Brazilian Bills, utilities on Foreign credit cards?

Actually, yes it is possible. The amount of time I spent trying to wrap my head around this and pay my bills is insane. Unfortunately, I don’t really have an answer because I’m not entirely sure what happened that allowed me to use my Amex from the US. When I moved into my new apartment in January I downloaded all the apps that allow you to pay boletos and after two or thee months of trying to get my foreign card to work, I just accepted that it wasn’t possible and started just paying in cash. Maybe three weeks or so ago, I decided to open up RecargaPay to attempt to pay my (postpaid) cell phone bill and surprisingly it worked first try. I managed to pay one electric bill and then trying to pay the following months immediately after locked my account but amazingly after I verified my ID (USA passport) with support, I was able to continue using my Cards from the us. When my account was locked I managed to pay the other power bill on mercado Pago but I distinctly remember both of these platforms not accepting my cards a few months ago so I couldn’t even begin to speculate on why it just started working all the sudden.

Until I finally had my CRNM and a Brazilian bank account this past December, I had been using a Capital One Credit card to pay my bills on our apartment in SP. I actually do not recall ever having had a problem

It is possible with a "chip" card. I hope you have no FTF on the card.

What about like putting the bills on someone's name like a family member who is brazilian and transferring money each month to their bank account, the amount would be below R$2000. Would that work?


Idk these acronyms you guys are saying

I know it's off-topic but when I re-registered (I had Netflix then closed it) my subscription with Netflix I did it in Brazil, so I signed-up (for the second time) for Netflix in Brazil.

I'm American who lives in the West Coast so all my billing info, all my credit cards have US billing address and issued by US banks.

So, Netflix shows my monthly bills in Brazilian reais, when I called to customer service, they said: "well you signed-up for Netflix while being physically in Brazil, that's why it shows in reais".

It's good that I used my CapitalOne credit card for registration and monthly recurring payments, they don't charge foreign transaction fees.

P.S.: Netflix cannot change currency (from reais to USD), the only way is to cancel subscription and register again.

The thing with foreign credit cards is that acceptance is unpredictable.   Some very small merchants are happy to take them; some major sellers are not.  Amazon-BR is happy to accept them to pay for purchases, but not, bizarrely, to pay for Prime membership.   Our gym had no problem accepting one to charge our monthly membership, until suddenly their  payment processor did.  It's a trial and error process, and your experience will be a little different from anyone else's.

Generally speaking, Visa and Mastercard have the best acceptance.   Discover is trying to build up its network, but without much visible success that I've been able to see.  Bpm917 has been able to use Amex; that's great, but probably unusual outside the travel and entertainment space.

"FTF"'s are "foreign transaction fees".  Some US card issuers charge them, some don't,  so check the fine print on all your cards.   You don't want an extra charge tacked onto every transaction.

The easiest and safest way to pay bills is online bill payment through a Brazilian bank account,  so transferring funds to a Brazilian relative that s/he will then use to pay the bill will work.  Almost anything else ends up requiring somebody to stand in a line sometimes,  paying somebody else in cash through a window - and lines are ridiculous right now because of the pandemic.

Thank you guys.

what about prepaid debit cards like from visa and mastercard. Those pre paid debit cards you just put money in and can use in many places.

Has anybody have any experience with those to pay recurrent bills such as condo fees, water, electric, internet?

I don't know about the rest of Brazil, but where I live you can only use a debit/credit card to pay utilities if the account is 2 months in arrears.