said, referring to burgeoning discussions over whether more countries should consider building their own real-time payments systems instead of relying on private players.
The Brazilian Central Bank declined to answer queries from Rest of World on the USTR investigation.
Pix is not the only homegrown digital payment system to dominate its market: Kenya’s M-Pesa and India’s UPI, also developed by a government agency, have beaten Big Tech rivals such as WhatsApp Pay. These platforms are also being exported beyond their borders.
Brazil has clashed with Big Tech before. In June, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that digital platforms are responsible for users’ content. In 2024, it temporarily blocked X, following a dispute over free speech and misinformation. The platform was reinstated after it paid outstanding fines and blocked a number of accounts.
Another potential driver behind Trump’s investigation into Brazil’s trade practices is a desire to force the South American country to align with the U.S. — and steer it away from China. Brazil is a member of BRICS, a political and economic bloc that includes Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and is the host country for this year’s summit. Trump threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on countries aligning themselves with the “anti-American policies” of BRICS.
The U.S. is trying to curb China’s rise urgently, said Santos Kosinski. “The investigation into Brazil’s trade practices is part of a strategy to expand U.S. influence here.”
In Brazil, where Pix is a source of national pride, the U.S. investigation feels personal and is stirring resentment among loyal users.
“Pix is a public digital good,” said Neves da Luz. “It’s a political choice that payment infrastructure doesn’t need to be controlled by Big Tech.”
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