TIPS Pix Interlinking: The ECB Starts a Brazil Feasibility Study

On 24 September 2026 the ECB announced that its Governing Council had approved a feasibility assessment for TIPS Pix interlinking: a possible connection between the Eurosystem’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform and Pix, the fast payment system owned and operated by the Central Bank of Brazil. The two central banks will work through technical, operational, legal and business considerations together. According to the ECB, Pix processes approximately 250 million instant payments a day, settled directly in central bank money.

For euro-area payment service providers (PSPs), the announcement adds Brazil to the corridors in progress with India’s UPI, the Nexus network and Switzerland’s SIC IP, with no timeline, no participation requirement and no change to TIPS rules. It also raises a question compliance teams can answer today: which EU rules govern a euro payment whose receiving PSP sits in Brazil. That answer departs from the intra-EU instant regime in three places.

Related reading: TIPS cross-currency settlement for EUR, SEK and DKK

Dates that frame the TIPS Pix interlinking assessment

• 21 October 2024: ECB announces the decision to continue linking TIPS with other fast payment systems (an OCT Inst-based cross-currency service, Nexus, a bilateral UPI link).
• June 2025 to September 2026: ECB pre-investigation study on Pix, per the ECB status update of 10 June 2026.
• October 2025: cross-currency settlement model goes into TIPS production; end-to-end PSP testing started April 2026.
• 20 November 2025: UPI realisation phase announced.
• 24 September 2026: Pix feasibility assessment announced.
• November 2026: planned TIPS release for full alignment with the EPC’s OCT Inst 2025 scheme business cases (TIPS-0075-URD).
• H1 2027: planned UPI pilot go-live.
• Pix: no exploration, realisation or go-live date published.

What the Governing Council approved, and what it left open

The decision approves initiating an assessment of whether TIPS and Pix can be interlinked, run in close collaboration with the Central Bank of Brazil. The ECB cites significant economic flows between the euro area and Brazil and the prospect of faster, lower-cost instant payments. It places Pix within a portfolio of TIPS linking initiatives supporting the G20 roadmap, covered in our note on the G20 cross-border payments targets, and ties the work to the Eurosystem’s 2026 payments strategy.

ECB documents label early work differently. The status update presented to the TIPS Consultative Group on 10 June 2026 described the Pix work as a pre-investigation study from June 2025 to September 2026, covering technical, legal, security and operational areas at a high level, with exploration and realisation yet to start. The ECB’s cross-border payments page now lists Pix in an investigation phase assessing technical, legal and economic feasibility, the same label it gives SIC IP. Reading “pre-investigation”, “investigation” and “exploration” as a fixed sequence of gates goes beyond what these documents state.

The label with a clear meaning is realisation: for UPI, the November 2025 decision to start it came with completing the legal arrangements and technical implementation in parallel. No realisation decision has been taken for Pix.

UPI and SIC IP as a yardstick for the Brazil corridor

UPI shows the path so far: exploratory work initiated in October 2024, followed by the Governing Council’s November 2025 decision to start the realisation phase. The June 2026 status update scheduled TIPS technical adaptations for Q4 2026 to Q1 2027 and a planned pilot go-live in H1 2027.

SIC IP is one step behind. The ECB announced an exploratory phase with the Swiss National Bank on 29 September 2025, to run throughout 2026; the June update showed a realisation window from November 2026 to H2 2028, not yet started. Nexus remained in exploration.

My reading is that Pix now stands roughly where UPI stood in October 2024. UPI’s planned pilot falls more than two years after its feasibility decision, but carrying that span over to Brazil would be an extrapolation.

Interlinking and one-leg-out are separate TIPS workstreams

The June 2026 update sets out three stages. First, standard one-leg-out transactions, where one leg of a cross-border payment settles in TIPS, implemented through the EPC’s One-Leg Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme: a first adaptation dated June 2025 (TIPS-0064-URD) and full alignment with the OCT Inst 2025 scheme business cases planned for November 2026. Second, intra-TIPS cross-currency settlement across the currencies TIPS hosts, delivered in October 2025. Third, from 2027 onwards, technical links with other platforms giving end-to-end instant settlement between euro in TIPS and other currencies in other fast payment systems.

Pix sits on the ECB’s corridor map in that third group, so an OCT Inst readiness project and the Pix announcement are different tracks. The October 2024 decision presented the OCT Inst-based service as a way for TIPS to interact with fast payment systems outside the euro area without a direct technical link; a TIPS-Pix interlink would be that direct link. Our explainer on the OCT Inst scheme for instant payments beyond SEPA covers the scheme side.

Which EU rules would govern a euro payment to a Pix account

The link design is unknown, but the legal classification of the payment does not depend on it. On the current texts, a transfer from a payer whose PSP is in the euro area to a payee whose PSP is in Brazil has one PSP outside the Union, and three EU instruments treat that case differently from an intra-EU instant credit transfer.

Transfer of Funds Regulation: the full dataset

Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 allows the intra-Union reduced dataset in Article 5(1) only where all PSPs involved in the payment chain are established in the Union. That derogation therefore does not apply to a transfer to a Brazilian PSP. For transfers exceeding EUR 1,000, including linked transfers that together exceed EUR 1,000, the Article 4 information requirements apply. Article 4 requires the payer’s name and payment account number; the payer’s address including country, official personal document number and customer identification number, or alternatively date and place of birth; the payee’s name and payment account number; and, where the relevant message field exists and the payer supplied it, the current LEI or available equivalent official identifier of the payer and payee.

Article 6(2), however, provides a separate derogation for transfers to a payee’s PSP outside the Union that do not exceed EUR 1,000 and do not appear linked to transfers taking the total above EUR 1,000: those transfers need at least the payer’s and payee’s names and their payment account numbers, or the unique transaction identifier where Article 4(3) applies. Article 4(6) prohibits execution before compliance with Article 4, subject to the derogations in Articles 5 and 6.

Verification is lighter than it looks. Article 4(4) requires the payer’s PSP to verify the payer information against a reliable and independent source, but Article 4(5) deems that done where the payer’s identity was verified under the customer due diligence rules of Directive (EU) 2015/849 and the information retained. For a transfer within the Article 6(2) derogation, the payer’s PSP need not verify the payer information unless it received the funds in cash or in anonymous electronic money or has reasonable grounds for suspecting money laundering or terrorist financing. For an account-holding customer, the operational burden is data completeness in the outgoing message.

PSD2: one-leg rules, minus the execution-time clock

Article 2(4) of Directive (EU) 2015/2366 applies most of Titles III and IV to payment transactions in all currencies where only one PSP is located in the Union, for the parts carried out in the Union. It switches off a list of provisions, including Article 81 on transferring the full amount and Article 83(1), which requires the amount to reach the payee’s PSP’s account by the end of the following business day. Recital 83 treats those provisions as good practice where one PSP is outside the Union. On that text, the speed of a Pix-bound payment would rest on link and scheme rules, with no binding PSD2 execution deadline.

SEPA Regulation: outside the instant regime

The instant obligations added by Regulation (EU) 2024/886 live inside Regulation (EU) No 260/2012, whose Article 1(1) covers credit transfers in euro where both the payer’s PSP and the payee’s PSP, or the sole PSP, are located in the Union. A payment to a Brazilian PSP falls outside that scope, and with it the obligations in our guide to the SEPA Instant Payments Regulation.

Sanctions screening is where that boundary bites. Article 5d requires PSPs offering instant credit transfers to verify their own users against EU targeted financial restrictive measures immediately after any new or amended measure enters into force and at least once every calendar day, and it bars the PSPs executing an instant credit transfer from running additional checks for those measures during execution. Even within scope, Article 5d(2) is without prejudice to other restrictive measures and to EU anti-money laundering law. For a Brazil-bound transfer, which sits outside the Regulation’s scope, EBA/GL/2024/15, applicable from 30 December 2025, sets the relevant PSP screening framework for transfers of funds outside the cases covered by Article 5d, alongside the applicable Union and national restrictive measures. Article 5d’s specific prohibition on additional targeted-financial-restrictive-measure checks during execution does not reach that transfer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What would a euro-area PSP have to check on an inbound payment from a Pix account?

Where the payer’s PSP is outside the Union, Article 7(2)(b) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 requires the payee’s PSP to detect whether the payer’s name, payment account number and the information specified in Article 4(1)(c), and the payee’s name and payment account number, are missing. Article 4(1)(c) requires the payer’s address including the name of the country, official personal document number and customer identification number, or, alternatively, the payer’s date and place of birth. Above EUR 1,000, Article 7(3) requires the payee’s PSP to verify the accuracy of the payee information referred to in Article 7(2), namely the payee’s name and payment account number, before crediting the payee’s payment account or making the funds available. Under Article 7(4), for transfers not exceeding EUR 1,000 that do not appear linked to transfers taking the total above EUR 1,000, the payee’s PSP need not verify that information unless it pays out the funds in cash or in anonymous electronic money or has reasonable grounds for suspecting money laundering or terrorist financing. Article 7(5) deems that verification done where the payee’s identity was verified under the customer due diligence rules of Directive (EU) 2015/849 and the information retained.

Article 8 requires risk-based procedures for determining whether to execute, reject or suspend a transfer lacking the required complete information and, where missing or incomplete information is detected, requires the PSP on a risk-sensitive basis to reject the transfer or request the required information.

Would the EU Verification of Payee check apply when a customer pays a Pix account?

Not by force of the SEPA Regulation. The verification of payee service sits in Article 5c of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012, whose scope under Article 1(1) is euro credit transfers where both PSPs, or the sole PSP, are located in the Union. Whether a TIPS-Pix link would carry any payee confirmation step depends on a design the ECB has not yet described.

Related Articles

• TIPS cross-currency settlement for EUR, SEK and DKK: how intra-TIPS cross-currency settlement works.
• The OCT Inst scheme and instant payments beyond SEPA: the EPC scheme behind one-leg-out instant credit transfers.
• SEPA Instant Payments Regulation: the Regulation (EU) 2024/886 instant, payee-verification and screening obligations.
• G20 cross-border payments targets: the goals behind the ECB’s TIPS linking work.

Sources and References

• ECB, “ECB to assess feasibility of interlinking with Brazil’s instant payment system Pix” (24 September 2026): ecb.europa.eu
• ECB, TIPS cross-border payments page: ecb.europa.eu
• ECB, “Status update on cross-border payments in TIPS”, TIPS-CG meeting (10 June 2026): ECB TIPS-CG presentation (PDF)
• ECB, “TIPS to connect to other fast payment systems globally” (21 October 2024): ECB document (PDF)
• ECB, “Eurosystem moves forward on work to connect TIPS with India’s Unified Payments Interface and with Nexus Global Payments” (20 November 2025): ecb.europa.eu
• ECB, “ECB and SNB explore link between instant payments systems” (29 September 2025): ecb.europa.eu
• ECB, “The Eurosystem’s comprehensive payments strategy” (2026): ecb.europa.eu
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 (Transfer of Funds Regulation), Articles 2 and 4 to 9: EUR-Lex
• Directive (EU) 2015/2366 (PSD2), Article 2(4), Articles 81 and 83, recital 83: EUR-Lex
• Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 (SEPA Regulation), consolidated text, Articles 1, 5c and 5d: EUR-Lex
• Regulation (EU) 2024/886 on instant credit transfers in euro: EUR-Lex
• EBA, Final Report on Guidelines EBA/GL/2024/14 and EBA/GL/2024/15 on internal policies, procedures and controls to ensure the implementation of Union and national restrictive measures (14 November 2024; Guidelines EBA/GL/2024/15 apply from 30 December 2025): EBA (PDF)

Next checkpoints for euro-area PSPs on the Brazil corridor

Two ECB milestones come next: the November 2026 TIPS release for OCT Inst 2025 alignment, and a Governing Council decision on whether Pix moves beyond feasibility, for which no date is set. The ECB’s cross-border page invites PSPs interested in its currency corridors to contact TIPS_cross-border@ecb.europa.eu. The decisions to take now are whether Brazil volumes justify registering that interest, and whether today’s Brazil-bound transfer channels that fall within Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 carry the information required by Articles 4 and 6, including the Article 6(2) derogation for qualifying transfers not exceeding EUR 1,000.

Disclaimer: The information on RegReportingDesk.com is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, tax, or compliance advice. Always consult your compliance officer, legal counsel, or the relevant supervisory authority for guidance specific to your institution.