Employee deficit should limit Pix’s advance in 2024, reveals Central Bank

Pix, an instant settlement platform officially launched by the Central Bank (BC) in October 2020, reached three years of accounting for an average of 4 billion monthly transactions. However, although the numbers justify the development of several new tools recently announced, on the other side of the counter the BC faces another challenge: the limitation of its staff to cover the advancement of Pix and other monetary authority projects.

This is what the head of the Competition and Financial Market Structure Department, Angelo Duarte, suggested last Monday (13), in a live broadcast about Pix’s three years and its prospects for the future. According to him, Pix’s evolutionary agenda is impacted because the staff did not keep up with the number of new projects incorporated by the BC in recent years, including Drex, the Brazilian version of digital currency issued by a central bank (CBDC). ).

For 2024, Duarte revealed that the BC should only launch the automated Pix, defined in October during a plenary session of the Pix Forum, which is an environment for discussions and coordination of the various market agents for matters related to instant payments within the scope of the Payment System. Brazilian Payments (SPB).

Meanwhile, launches such as Pix Internacional, integration with digital transaction systems in other countries, Pix Offline, carrying out operations without an internet connection, and Pix Parcelado, which is in the testing phase but with no implementation planned, they run the risk of ending up in the refrigerator.

Although Angelo Duarte did not detail the BC’s deficit in its staff, the problem is already public knowledge and so are its reasons. Among them is Drexit, a term alluding to Brexit that refers to the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. In this case, Drexit concerns the departure of BC employees due to harassment by the private sector, mostly professionals linked to the development of Drex.

However, there are other issues for limiting employees, given the demands of the BC. One of them is the demand for a productivity bonus along the lines of what was regulated for the Federal Revenue, and the non-holding of new competitions. Furthermore, the BC currently lives in a climate that is not pleasant due to the distortion of attorneys’ salaries, due to the incorporation of fees into their salaries.

Despite the functional challenges, the Central Bank announced that Pix will be integrated with Drex next year, as reported by Cointelegraph Brasil.