Pix effect: Santander bank starts disabling DOC transfers

Santander Pre-finished transfers via Document of Credit Order (DOC). As the Brazilian Banks Federation (Febraban) explained, although banks should only turn off this feature in May, the institution predicted and this option is no longer available to customers.

At the end of July, Santander had said that such transfers would expire in September, but ultimately foresaw this decision. With the rise of Pix, both DOC and Private Credit Transfer (TED) lost their power.

The header of the Santander notification sent to customers reads “DOC service finished”. After the message from the institution, the message “DOC has been stopped. You can now make your transfers with Pix or TED”. Some users posted screenshots of that moment on Twitter, formerly called X.

a historical record pic.twitter.com/E8wmXaZisb

— Alexander Pilarum Caietanum Canit™ (@fvguima) 29 August 2023

There is one more thing I have to say to the young people who show how old I am.

Me: “in my time there wasn’t even a picture, it was a document and I paid 10 FACTS to do it” pic.twitter.com/LtFCGxob6V

— liliezer (@naoLinemLili) 29 August 2023

customers also got a warning when trying to transfer money to other bank accounts. The message says “Transfer via DOC has been stopped, use TED (Private Credit Transfer) for your transfers”. “Planned operations will be maintained and completed,” Santander concludes.

DOC was established in 1985 by the Central Bank (BC). The transfer is overnight and has a limit of R$4,999.99. The money is transferred to the recipient’s account the next business day or two business days later (after 10 pm on weekends or holidays).

To send higher volumes, customers need to do a TED. If the transaction is made before 17.00, it will be transferred to the target account on the same day. At the end of this period, the amount will only be credited to the account on the next business day.

Pix Domination

Released in November 2020. Pix soon replaced DOC. Using data from BC, Febranan conducted a survey showing the dizzying decline of the old method. Only 59 million DOC operations took place in 2022, or 3.7% of the total.

Check out the order of transactions for the last year, with the number of transactions and the amounts executed:

1. Pix – 24.1 billion – BRL 10.9 trillion (more number of transactions)
2. Credit card – 18.2 billion – R$2.09 trillion
3. ATM card – 15.6 billion – BRL 992 billion
4. Boleto – 1.03 billion – BRL 2.3 trillion
5. TED – 1.01 billion – BRL 40.7 trillion (largest amounts traded)
6. Checks – 202.8 million – BRL 666.8 billion
7. DOC – 59 million – BRL 55.7 billion(lower transaction count and lower transaction amount)