Picture selling a burger for R$ 100 and watching the full R$ 100 land in your account. In Brazil, that everyday scene now has an expiration date. Starting in 2027, the country’s sweeping tax reform rolls out split payment: the tax slice is carved out at the exact moment a sale settles — before the money ever reaches the seller. Every sale arrives pre-sliced.

Here’s what split payment is, what it does to anyone who sells — and how a non-custodial payment account works: load it with Pix, then pay and get paid directly in crypto, where split payment doesn’t operate.

What is Brazil’s split payment?

Today, a Brazilian merchant receives the full amount of every sale and remits taxes later, within the legal deadline. Split payment flips that order. Established by articles 31 to 35 of Complementary Law 214/2025², it puts the payment system itself in charge: the rails behind Pix (Brazil’s wildly popular instant payment network), bank slips and cards will separate the IBS and CBS portion — the country’s new VAT — at financial settlement and forward it straight to the tax authority. Only the net ever touches the seller’s account.

The rollout is already underway. 2026 is the reform’s test year, with symbolic rates; in 2027 split payment’s first stage goes live, optional and limited to transactions between regular-regime businesses on bank-slip, Pix, TED and TEF rails; from there, adoption expands alongside the IBS transition, which runs through 2033¹. In June 2026, Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service and the IBS Steering Committee published the technical documentation of the public platform that will operate it all³. This is not a rumor — the system is being built right now.

What split payment does to anyone who sells

Split payment is being sold as fiscal modernization. Seen from behind the counter, the picture looks different. Here’s what changes when the tax is ripped out at settlement:

  • Your working capital evaporates on the spot. Today the full amount lands and tax only leaves at monthly assessment — and in between, that money restocks shelves, pays suppliers, covers payroll. Under split payment, the state’s slice vanishes the second a sale settles. On thin margins, that’s a permanent liquidity squeeze.
  • Your tax credits become a waiting line. IBS and CBS are value-added taxes: your purchases generate credits to offset. The “smart split” promises to net them out in real time; any excess withholding becomes your money sitting idle, waiting for a government system to calculate and give it back. Your cash flow now depends on the efficiency of a state refund queue.
  • The payment rail becomes a collection agent. The plumbing behind Pix, bank slips and cards starts executing the withholding. A calculation error, a mismatched registration, a system outage — all of it now lives between your customer paying and you getting paid.
  • Real-time surveillance, by default. Every sale is processed, classified and sliced by a state platform the moment it happens. Not a monthly report — the state inside the settlement of every payment you receive.

And here’s the part that never makes the announcement: none of this would be possible if a bank balance were truly yours. It’s an entry in a system where third parties hold the keys — one that can slice, hold, freeze and reprogram your money without you touching a single button. Split payment doesn’t create that power. It just makes it automatic and routine.

If the net is what’s left, the right question is: who controls what’s left?

A non-custodial payment account: you hold the key

The DePix App’s answer is a payment account that is truly yours. Opening one takes a minute and an email — no credit check, no queue, no company registration. Inside it lives the Integrated Wallet, a non-custodial wallet: the keys stay on your device, protected by a 12-word recovery phrase and a PIN. The vault is yours, and so is the key; the app never holds your funds.

The flow is simple: load it with Pix, cash out with Pix whenever you want — and live in crypto in between. A top-up becomes DePix, a stablecoin worth exactly one Brazilian real. From there, you pay and get paid by anyone directly in crypto — DePix, USDt, L-BTC, Lightning or Bitcoin — wallet to wallet. And when the other side only takes Pix, you pay via Pix from inside the app.

For sellers, merchant mode generates Pix QR codes and sales reports: your customer pays a regular Pix, no crypto knowledge required, and you receive DePix in your wallet. Pricing is transparent — 2% + R$ 0.99 per payment received via Pix, no monthly fee, no card machine⁴ — and each Pix payment goes through an anti-fraud security window whose wait is shown in the app upfront. A payment received directly in crypto, by contrast, is a plain network transaction: it goes from the payer’s wallet to yours.

Want to see it in practice? Check our guides to a no-bureaucracy crypto business account and to being your own bank .

Crypto payments sit outside split payment

Split payment operates inside payment arrangements — it intercepts bank settlement. A crypto payment has no bank settlement. A DePix transfer on the Liquid Network, a Lightning payment, a USDt send: all of it moves wallet to wallet, with no arrangement in the middle, no settlement agent, nowhere for the split to hook in. The money leaves whole and arrives whole — and, on Liquid, with amounts protected by Confidential Transactions. We don’t treat that as a technical footnote: to us, financial privacy is a fundamental right of every person.

Outside the split doesn’t mean outside taxes: selling still creates tax obligations, and declaring is still on you — we even have a guide on declaring DePix for income tax . What changes is the order of things: under split payment, the system withholds first and you check the math later; in crypto, the money arrives whole and you are the one who settles up. Autonomy instead of interception.

And the usual reminder: DePix is money to use, not money to save — the Brazilian real loses purchasing power to inflation. For long-term savings, convert part of it to Bitcoin (L-BTC) inside the same Integrated Wallet.

References

  1. Ministry of Finance — Tax Reform regulation hub (in Portuguese)
  2. Planalto — Complementary Law No. 214 of January 16, 2025 (in Portuguese)
  3. Ministry of Finance — Technical documentation of the public Split Payment platform (in Portuguese)
  4. DePix App — What is DePix: a non-custodial payment account

Your financial privacy starts here

Split payment decides how much of each sale reaches you. In a non-custodial account, you decide: load it with Pix, pay and get paid in crypto, cash out whenever you want. Pix has convenience — DePix has privacy. Stop exposing every sale to the banking system and start using digital money that only you control. Create your free account at depixapp.com .