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Digital public infrastructure: lessons from Brazil’s Pix

A public standard run by hundreds of institutions took Pix to 86% of adults, and procurement follows the same design

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Takter Insights
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Digital public infrastructure is the layer of shared systems on which governments and businesses build services: identity, payments, and data exchange. In Brazil, the most visible example is Pix, the instant payment system created by the country’s central bank. According to the Central Bank of Brazil, Pix closed 2025 with almost 80 billion transactions and 148 million individual users, about 86% of the adult population. The model behind that reach applies to other areas of public management.

The Central Bank itself classifies Pix as digital public infrastructure in its Pix management report, published in August 2026. Three choices explain the result: a single standard set by a public authority, operation open to hundreds of private institutions, and governance in which the market and users take part in decisions. Law 14,133/2021, Brazil’s public procurement law, applied part of that logic to government purchasing through the National Public Procurement Portal (PNCP). Managers who understand the model make better decisions about what to buy, what to standardize, and where to start.

What is digital public infrastructure?

It is the middle layer of the digital world. Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, describes it as the level that sits between the physical layer (connectivity, devices, servers, and data centers) and the application layer (e-commerce, telehealth, remote education, and cash transfers). It holds the identity registries, payments, data exchange, and consent mechanisms that applications depend on.

The word "public" describes access and purpose: the infrastructure serves the entire population and follows rules set by public authorities. The state, a company, or both together can build and operate it. Chakravorti notes that responsibility usually falls to government, even though businesses have built most of the physical layer and of the services on top of it.

The economic gain comes from reuse. Once identity and payments exist as common services, an agency or a company launching a new service does not have to solve again who the user is or how that user pays. The cost of experimenting falls, and more services are built on the same base.

Pix, gov.br, and PNCP: Brazil’s layers

Brazil now runs three layers of this kind at national scale, each with its own role.

Payments: Pix

The Central Bank developed Pix under its legal mandate to promote competition, financial inclusion, and transparency in payments. According to its report, the number of transactions grew 25.7% in 2025, to almost 80 billion, and the value moved grew 33.8%, to more than R$35 trillion. The system ended the year with 926 participating institutions. The public sector uses it too: transactions involving government exceeded 282 million in 2025, up 44.3% from 2024, and payments from individuals to government, such as fees and taxes, passed 172 million. By value, the largest public transactions are those between government and businesses, such as payments to suppliers.

Identity: gov.br

According to Brazil’s Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services (MGI), gov.br, the federal government’s digital identity and services platform, had 170 million active accounts in September 2025. It gave access to 4,600 federal digital services and to more than 8,000 state and municipal services. By mid-September, 130.6 million people had used the platform in 2025, more than in all of 2024, and had signed 140 million documents electronically through it.

Public procurement: PNCP

Law 14,133/2021 created the PNCP as the official website for the centralized and mandatory disclosure of the acts the law requires, from annual procurement plans to contracts and amendments. Publishing a contract and its amendments on the portal is a condition for them to take effect. The law also provides that the PNCP offer a unified supplier registry, a price lookup dashboard, and a system for sharing information on contract performance with the public. A committee with representatives of the federal government, the states, and the municipalities manages the portal. And under the current wording of Article 175, a purchase can be run on an electronic system supplied by a public or private entity, as long as that system is integrated with the PNCP.

The three layers share the same design: a public authority sets the standard and keeps the central registry, and a network of public and private institutions builds services on top of it. The PNCP gathers what each agency publishes, so the quality of the national registry depends on the information each agency sends. In Brazil’s 2027 government transition, that information is the starting point for the inventory of contracts the new administration inherits.

The attributes that make the infrastructure work

Chakravorti proposes eight attributes for well-designed digital public infrastructure. Four of them show up clearly in the Pix experience.

  • Inclusion: according to the Central Bank, practically every Brazilian state has more than 80% of its adult population using Pix, including the states of the less-developed North region, and the system helped widen access to financial services by encouraging people to actually use their accounts.
  • Interoperability: a single standard for keys and QR codes applies to all 926 participating institutions, so a customer of one pays a customer of another through the same procedure.
  • Trust: according to the Central Bank, many of the security measures adopted between 2023 and 2025 were designed with a working group of the Pix Forum that brings together market associations and other stakeholders, including end users.
  • Political viability: Chakravorti recalls that Aadhaar, India’s digital identity system, risked being scrapped after the party that created it lost the 2014 elections. Pix rests on a permanent mandate of the Central Bank and evolves through consultation with the market. Pix Automático, a direct debit service built on Pix, was discussed in the Pix Forum in 2022, 2023, and 2024 and went live on June 16, 2025.

The other four attributes on the list are support for the Sustainable Development Goals, a citizen-centric design, support for innovation, and resilience in a crisis.

What to do: before buying or building a system that serves citizens or suppliers, ask for the list of public layers it uses (the gov.br login, Pix for collections, publication on the PNCP) and the format in which data leaves it. A system that rebuilds registration, payment, or publication on its own duplicates cost and creates a database that no other service queries.

Who funds it and who runs it

For Chakravorti, neither side can do it alone. Government decision and budget cycles move more slowly than technology cycles, and governments have little tradition of treating citizens as customers of a service. Technology companies recover their investment by charging for access, monetizing user data, and prioritizing the most profitable segments, which undermines inclusion and trust. Chakravorti's answer is the public-private partnership, with risk allocated to whoever can best manage it and incentives aligned on both sides.

Two levers lower the cost of such a partnership. The first is digital public goods: open software, data, models, and standards that a government can reuse without paying for a license. The second is collaboration among specialists from different fields, such as the one that joined an open digital identity system with an open benefits payment system.

Pix and the PNCP already follow that division of roles. With Pix, the Central Bank developed the system and sets the rules, and participating institutions serve end users. With the PNCP, the law establishes the central registry and allows purchases to run on third-party systems integrated with it. For an agency buying technology, the practical question is what stays under public control when a supplier runs the service.

What to do: in the specifications for a system that touches a public layer, state what remains with the agency: ownership of the data, the integration standard, and the right to export the full history in an open format at the end of the contract. With those three clauses, the agency can change suppliers without losing its history or rebuilding the integration.

Start with one application

Digital public infrastructure has a broad scope and a risky upfront investment. Chakravorti recommends starting with narrow, high-priority applications that can later be replicated in other regions. The models behind the current wave emerged in moments of acute need: Estonia, which had to build public services from scratch after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and India, whose identification and payment methods were fragmented and vulnerable to corruption.

For a Brazilian state or municipality, the first application can use a layer that already exists. Collecting fees and taxes through Pix has volume, a ready standard, and a measurable result in collection time. Publishing contracts and amendments on the PNCP, with performance data organized, meets the law and gives auditors a base they can cross-check against others, as the use of AI against fraud in public works procurement shows.

What to do: choose a high-volume process that already has a public layer in place. Measure its time and cost before the change, name an owner, and move on to the next process once the first has been stable for a few months.

Conclusion

Pix reached 86% of Brazilian adults with a public standard, a network of private operators, and governance open to the market and to users. gov.br and the PNCP follow the same design for identity and public procurement. For public managers, the model comes down to three decisions: use the public layers that already exist, keep data and standards under the agency’s control when a supplier runs the service, and start with one high-volume process, measured before and after.

What an agency publishes on the PNCP comes from its own contract records. Converge Gestão de Contratos® brings each contract’s term, amendments, service sign-offs, budget, and payments into a single workflow, with alerts before every deadline, automatic reconciliation, and an audit trail. To organize those records across your agency’s portfolio, contact Takter.

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