While the Brazilian consumer sees the ease of paying with a QR code or a tap on mobile, there is a structural change happening behind the scenes of the financial industry. A quiet but radical transition is underway: the migration from the model based on private networks and percentage rates per transaction to a new infrastructure logic that is open, interoperable and instantaneous.
At the heart of this transition is Pix. But the impact is not only technological or operational, but strategic because it changes the balance of power throughout the payment chain, especially in the role of flags.
The gear of flags
To understand what is at stake, one must understand the traditional architecture of card payments.Every time a purchase is made with a physical or virtual card, several actors in the payment chain come into play:
- The cardholder, who makes the payment;
- The commercial establishment, which receives;
- The acquirer, who processes the transaction (such as Cielo and Stone);
- The issuer, usually a bank, that issued the card;
- The flag (Visa, Mastercard and others), which connects all points.
The function of the flag is to orchestrate the network: to define interoperability rules, ensure financial settlement between participants, and maintain the infrastructure that allows a card issued anywhere in the world to function anywhere that accepts it.
For this, each transaction generates a series of tariffs, distributed along the chain. Among them:
- Interchange fee: from merchant to issuer;
- MDR (Merchant Discount Rate): commission paid to the acquirer;
- Assessment fee: direct remuneration of the flag;
- Other auxiliary fees: anti-fraud, clearing, settlement and etc.
It is a sophisticated, convenient and efficient model, but also expensive and not so transparent, especially for the end end of the chain that is the consumer in possession of the card.
The disruption brought by Pix and inra as sovereignty
Pix simplifies this model drastically because with it the payer starts the transaction directly in the app of your bank, the receiver receives the amount in seconds, there are no intermediaries such as acquirers or flags and the settlement happens in real time between bank accounts via Central Bank infrastructure.
Pix is just the tip of the iceberg of a financial architecture designed with technical rigor, institutional coordination and long-term vision.
It works because it was designed as a platform, not as a product and allows banks, fintechs and even companies to create value on it. And it works in real time, 24/7, with virtually zero marginal cost.
The result?A deep cut in the margins of traditional networks where each transaction that migrates from the card to be carried out via Pix represents an operation that no longer passes through the gears of the flags and their partners.
This means less exchange revenue, less reliance on issuers and less volume for acquirers.
And more: with the advancement of solutions such as Scheduled Pix, Guaranteed Pix and payment initiation APIs, even the typical functions of the credit card begin to be reproduced outside the traditional logic of the card.
What does that mean for the market?
The traditional infrastructure was built for a world where settlement was happening at a slower speed, risk was high, and interoperability was difficult. The flags solved this problem by creating global, reliable, and scalable networks and were largely successful in this mission.
But the context has changed.
With the modernization of banking systems, the advancement of cloud computing, open finance and pro-competitive regulation, it is already possible to replicate much of the functionality of the flags with lighter, cheaper and open structures.
And this change is accelerated by the data itself:
- More than 160 million Brazilians already use Pix;
- It has surpassed debit and credit card in transaction volume in many segments;
- New entrants (such as fintechs and platforms) are opting for Pix as a default, not an alternative.
Does that mean the end of the flags?
No, but it does mean that their role is being re-signified. Flags are still fundamental to some actions, such as: international transactions, loyalty and revolving credit programs, operations in markets with low bank interoperability and use cases where risk needs to be absorbed by multiple agents.
But its central and mandatory position in the payment chain is being challenged, and this requires a reinvention of models, not only commercial, but mainly of technological infrastructure.
The dispute over the invisible layer
Flags still retain dominance in areas such as installment payments, international credit and loyalty networks. But this is also changing. Scheduled Pix begins to compete with installment.Open APIs allow fintechs to replicate reward logic. Financial intermediation is being reprogrammed line by line.
And the more governments and businesses understand that financial infrastructure is a topic of sovereignty and economic efficiency, the more we will see local alternatives replacing bloated global models with decades of rent-seeking.
At the end of the day, it is not a clash between public and private, but between old and new. Between closed architecture and interoperable platforms.Every time a new transaction happens via Pix, it is a piece of the old order that dissolves into code.
What is at stake is who occupies the invisible layer that moves money that, for decades, has been dominated by large global private networks. Now, we begin to see that it is possible to build more open, interoperable and efficient alternatives.
And perhaps this is Pix's greatest legacy: not only proving that infrastructure innovation is possible, but that it can drive inclusivity, efficiency and scale when designed with architectural clarity and a focus on interoperability.
Who sets the standards, sets the future, and every transaction that stops going through a card and happens in an open system is, silently, a piece of this new infrastructure taking shape.
