The silent revolution of payments has just gained a new chapter: Automatic Pix, which was officially launched and starts operating on June 16. With it, a thesis we’ve defended since the novelty was announced has finally been confirmed: it didn’t come to kill the boleto, but rather to replace the old and problematic automatic debit.
The distinction matters. For over two decades, automatic debit was an unresolved promise of convenience. In theory, it would allow bills like electricity, water, gas, phone, or subscriptions to be paid with a simple click, or none at all. But in practice, it never came close to becoming a mass payment method. Only 11% of utility consumers used automatic debit, and in lower-income segments, the rate is even lower.
The reasons aren’t hard to understand: trust in the billing company was always low. Consumers have experienced numerous negative incidents with improper charges, difficult cancellations, and little transparency in debited amounts. The effect of these experiences isn’t limited to one sector: someone who had a problem with a phone carrier, for example, tends to carry that distrust to other services. This helps explain why so many avoid putting even essential bills like electricity and water on automatic debit. Add to this the so-called marginal propensity to consume of 1 to 1, where everything earned is consumed, requiring users to have autonomy to decide month by month what can or cannot be paid. Automatic debit never served this reality well.
That’s why, since Pix was launched in 2020, many experts, including us, argued that a recurring payment feature would be the final blow to automatic debit—not the boleto, as many imagined. It would allow scheduling regular payments with more control, more transparency, and especially more interoperability between payer and payee. On the 4th, during the Conexão Pix event held in São Paulo by the Central Bank, this thesis materialized.
The participation of companies like GloboPlay, Amazon, OLX, and Mercado Pago among the first to adopt Automatic Pix reveals the leading role of e-commerce in this new phase of payments. For utilities, there’s an expectation of growth in automatic payments with Pix, but sector analysts estimate this advance shouldn’t exceed 5%. The majority of consumers still prefer the boleto, reinforcing the structural limits still present in this segment.
The model solves what was perhaps the market’s biggest pain: integration between biller and recipient. Traditional automatic debit depends on agreements with banks, imposing high costs and little flexibility. Automatic Pix is, by design, more democratic: the consumer just needs to authorize the recurrence. This changes the logic of new players entering the ecosystem and accelerates the digitalization of sectors previously hindered by analog infrastructure.
As stated by Gabriel Galípolo, president of the Central Bank: “Pix is money moving at the speed of our time”, this new phase of Pix could do for recurring payments what the first wave did for instant transfers: universalize.
The confirmation of this thesis is symbolic for those following the evolution of Brazil’s financial system. The boleto, with all its problems, still serves a critical function of reminder and control. Automatic debit, meanwhile, was stuck in the middle: neither as transparent as the boleto nor as convenient as Pix promises to be.
And for those who still doubt the speed of this transformation, remember: Pix took less than four years to reach 160 million users. Automatic Pix inherits this base and now has everything to become the new standard for automatic payments in Brazil. It’s rewarding to see this vision consolidate before our eyes, especially in e-commerce. Automatic Pix isn’t just a functional innovation. It’s the victory of a fairer, simpler model more aligned with Brazilian consumer behavior.
*Vinicius Santos, founder and CEO of Conta Comigo Digital. Graduated in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Vinicius also holds a degree in Philosophy from Sorbonne University in Paris (FR). Currently founder and CEO of fintech Conta Comigo Digital, he has led companies like Navii.co, focused on the maritime sector, and Acordo Aéreo, a company with a platform capable of seeking compensation for consumers who experienced issues with airlines.
