The Central Bank of Brazil (BC) and the European Central Bank (ECB) began on Thursday (24) to study the technical feasibility of connecting the Pix system with Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), the Eurosystem's instant payment settlement service.
This analysis will cover the technical, operational, legal, and business aspects related to the potential integration of these two systems.
In a statement, the BC noted that this measure takes into account economic and financial flows between Brazil and the Eurozone. It emphasized that connecting Pix and TIPS could facilitate faster, more efficient, and less costly cross-border payments between the two jurisdictions.
More broadly, the integration of instant payment systems has the potential to reduce costs, increase speed, expand access, and improve the transparency of cross-border operations, aligning with the goals of the G20 Action Plan for improving cross-border payments.
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The TIPS system was created by the Eurosystem as a pan-European infrastructure for instant settlement in central bank currencies. Currently, the system operates using the euro, Swedish krona, and Danish krone, with plans to expand to other currencies within the European Economic Area.
According to data from the Central Bank of Brazil, studying a possible link with Pix complements the Eurosystem's work to connect TIPS to other instant payment infrastructures. These infrastructures include Nexus, a Bank for International Settlements initiative, as well as the payment systems of India and Switzerland.