Digital payments have gone viral in Brazil

FOR YEARS Brazilians had little incentive to abandon cash. Wiring 50 reais ($10) to a friend would set you back an extra 16; swiping a credit card, 2% of the cost of your purchase. For e-commerce firms this made doing business particularly cumbersome. Customers wanting to buy something online, but not wanting to incur the costs of a digital payment, could choose instead to print a payment slip (boleto), take that slip to a shop or post office, and hand over the cash. The problem for e-commerce firms, however, was that not everyone who printed a boleto ended up going to a shop to fork over the cash—meaning that many transactions were never completed.