Five Years After Pix, Brazil Still Paid 4.1 Billion Boletos

Brazilians paid 4.08 billion boletos in 2025, according to monthly payment statistics from the Banco Central do Brasil. That is more than in 2019, the year before Pix launched, when they paid 3.00 billion.

Pix has grown far larger, to 79.6 billion payments in 2025. But it has not replaced the boleto, the bank payment slip Brazilians use for bills, invoices and online purchases. It has grown around it.

A plateau, not a collapse

Boleto payments rose from 3.00 billion in 2019 to 4.12 billion in 2021 and peaked at 4.20 billion in 2022. Since then they have barely moved: 4.19 billion in 2023, 4.18 billion in 2024 and 4.08 billion in 2025, 2.8% below the peak.

The decline is now visible but slow. From January to September 2026 there were 2.96 billion boleto payments, 3.2% fewer than in the same months of 2025. Pix payments rose 18.5% over the same period.

What has collapsed is the boleto’s share. Across the six payment types in the central bank’s series, boletos were 65.0% of payments in 2019 and 4.8% in 2025.

Larger payments, rising value

While the number of boletos has flattened, their value has kept rising. Boletos carried R$3.51 trillion in 2019 and R$6.46 trillion in 2025, an 84.1% increase.

That means the average boleto has grown, from R$1,169 in 2019 to R$1,583 in 2025 and R$1,674 so far in 2026. The average Pix payment in 2025 was R$443.

The older instruments around the boleto have faded faster. Cheque payments fell 72.9% between 2019 and 2025, to 99.2 million. DOC transfers, 205 million in 2019, are zero in the data from March 2024.

Why this matters

For anyone selling into Brazil, the boleto is still a payment method that has to be supported, not a legacy option to switch off. Four billion payments a year is a large flow by any standard, and the rising average suggests it is increasingly used for larger bills and invoices rather than small purchases.

It also tempers the story of Pix as a replacement for everything. Pix has taken almost all of the growth in Brazilian payments, but the boleto’s absolute volume has fallen only slightly from its peak.

What this is not

Values are in nominal reais. Part of the rise in boleto value and average size reflects inflation over the period.

The series counts payments, not who makes them or what they pay for. It cannot show which bills or purchases remain on boletos.

Card payments are not in this series, so the shares compare the boleto with Pix, TED, cheques and the discontinued DOC and TEC only. HaiPay did not contact the Banco Central do Brasil.

What to watch

Whether the 2026 decline speeds up. A fall of 3.2% in nine months is the clearest drop since Pix launched, but still small.

Whether the average boleto keeps rising. If it does, the boleto is becoming a business and bill-payment instrument rather than a consumer one.

And whether monthly boleto payments fall below 300 million. They have not done so since June 2020.