Just six months after introducing Pix Automático in Brazil through payments specialist EBANX, recurring Pix payments already account for 28% of Nord Security‘s total payment volume in the country, while more than a third of its Brazilian customers now use the payment method. More significantly, merchant-initiated transactions processed through Pix Automático are outperforming traditional card payments, with approval rates around 20 percentage points higher.
Those figures may look like another regional payments success story, but they actually point to something much larger: the emergence of alternative payment methods not simply as another checkout option, but as the engine that could power the next generation of subscription services.
For the telemedia industry, which has spent decades trying to solve recurring billing challenges across digital content, this development deserves close attention.
A boost for subscriptions
For years, subscription businesses have largely been built around one assumption: that the customer has a payment card. Whether it is streaming services, VPNs, gaming subscriptions or premium digital content, recurring billing has relied on Visa, Mastercard or a bank account capable of supporting direct debits. These latest figures from Nord Security suggest that assumption is rapidly becoming outdated.
The most striking aspect of Nord Security’s experience is not that consumers like Pix – that has been evident for several years. Brazil’s instant payment network has become one of the world’s most successful real-time payment systems, with more than 165 million users covering almost the entire adult population. Instead, what stands out is that Pix has now evolved beyond one-off transactions into a fully-fledged recurring payments platform.
That matters because recurring payments are fundamentally different from ordinary ecommerce purchases. Consumers expect subscriptions to renew automatically, providers need predictable revenue, and failed payments quickly translate into customer churn.
Historically, cards have handled that role reasonably well, but they come with well-known problems. Cards expire, they are replaced after fraud incidents, credit limits are reached and issuers decline transactions for a host of reasons. Every failure represents another customer who may quietly disappear.
Pix Automático changes that equation by using a payment rail that is directly connected to the customer’s bank account rather than a payment card. Once authorised, subscriptions can continue automatically without many of the issues associated with traditional card credentials.
The result is higher approval rates, fewer failed renewals and, ultimately, more stable subscription revenues.
Perhaps even more significant is who Pix brings into the subscription economy. Brazil’s Central Bank estimates that around 60 million Brazilians do not have access to credit cards. Traditionally, these consumers have been excluded from large parts of the subscription market despite having bank accounts and smartphones.
Pix removes that barrier. For companies such as Nord Security, the impact is obvious. Customers who previously could not subscribe to cybersecurity services now can. For streaming platforms, gaming providers, digital publishers and cloud software companies, the potential addressable market expands dramatically.
The next wave of telemedia
This is something the telemedia sector has understood for years. Premium mobile services originally flourished because carrier billing reached customers who either could not, or would not, use payment cards online. By placing charges directly onto the mobile bill or deducting them from prepaid airtime, Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) became one of the first genuinely inclusive digital payment mechanisms.
The challenge for DCB has never been convenience. It has always been economics, regulation and scale. Operator fees remain relatively high, regulatory oversight has tightened significantly, and consumers increasingly have access to alternative digital payment methods.
Pix does not necessarily replace DCB, however. Instead, it highlights where carrier billing may continue to thrive. Where customers have access to fast, low-cost account-to-account payment systems such as Pix, those rails may become the preferred mechanism for longer-term subscriptions. DCB, meanwhile, remains particularly valuable where consumers are prepaid mobile users, underbanked or where real-time payment infrastructure is less mature.
Rather than competing directly, the two payment models could increasingly become complementary.
The wider lesson is that localisation matters more than ever. One of EBANX’s key observations is that subscription businesses cannot rely on a single payment method. Brazilian consumers continue to use both cards and Pix, with the two together accounting for the overwhelming majority of ecommerce transactions. Giving customers the ability to choose whichever payment method best fits their circumstances is becoming a competitive advantage rather than simply a checkout optimisation exercise.
All over the world
That trend is visible well beyond Brazil. Across India, the rapid adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has transformed digital commerce and is increasingly supporting recurring payments. Elsewhere, account-to-account payment schemes built on open banking are beginning to enable subscription models across Europe.
Digital wallets continue to dominate many Asian markets, while Africa increasingly combines mobile money services with subscription products.
Each market is developing its own preferred payment ecosystem. For global subscription providers, that means localisation can no longer stop at language, pricing or content. Payments themselves are becoming part of the customer experience.
For telemedia companies operating internationally, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity lies in reaching entirely new audiences who previously sat outside traditional card-based commerce. Whether selling streaming services, gaming passes, digital publications, premium messaging, cloud software or AI subscriptions, offering locally trusted payment methods immediately broadens the potential customer base.
The challenge is managing growing payment complexity. Supporting cards alone is no longer sufficient. Operators increasingly need to integrate multiple payment rails, from wallets and instant bank payments to carrier billing and emerging account-to-account services.
That complexity is likely to become a defining feature of subscription commerce over the next decade. Artificial intelligence may also accelerate the trend. As AI shopping assistants begin purchasing digital services on behalf of consumers, payment methods with high approval rates, predictable recurring billing and seamless authentication will become increasingly valuable. Frictionless payment infrastructure could become just as important as the subscription product itself.
Seen through that lens, Nord Security’s experience with Pix Automático is about much more than Brazil. It demonstrates that alternative payment methods have evolved beyond niche local preferences into strategic growth tools capable of driving subscriber acquisition, reducing churn and increasing payment success rates. They are no longer simply alternatives to cards; in many markets they may become the default route into recurring digital commerce.
For the telemedia industry, which has always sat at the intersection of content, connectivity and payments, the message is clear – the future of subscriptions will not be built around a single payment method. Instead, success will increasingly depend on offering the right payment mechanism for each market, each customer and each use case.
Pix may be leading the way in Brazil today, but it is unlikely to be the last local payment rail to redefine how digital subscriptions are bought, renewed and monetised.
The VAMP effect
Visa’s changes to VAMP and the upcoming Mastercard scheme also have an impact – although not necessarily in the way that many industry watchers think. These won’t push merchants away from cards entirely, rather they will encourage merchants to become much more strategic about payment orchestration and to reduce their dependence on any single payment rail. That creates an opportunity for alternative payment methods.
These card schemes are aimed at cutting chargebacks and fraud, service like Pix don’t have that problem. Once a genuine customer authorises payment, there is no equivalent consumer chargeback process in the same sense as cards. That immediately removes one of the largest sources of cost and operational complexity for subscription businesses.
The same logic increasingly applies to many account-to-account payment systems built on instant payment rails. They generally experience fewer traditional card fraud scenarios because there are no card numbers to steal, no expired cards and no card credentials circulating online.
That doesn’t mean cards disappear. Visa and Mastercard remain enormously valuable because they are global, trusted and familiar. For international subscriptions they will remain essential.
However, what many merchants are now asking is not “How do I replace cards?” but “How do I reduce the percentage of transactions that expose me to unnecessary risk?”
That’s where payment orchestration becomes important. A merchant might offer cards for international customers, Pix in Brazil, UPI in India, open banking or VRP in the UK and Europe, digital wallets where they dominate and DCB where banking penetration remains low or mobile-first consumers are prevalent.
