PIX transfer limit begins to apply starting this Monday

Marcos Lima – from Cenarium

MANAUS – From this Monday, 4, transfers via PIX, by individuals, between 8 pm and 6 am will be limited to R$ 1 thousand. The change was announced by the Central Bank in September and aims to prevent theft, fraud, scams and kidnappings at night. Corporate accounts are not affected by this change.

Other means of payment will also be affected by the nightly limit, as is the case with Available Electronic Transfer (TED) and Credit Order Document (DOC), payments of bills and purchases with debit cards.

PIX is an instant payment system created by the Central Bank in which funds are transferred between accounts in a few seconds, at any time of the day. The service can be performed between current, savings, or prepaid payment accounts. The fees are lower than for the traditional service. According to the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febrabam), the PIX represents 30% of all transfers in the country.

With the arrival of the service, the number of crimes through these services has also increased. The president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, said last Friday, 1st, that fraud has increased because of the reopening of the economy. To try to reduce the practice, this change was adopted.

“We created a new segment of the PIX just to prevent fraud. Of course, there was an increase in the number of frauds, but this is more related to the reopening of the economy than the way we do it”, said Roberto Campos, during a virtual event.

Leak

One day before the president’s statement, the Central Bank informed that 365,000 PIX keys were leaked by hackers. The improperly accessed information was under the custody of the Sergipe State Bank (Banese).

In a statement, the Central Bank said that no sensitive data was exposed, such as passwords, amounts moved and account balances. It also reported that the leak happened because of “occasional failures” in the Sergipe State Bank system.

The transaction limits can be changed directly with the financial institutions. The deadline for making the change is 24 hours to 48 hours after the request. Accounts can be registered as trusted to receive amounts above the limit.

The Central Bank has established that as of November 16, new security measures will be adopted to increase the security of the PIX. One of the actions is to block the receipt of transfers to individuals for up to 72 hours, if it is suspected that the account benefited is used for fraud.