Pix and UPI payment success stories: what lessons can stablecoins and tokenised deposits learn?

As Pix (a payment method created by the Brazilian central bank) climbs to dominate Brazil’s e-commerce sector, across the world in India, unified payment interface (UPI) has made a dramatic change to the payment system there. These two instant payment systems (IPSs) are aimed at speeding up payments and making them less costly whilst removing the intermediaries involved in making payments - both systems have seen a good deal of success and rapid adoption in their countries respectively. In the first quarter of 2024, with over 13 billion transactions per month, the UPI became a leading payment system in India, making up for about 81.8% of India’s total digital payments. In Brazil, e-commerce, which was previously dominated by credit cards flanked by cash and wire transfers, has seen a difference as the use of Pix payment threatens to take over the sector. In December 2023, whilst credit card orders slipped 5% down, orders paid with Pix (which had earlier surged 22% in the first 2 years…