Pix for cross-border e-commerce: what foreign merchants need to know

A merchant in Europe, the Gulf or Central Asia that starts selling to Brazil usually begins with cards. Within a few weeks the question arrives from the Brazilian side of the business: where is Pix? It is the first method many Brazilian shoppers look for, and a checkout without it loses orders that cards will not recover.

This article explains how a business with no Brazilian entity accepts Pix, what the shopper sees, what changes for a foreign merchant (IOF, limits, settlement, the eFX rules), how refunds, disputes and recurring payments work, and the mistakes that cost conversion. For the method itself, see our Pix page; for the wider market, our Brazil guide.

Why does Pix matter for a foreign online store?

Because it is where Brazilian online spending already is. According to the Central Bank of Brazil’s Pix management report, Pix handled almost 80 billion transactions in 2025, 25.7% more than in 2024, worth more than R$35 trillion. In December 2025, 148 million people and 12 million companies made a Pix. The use has shifted from transfers between friends to purchases: 43% of Pix transactions in 2025 were from people to businesses, 37 percentage points more than in 2020, the year of launch.

In e-commerce specifically, Poder360 reports figures from the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2026: Pix accounted for 42% of Brazilian e-commerce value in 2025, against 40% for credit cards and 4% for debit cards. The ticket sizes suit online retail and digital goods. The Central Bank’s report shows that 76% of person-to-business Pix transactions in 2025 were for R$60 or less, and only 8% were above R$200.

How does a foreign merchant accept Pix?

Through a partner inside Brazil. The Pix infrastructure only processes domestic transactions, as the Central Bank’s report notes, so a merchant abroad cannot be a Pix recipient directly. The model the Central Bank describes works like this:

1. The shopper pays a Pix in reais to a Brazilian institution that partners with the merchant’s provider.
2. The partner receives the funds instantly and confirms the payment, which the provider passes to the merchant.
3. The partner later sends the money abroad through a conventional foreign exchange transfer, outside the Pix rails.
4. The merchant settles in its own account currency, or in BRL if the provider supports it.

In practice the merchant contracts with a cross-border provider that handles the Brazilian side, and the partner usually appears as the recipient on the shopper’s bank statement. Stripe’s documentation, for example, says its Pix partner appears as the payment recipient and in the statement descriptor, while the merchant’s name appears in the identifier field.

The legal channel for this is eFX, the Central Bank’s framework for international payment and transfer services. According to a client alert from the law firm Lefosse, BCB Resolution 561, published on 30 April 2026, amends Resolution 277/2022 so that from 1 October 2026 eFX may be provided only by institutions authorised by the Central Bank. Existing providers outside the authorised list may keep operating only if they apply for authorisation by 31 May 2027. For a merchant, the practical question to put to any Pix provider is simple: which authorised institution sits behind the Brazilian leg, and what is its status under the new rules?

What does the shopper see at checkout?

The flow is the same whether the merchant is in Brazil or abroad:

• The shopper picks Pix and the checkout shows a dynamic QR code and a Pix code to copy and paste, both tied to this order and amount.
• On desktop, the shopper scans the QR code with their phone. On mobile, they copy the code and paste it into their banking app, because scanning their own screen does not work.
• The shopper reviews and approves the payment in the banking app.
• The bank settles it in seconds and the provider confirms the payment.

The banking app does not send the shopper back to the merchant. Stripe’s documentation notes that the checkout stays open while the shopper uses the banking app, and moves on when the payment reaches a final status. Build the page to wait for that status, not for a redirect.

Each charge has a lifetime. In the Central Bank’s Pix API specification, an immediate charge (cob) expires after 86,400 seconds, 24 hours, by default, and the merchant’s provider can set a shorter or longer value. A charge with a due date (cobv) can stay payable for a set number of days after it, which suits invoices more than checkouts.

What changes when the merchant is outside Brazil?

Four things: tax, limits, settlement and statements. The table compares a domestic Pix with a cross-border one, using Stripe’s documentation as the reference provider; other providers set their own values.

Topic	Merchant in Brazil	Merchant outside Brazil
Who receives the Pix	The merchant’s own Brazilian account	A Brazilian partner of the provider
IOF on the shopper	None	3.5% of the transaction value, unless the merchant absorbs it
Per-customer caps	Provider’s per-payment maximum	3,000 USD per day and 10,000 USD per month per customer per business
Settlement currency	BRL	The provider account’s currency, such as USD, EUR or GBP
Statement name	The merchant	The partner, with the merchant in the identifier field

The IOF needs a decision before launch. Stripe’s documentation says the tax is collected from Brazilian customers paying businesses domiciled outside Brazil, at 3.5% of the transaction value. By default the shopper pays it and sees the amount marked up in their banking app. The merchant can absorb it instead, and the provider deducts it from settlement. Either way, the checkout must disclose it, and Stripe notes that businesses in Brazil commonly itemise the IOF on each receipt.

The caps matter for higher baskets and repeat customers. A shopper who buys several times a week can hit a daily cap, and the payment fails at the provider rather than at the bank.

Worked example: should you absorb the IOF?

Example figures, for illustration only.

An online fashion retailer based in Georgia sells to Brazil with an average Pix order of R$250, and 8,000 shoppers a month reach the Pix step. With the IOF passed on, each shopper sees R$258.75 in their banking app, and 70% complete the payment. With the IOF absorbed, the shopper sees R$250, and completion rises to 74%.

Setup	Completed orders	Revenue	IOF cost	Net revenue
Shopper pays IOF	5,600	R$1,400,000	R$0	R$1,400,000
Merchant absorbs IOF	5,920	R$1,480,000	R$51,800	R$1,428,200

Absorbing the tax costs 3.5% of revenue and gains 320 orders. In this example it is worth R$28,200 a month before margins, but the answer turns on the completion gap, which only a test on your own traffic will show. One middle path is to absorb the IOF on first purchases and pass it on to repeat customers.

How do refunds, disputes and Pix Automático work?

Refunds. A Pix refund (devolução) goes back to the account that paid. The Central Bank’s API allows refunds for 90 days from the original settlement, and the total refunded cannot exceed the original amount. Stripe adds that customers usually receive refunds within minutes and that a refund cannot be cancelled once sent. For a cross-border merchant, ask the provider which exchange rate applies to a refund and who carries the difference.

Disputes. Pix has no card-style chargeback. Claims of fraud, scams or account takeover go through the Special Return Mechanism (MED), which lets the payer’s bank block funds in the receiving account and request their return. In October 2025 the Central Bank added a self-service claim button to banking apps. Stripe’s documentation says merchants cannot contest Pix disputes through it and the partner’s decision is final. IstoÉ Dinheiro reports that from 1 September 2026 the window to contest an improper MED return rose from 30 to 80 days, aimed at a scam in which a shopper claims a Pix was sent by mistake, gets a refund, then files a MED claim for a second return. Never refund “mistaken” payments outside your normal refund flow.

Recurring payments. Pix Automático went live on 16 June 2025, according to the Central Bank, and Agência Brasil reports that it became mandatory for institutions on 13 October 2025. The customer authorises a mandate once in their banking app, sets the frequency, a fixed or variable amount and a maximum per charge, and can cancel at any time. Only individuals can be payers, and only companies operating for more than six months can offer it. Stripe makes it available to businesses outside Brazil: each recurring charge triggers a pre-debit notice, a three-day wait and then the debit, so the payment can stay in processing for up to seven days with retries.

What are the common mistakes?

• Treating the redirect as confirmation. The banking app does not return the shopper. Fulfil on the provider’s webhook, and let the order page poll for status.
• One expiry for every order. A 24-hour default suits invoices. For stock-limited items or digital goods delivered at once, a short window with a visible countdown and a “generate a new code” button converts better than a code that silently dies.
• Showing only a QR code on mobile. A shopper cannot scan the screen they are holding. Put the copy-and-paste code and a copy button first on small screens.
• Ignoring the IOF disclosure. An unexplained 3.5% mark-up in the banking app is a reason to abandon the payment, and a reason for complaints afterwards.
• No plan for the caps. Repeat customers who hit the daily or monthly cap need another route, such as a card, rather than a generic error.
• A single provider. If the only Pix provider has an outage, Brazilian revenue stops. Our article on single PSP risk covers what a second route protects.

How does Omno support Pix for cross-border merchants?

Omno can connect Pix through more than one provider behind one API, with routing rules by country, currency and customer group, and cascading: if a provider is unavailable or rejects the request, the payment moves to the next provider in the rule until one accepts. The hosted checkout shows the QR code and the copy-and-paste code, the final status of every payment arrives by webhook, and the routing-decision log shows which provider handled each order. The hosted checkout page covers the setup.