The United States has raised the alarm about Brazil’s instant payment platform, Pix. That is because the public scheme has highlighted the infrastructural basis of monetary sovereignty, which now hinges not on exchange rates and reserve currencies but on who designs and governs the rails on which finance moves.
ANGERS—The development of payment infrastructure in emerging-market economies (EMEs)—from instant payment systems in retail markets to wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for cross-border interbank settlement—is part of a broader technological transformation. But the intense scrutiny these initiatives face from the United States suggests that what is at stake is not only technical supremacy, but monetary power itself.