Brazil: Central Bank's regulation on authorisation, penalties and fraud-prevention measures in Pix payment scheme including authorisation criteria for payment institutions entered into force with grace periods for compliance

On 30 September 2025, the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) Resolution No. 506, adopted by the BCB on 26 September 2025, was published in the Official Gazette of the Union and entered into force with grace periods for compliance following its publication. The resolution amends BCB Resolution No. 1 of 12 August 2020, which establishes the Pix payment scheme and its regulations, to revise authorisation criteria for payment institutions that are not authorised to operate by the BCB and that are Pix participants, to strengthen the scheme’s security mechanisms, and to adjust provisions on penalties applicable to Pix participants. It sets transitional deadlines requiring institutions that joined Pix up to 31 December 2022 to request authorisation to operate by 31 March 2025, those that joined between 1 January 2023 and 30 June 2024 to comply between 1 April and 31 December 2025, and the remainder between 1 January and 1 May 2026. The Resolution also establishes grounds for loss of Pix participant status, including liquidation or bankruptcy, non-compliance with minimum capital and net worth requirements, failure to request authorisation within deadlines, or definitive exclusion penalties, and introduces fraud-prevention measures requiring rejection of Pix key registrations, portability requests and transactions linked to users flagged for transactional fraud, with participants obliged to follow minimum fraud-suspicion criteria defined by the BCB.