The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has approved the start of a feasibility assessment into interlinking the Eurosystem’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform with Pix, Brazil’s fast payment system. The work will be carried out in close collaboration with the Central Bank of Brazil and will examine technical, operational, legal and business considerations.
The ECB links the initiative to the economic flows between the euro area and Brazil, which it describes as significant. According to the central bank, connecting the two systems could make instant payments between the two regions faster and lower in cost. The decision concerns an assessment only. The ECB has not committed to building the link, and no timeline for the review or any later implementation has been disclosed.
Pix is owned and operated by the Central Bank of Brazil. It processes approximately 250 million real-time payments per day, with transactions settled directly in central bank money. TIPS serves as the Eurosystem’s platform for settling instant payments. A potential interlink would therefore connect two infrastructures run by central banks, which places the governance and legal dimensions of the review alongside the technical work.
Part of a wider cross-border portfolio
The Pix assessment is one of several initiatives the Eurosystem is pursuing to connect TIPS with fast payment systems outside the euro area. These include joining Nexus Global Payments, the multilateral network of instant payment systems initially launched by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). In addition, the Eurosystem is also working on a bilateral link with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), developed by the National Payments Corporation of India and regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. A third initiative involves a bilateral link with the Swiss Interbank Clearing Instant Payments system, developed by the Swiss National Bank.
Taken together, these initiatives show the Eurosystem combining two approaches: participation in a multilateral network through Nexus, and a series of bilateral connections with individual national systems. The inclusion of Pix would extend the bilateral track to Latin America, alongside the existing work involving India and Switzerland. Further details are available on the ECB’s cross-border payments webpage.
Policy framework
The ECB places the work within the G20 roadmap for cross-border payments, which aims to create a faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more accessible global payments ecosystem while keeping instant payments secure and reliable.
The initiatives are also aligned with the Eurosystem’s comprehensive payments strategy, which envisages advancing the integration of global cross-border payments by improving existing infrastructure rather than building separate systems. Within this framework, interlinking domestic instant payment systems is presented as a route to shortening and simplifying cross-border payment chains.
For the payments ecosystem, the findings across the four areas under review are expected to determine whether the ECB and the Central Bank of Brazil move towards an operational link between TIPS and Pix.
