[HN Gopher] Brazil's government-run payments system has become d...
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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant
Author : jcartw
Score : 375 points
Date : 2025-04-08 10:59 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| dotdi wrote:
| https://archive.ph/pZGLb
| vithalreddy wrote:
| Same with India's UPI https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-
| ecosystem-statist...
| alephnerd wrote:
| Tiger Global, Seqouia, and Khosla Ventures invested in a lot of
| Brazilian fintech and neobank startups in the early/mid 2010s
| the same way they did in Indian fintech and what became
| IndiaStack in the early 2010s, and China's equivalent in the
| late 2000s.
|
| YC has also been very active in the space in both markets by
| the late 2010s.
|
| A lot of the work around Pix is largely thanks to the fact that
| neobanks like Nubank have become very competitive in the
| Brazilian market, and helped set higher consumer and business
| expectations for transaction processing and management.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Given the fact that the central government uses taxes to fund the
| creation and managements of a countries currency, it makes
| perfect sense that in the digital age it should also be funding
| the infrastructure to send digital transactions with that
| currency. I wonder how differently the internet would have
| developed if microtransations were free and easy to transfer.
| bestouff wrote:
| > Pix has spiced up Brazil's fusty banking sector, but it gives
| the central bank a worrying amount of power
|
| I think a largely prefer a government-run payment system than an
| US company monopoly.
| nicce wrote:
| Payment systems take huge fees. It is always good if they get
| back to the country and not elsewhere. Digital paying is
| something fundamental. Like electricity.
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Brazilian Pix is free though, at least for the time being.
| IMO the biggest thing is not the money behind it, but the
| ability to track individual payments. Even that, I prefer the
| government to have that information, than some shady owner of
| a private company
| souenzzo wrote:
| PIX are free for persons. Companies may* pay for pix
| services. My bank (that is not a good bank) charges a fixed
| amount of 4 BRL (aprox 1 USD) per transaction (to send PIX.
| not to receive) PIX in "maquininhas" may cost ~1% to the
| seller.
|
| * may: banks are allowed to charge.
| rpgbr wrote:
| Which is way cheaper than credit/debit card charges from
| Visa and Mastercard.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And there's no surprise fraud claims.
| xfalcox wrote:
| My wife runs a small retail makeup shop on Shopify, which
| started before pix and those surprise false fraud claims
| almost killed the business.
|
| Pix was such a game changer. It is perfect.
| 8bitbeep wrote:
| > 4 BRL (aprox 1 USD)
|
| I wish. That's off by 50%
| xethos wrote:
| Fast, free, and frictionless payments allow the economy to
| run better. That's better for the government _and_ the
| people. Only corporations like Visa and Mastercard lose.
| rafaquintanilha wrote:
| It's funny but also worrying how much Americans underestimate
| the impact a centralized government can have on people's lives.
| That probably means that eventually it will happen there.
|
| A centralized - often socialist - government is the
| _definition_ of monopoly, you can't escape from it without
| risking jail or worse. No U.S. monopoly, no matter how much you
| hate it, will get close to this, and you think it does, you are
| sincerely naive at least.
| dtquad wrote:
| There are alternatives to both inefficient government-run
| monopolies and US tech giant monopolies.
|
| Even a small country like Denmark has multiple software and
| finance companies doing apps and software in the digital
| payments and banking field.
| Gud wrote:
| Why do you assume a government-run monopoly is inefficient?
|
| You should try to take a train in Switzerland sometime. Its
| government run and I guarantee you will be mind blown over
| its efficiency.
| wtcactus wrote:
| You should take one in Portugal, where it's also government
| run...
| Gud wrote:
| I made no assumption that government run organisations
| are necessarily efficient. The comment I responded to
| implied that government monopolies are inefficient by
| their nature, which I would argue against.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I don't think it is a realistic option in the US, at least in
| the current climate.
|
| There are so many powerful and influential anti/small-
| government that are rabidly opposing anything made by the
| government, and offered to the people.
|
| The argument is always the same:
|
| - "It will stifle innovation"
|
| - "It is unfair to business"
|
| - "It will make people dependent on the government"
|
| - "It will give government more access to spy on the citizens"
|
| and the list goes on.
|
| For decades the American people have been told that anything
| the government touches will be expensive, inefficient, and lead
| to a more taxes. Private sector knows best, and all that.
|
| And it is especially bad right now. You had MAGA-influencers
| outright rejoicing that DOGE had laid off the 18F team,
| spreading the gospel that free (government-run) tax tools are
| an abomination.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >For decades the American people have been told that anything
| the government touches will be expensive, inefficient, and
| lead to a more taxes. Private sector knows best, and all
| that.
|
| Do you have some counter arguments?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Do you mean US examples or world wide examples?
|
| Because I think the whole government are inefficient and
| suck is partly a self fulfilling prophecy.
|
| Swiss railways or how Taiwan created the semiconductor
| industry from scratch comes to mind. Estonia E-Government.
| Or like the Panama canal?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Well, every municipal broadband service I've tried has been
| better than the laughable garbage some ISPs offer out in
| rural areas, where they have a monopoly.
| squigz wrote:
| Making an assertion without arguments does not necessitate
| counter arguments.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Any european who happened to have become sick once in the
| US can tell you about that if you will.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i have friends who have had to deal with the NHS and
| absolutely ridiculous (like year+) wait times for
| specialists.
|
| frankly i find the american healthcare system quite good
| if you have good job-tied insurance. most of the problems
| arise because we don't have any sort of triage for high
| need issues and thus get overutilization and high cost.
| archagon wrote:
| From personal experience, the quality of your insurance
| has little to do with wait times. I had best-in-biz FAANG
| insurance and I still had to wait months for dermatology
| and ENT appointments, for example.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The quality of your insurance definitely impacts wait
| times. HMOs are often faster and if you have medicaid
| you're going to look at much longer wait times for the
| specialists that accept it.
|
| Months for specialists sounds bad (during covid the waits
| in the Bay Area got pretty bad), but for context on the
| NHS, they are currently targeting having more than 65% of
| patients served within ~5 months and they don't even make
| that target. Even the extremely capacity constrained Bay
| Area isn't close to that level of dysfunction.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Silicon Valley
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i wish i was not sympathetic to those arguments - and i used
| to not be, but then i actually worked in the federal
| government. perhaps local governments can efficiently
| provision services but the feds are handicapped in so many
| different ways it would be quite challenging to untangle.
|
| realistically, the workforce that was hired around sorting
| through hundreds of thousands of bureaucratic paper documents
| in the 70s/80s is not the same workforce that can really
| build new products and the feds are mostly the former.
| rebanevapustus wrote:
| The Brazilian government is a *very* corrupt authoritarian
| oligarchy. I would take any US company over that any day.
| xinayder wrote:
| Yet we, a developing "third-world" country, have a better
| functioning payment system than the US, where it takes days,
| or even weeks, for a wire transfer to land, and you pay a
| huge amount of fees for that.
|
| Cases in point:
|
| - To transfer money to a broker, I need to pay around $5 in
| transfer fees via ACH or wire
|
| - I want to change the custody of my stock market assets from
| one broker to another, and it will cost me $75 to move $60
| worth of shares. Meanwhile, in Brazil, this process is free
| in every broker.
| ave_b_2011 wrote:
| I don't understand this binary. The UK was able to create a
| near-instant bank transfer system without monopolizing in
| the same way.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments
|
| It costing more for instant transfers is just a regressive
| tax on the working poor.
| xinayder wrote:
| I can't find the details of the UK system, but it's not
| "monopolized" in Brazil. Perhaps due to the fact that the
| infra is provided by the Central Bank, and banks choosing
| to implement Pix support must implement the Pix APIs in
| their system.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Everybody adopting an open protocol is "monopolizing"
| now...
| alright2565 wrote:
| > To transfer money to a broker, I need to pay around $5 in
| transfer fees via ACH or wire
|
| I suggest switching to a better bank. This is unreasonable,
| my ACH transfers are free.
|
| > I want to change the custody of my stock market assets
| from one broker to another
|
| $75 sounds like a bargain, given the complexity it
| involves: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/how-acats-
| transfers-w...
|
| But anyway, I recently transferred some assets between
| brokers. It was free because the sending broker's fee to
| transfer assets out only applies when transferring the
| whole account. The receiving broker is happy to receive the
| assets, and shouldn't be charging any fee.
| rebanevapustus wrote:
| It's cool that "we" have a payment system, however, I would
| never be comfortable using something whose people in charge
| are those that keep us (not me particularly because I've
| gladly left the country almost a decade ago) in this
| misery.
|
| I use Crypto for everything you've mentioned. It's instant,
| almost free, and alexandre(he deserves a lowercased a)
| can't take my money if he feels that writing his name in
| lowercase makes me unworthy of my civil rights.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum, sorry, no. It's a very corrupt _liberal_ oligarchy.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| UPI from India is a much better system in my opinion since it's
| decentralized and doesn't give all the power to the central
| bank.
| gloomyday wrote:
| That is such an inane opinion by the author. I wonder if he/she
| knows central banks can literally print money. Helping to move
| it around is nothing, and benefits everyone.
| bjackman wrote:
| It's the Economist, this kinda thing is just their weird
| party line
| coliveira wrote:
| Yes, now in Brazil you can hardly find anyone not using Pix. It
| is all digital and free. Even in Argentina and Paraguay, many
| local merchants are now accepting Pix.
| dguest wrote:
| Is there anything preventing a merchant in e.g. the US from
| using Pix?
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's denominated in the Brazilian _real_ rather than USD?
| souenzzo wrote:
| With BRICS, other currencies may be integrated.
|
| China also have a pix-like wechat Russia has a pix-like
| "BRICS Pay"
|
| And those systems can be integrated.
|
| PIX QRCode protocol already have a "currency" field, that
| currently only support the constant value of "BRL"
|
| USA probably will continue to use check and printed money
| like the ancients do.
| HNArg024 wrote:
| Yeah, in Argentina the main digital wallet is MercadoPago. Many
| merchants have their terminal to accept payments with credit
| cards/QR, and since this past summer you have the option to
| accept payments with Pix too. Also it goes both ways, everyone
| going on vacation to Brazil can pay with MercadoPago without
| having to install Pix.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| I've been living in Brazil for the last 20 years.
|
| Pix revolutionised the way we transact in Brazil. I've used Pix
| to pay for things that cost only cents, and I have a friend who
| bought her house using Pix. The system just works for any
| transfer amount. And it's so easy to use.
|
| Its speed is truly baffling, and so is its reliability. Never
| have I failed to make a Pix payment because of downtime. I never
| cease to be amazed by how fast money arrives in my Brazilian
| account when I make a withdrawal directly from my EUR wallet on
| Wise. I receive a push notification from my Brazilian bank before
| Wise finishes running the animation of confirmation of
| withdrawal. It's like magic.
|
| And it's so widespread that nowadays I don't even question
| whether someone accepts Pix. When I get in a taxi, no matter how
| old the driver is, it's certain that they take (and prefer) Pix.
|
| I've even had homeless people ask me for Pix instead of change on
| multiple occasions.
|
| Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
| mhluongo wrote:
| > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| Does it work internationally? Does it send USD as well, or only
| the real?
|
| If it solves th same problems, why is Brazil considering
| banning self-custodial USD stablecoins? And why has there been
| an ongoing discussion about launching mBRL, and stablecoin
| pegged to the real?
|
| https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2024/brazil-considers-...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nearly every non-western country has it's own e-cash type
| system.
|
| Everything from m-pesa in Kenya to Gcash in the Philippines
| to PromptPay in Thailand to Alipay in China to SGQR in
| Singapore to MPay in Oman....
|
| The pattern is that these systems are nearly all fully
| centralised, require ID, zero privacy, usually government
| sanctioned, and not cross border.
| pjc50 wrote:
| And quite a lot of Western ones like Vipps. And see this
| long list: https://truelayer.com/reports/alternative-
| payments/european-...
|
| > require ID, zero privacy, usually government sanctioned
|
| Unfortunately systems that don't have those requirements
| are going to be money laundering channels. I wish it wasn't
| such a big concern but it's unavoidable.
| earnesti wrote:
| >> require ID, zero privacy, usually government
| sanctioned
|
| > Unfortunately systems that don't have those
| requirements are going to be money laundering channels. I
| wish it wasn't such a big concern but it's unavoidable.
|
| There same requirements also make the likelihood of these
| systems scaling beyong one jurisdiction very unlikely.
| Tourists don't want to set up a payment account for every
| country they visit. Or other way around, banks don't want
| to KYC and set up an account for every foreign tourist.
|
| As Visa and MC work globally, I'm betting that the
| dominance from those will continue. Cryptocurrencies
| might have some change of becoming the "global"
| transaction method as well.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > As Visa and MC work globally, I'm betting that the
| dominance from those will continue.
|
| China, India, Brazil, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and
| others are all trying to expand their own transaction
| networks.
|
| While it's still piecemeal, a Chinese or Indian tourist
| in Thailand can use UnionPay or UPI to transact without
| using Visa/Mastercard, a Russian tourist in Vietnam can
| use Mir, a Brazilian in Argentina can use Pix instead of
| Visa/MC as well, and a Japanese visitor in Singapore can
| use JCB instead.
|
| Even the ECB has recently started considering this option
| (though it might also be an attempt to force the Trump
| admin to negotiate).
|
| The biggest thing blocking international payment
| competitors is FATF, which has some regulations biased in
| favor of Visa/Mastercard.
|
| > Cryptocurrencies might have some change of becoming the
| "global" transaction method as well
|
| I'm not sure. Most jurisdictions that aren't the US and
| EU heavily regulate cryptocurrencies, and at best allow
| state managed or regulated cryptocurrencies, which
| basically makes the whole point of crypto moot.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > a Russian tourist in Vietnam can use Mir
|
| If you can find a place that actually accepts it! It's
| certainly not as ubiquitous as the local Napas247 QR
| codes.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Yep! And Napas247 was co-developed by Vietnam and South
| Korea (edit: Only VN - confused Shinhan's support for
| development work)!
|
| The point is there is a steady decoupling towards non-
| Visa/MC payment systems outside the US and EU, and it
| wouldn't be too surprising if a number of these systems
| begin supporting inter-operability within the next 10
| years.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Oh yeah, I think lots of QR code based systems in Asia
| are actually interoperable now (just not if you're not a
| resident in any of these countries -- e.g. I do have
| GCash, but my account works in Philippines only).
| nguyenkien wrote:
| Sorry, I can't find anywhere mention it co-develop with
| South Korea. Can you give source to this?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Good callout! I'm wrong on that one. I was under the
| assumption it was co-developed with Shinhan but that was
| wrong.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Yes. As soon as June, Brazilian pix will support
| "Automatic Pix". Which means, basically, Pix will support
| subscriptions. So let's say, you authorize Netflix with
| pix, and then every month they will charge you with Pix
| automatically.
|
| I find very likely Netflix or Amazon will be one of the
| first companies to support this in June now.
|
| This was made initially to replace old school automatic
| debit for phone/electricity/etc bills, but it will
| support all services.
|
| In Brazil, installments with credit cards are also super
| common... Basically when you put a credit card on any
| website or buy on a store, you can just choose to pay in
| 12x.
|
| Well, they will add in September Pix Installments as
| well.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| > As Visa and MC work globally, I'm betting that the
| dominance from those will continue.
|
| Until there will be a stable coin we can trust and which
| can be accepted by most businesses.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| A state of mutual trust can be established, similar to
| driver's licenses and passports: country A trusts you,
| they did all the legwork, we certify their endorsement,
| you're fine. It won't necessarily be possible between
| _all_ pairs, but, SEPA and Interac should be
| theoretically interoperable; dozens of other friendly-
| country pairs can be thought of.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| This is not a good argument. We can't forbid everything
| just because it can be used by criminals.
|
| By the same thinking we should forbid cash, too.
|
| We have two ways:
|
| Give up all freedoms, forbid anything and transform the
| society into a mass surveillance society where everyone
| spies everyone, where is no anonimity and no privacy.
|
| Or require law enforcement to do a better jobs without
| people giving up their freedoms.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| There is a pretty big gray area in there. Literally every
| society on the planet has some form of "giving up their
| freedoms" in exchange for some amount of security. I
| would argue that it's impossible to have a stable society
| without that. The thing that's important is deciding
| which rights are worth protecting and which ones are ok
| to give up in exchange for security (or other reasons,
| presumably).
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| And it's not as if crypto is particularly anonymous.
| Transaction analysis will identify you unless you work
| hard at covering your tracks.
| WillAdams wrote:
| That's okay so long as criminals can still use public
| lotteries for that so that the government gets its cut.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| And then BRICS comes along connecting all those countries
| payment systems and voila the circle is complete.
| jowea wrote:
| Only real afaik, although there have been some thoughts to
| integrating some neighbours to the system. Right afaik it
| works in shops popular with Brazilian tourists in the
| Southern Cone through some workarounds.
| wslh wrote:
| > Does it work internationally? Does it send USD as well, or
| only the real?
|
| There are neighboring wallets (like Belo in Argentina) that
| support it, and I believe tourism will drive even more
| integration over time.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| >Does it work internationally?
|
| Does crypto? You may have heard of this thing called
| "tariffs" lately. Even purchases of software licenses are
| tariffed in Brazil[1]. The average person purchasing goods
| with crypto is just going to ignore this and several similar
| laws.
|
| If you say crypto works to transact internationally, keep in
| mind: so does TF2 hats.
|
| 1: https://www.machadoassociados.com.br/en/2021/05/brazilian-
| fe...
| mhluongo wrote:
| Indeed, TF2 hats and gift cards appear to do something well
| that this system doesn't :)
| dwattttt wrote:
| I note that that thing is not "abide by the law"
| oulipo wrote:
| Interestig, but this is also worrying to know that the
| government now knows exactly what you bought, where, when, and
| for how much. They can also (if there's a rogue government)
| create fake transactions to implicate you in things you haven't
| done
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Any half competent government can always create fake
| transactions to implicate people, whether it's a paper or
| electronic (government currency) transaction.
| soco wrote:
| And a government who would resort to creating fake
| transactions, probably wouldn't bother with creating fake
| transactions at all. So that argument sounds quite out of
| touch.
| julkali wrote:
| That's why central bank digital currencies are the way to go
| - same amount of trust as the (real) base currency and near-
| cash-level privacy (modulo implementation details)
| forty wrote:
| Is it much more worrying than having Visa being able to do
| that? Especially when you see how the US is going downhill, I
| think it'd rather take the risk of having to deal with
| hypothetical local fascist state.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There's pretty much no practical difference between Visa
| knowing all this stuff and the government knowing it. All
| Visa's data is at most one subpoena away and that's the
| optimistic scenario.
| kevincox wrote:
| Of course there is a difference the other way. With a
| government run payment system _only_ the government knows
| it. Not the government and some for-profit corporation.
| darkwater wrote:
| And maybe even some other government which was an ally
| until a new old president is elected.
| dkga wrote:
| You cannot seriously believe that. Visa or any other
| private card processing company would actively seek to
| exploit it for its financial gains within the limits of
| the rules. The central bank (which is not "the
| governmentTM") would use the data to make sure the system
| is functioning properly or some other public policy goal.
| That's all the difference in the world.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Is it much more worrying than having Visa being able to
| do that?
|
| Yes, of course it is. How could anybody think otherwise?
| What is the worst thing Visa can do and what is the worst
| thing Visa has done? What is the worst thing the government
| can do and what is the worst thing the government has done?
| maeln wrote:
| Visa has to respect whatever laws apply in the country
| they operate in. So if the police want Visa info on
| whoever, provided that a legal framework cover this
| issue, Visa has to give it. It makes 0 difference if the
| payment system is government-operated or not. In any
| democratic country, the police would need the approval of
| a judge whether the service is public or a private
| company. And in dictatorship, the government will get the
| data or ban you from doing business in the country
| anyway.
| 34679 wrote:
| I can think of at least one difference. If the government
| wants to lie about credit card transactions, Visa has to
| go along with it.
| ziddoap wrote:
| If Visa has it, the government simply needs to ask for
| it. There's a difference, but it's not much of one.
| piva00 wrote:
| Sell your data to interested 3rd parties? Because
| anything else a government can do through their own
| systems they can require Visa to do as well, so seems
| like Visa with a profit motive has the potential to
| misuse the data even more than a government.
| ImJamal wrote:
| You could always just use cash then Visa wouldn't know.
| Wilder7977 wrote:
| There is virtually no difference with a private entity which
| can be compelled by the government to do the same, plus has
| its own profit motive which could also create incentive to do
| it.
|
| There must be a non-repudiation and integrity check to verify
| transactions (e.g., in Estonia I sign digitally all my
| transactions), so the latter problem is easier to mitigate.
| simgt wrote:
| > this is also worrying to know that the government now knows
| exactly what you bought, where, when, and for how much
|
| As a citizen of a still kind-of-functioning democracy, I'd
| happily make the trade if that means Apple, Google, Visa or
| Mastercard don't have the information anymore.
| roenxi wrote:
| I don't think you've thought that through - fascists and
| communists both have more control over the institutions of
| democracy than they do over those companies. The banking
| companies generally don't want to be involved in anything
| ideological except moneymaking.
| rafaquintanilha wrote:
| Correct. Moreover, when you are trapped by the
| government, few things work better than raising
| international awareness. Even if the companies ultimately
| comply, that is typically done loud and clear, and
| eventually snowball until it's unsustainable.
| erikerikson wrote:
| So there's this thing called a gag order.
| Propelloni wrote:
| What "institutions of democracy" would that be, if the
| state is fascist or communist? And I think you severly
| underestimate the reach a totalitarian state has. Hint:
| it is total.
| hooverd wrote:
| Banking companies are more than happy to fold like a
| cardboard box if either government threatens their money-
| making.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Then I would prefer to do transactions with crypto. I don't
| want neither a government nor corporation to peek on all my
| transactions.
| pjc50 wrote:
| .. so you put them on a globally visible blockchain?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| As long as the blockchain provides anonimity, sure.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Tornado cash has been delisted from OFAC, and there is
| also something like monero / privacy coin.
| pearlsontheroad wrote:
| Brazil has an insane level of financial fraud and tax
| evasion. Pix mitigates some of that, but at the cost of
| privacy - something that Brazilians do not care too much
| about.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's a pretty sweeping generalization about 200M+ people!
| rafaquintanilha wrote:
| But it's correct though
| skrebbel wrote:
| A statistic isn't a generalization.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| He's not wrong though. "If you have nothing to hide, you
| have nothing to fear" is a popular saying here. People
| who lived under a military dictatorship not even half a
| century ago will actually utter those words.
| guax wrote:
| Pix does not substantially changes the tax evasion problem
| as that is mostly a problem with higher earners and
| small/medium business who evade tax using cash payment,
| convoluted setups of companies and "laranjas" (our slang
| for someone borrowing the name to do something for someone
| else, the scapegoat) as well as "non cash" transactions.
|
| Pix mostly replaces and eats on credit card transactions
| that were done for the convenience aspect and no the credit
| aspect. As well as allow a whole new part of the country to
| accept electronic payments, and although that would
| increase tax revenue from business it also substantially
| increase their revenue since there is no x% from card
| processors and don't require special rented/bought
| equipment.
| deepsun wrote:
| Visa/Mastercard report all of that to governments anyway.
| guax wrote:
| A lot of governments have that ability for electronic
| transactions. In Brazils case specifically it was implemented
| as a payment broker between institutions that participate in
| the SPI (instantaneous payment system) and works pretty much
| like any other inter bank transfer system. It is also
| possible to use the system semi-anonymously by using a "non
| bank" participant that will broker the transaction for you
| using random keys. Which would mean not even your bank
| account no gets exposed, because its not used.
|
| As far as I can tell the legal landscape of the solution
| currently only allow the actual government to look at the
| data with the standard court orders. I believe not even the
| 10k report limit is applied to pix atm the same way as the
| other methods.
|
| Regarding fake transactions, that would be a non concern to
| me, the system is only centralised in parts, the banks still
| hold most of the data so they would have to collaborate on
| this potentially leaving lots of evidence behind. Governments
| do not need to be subtle to screw you over, see current US
| deportation news.
|
| Its not that much different than how bank transfers in Europe
| work in practice. The US is particularly archaic in banking
| technology available to the public.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| If you pay with Google Wallet or Apple Pay it's a corporation
| what you bought, when and where. And since Google knows your
| location and has access to your mail, social media and
| everything on your phone, they can connect more dots.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Google is not going to put me in a concentration camp,
| enslave me, or send me to die in a trench on the front
| lines.
|
| (If you're reading this, please note this comment was
| written in 2025)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Google will just sell your data to anyone who pays more.
| Who might not have the best intentions regarding you.
|
| On top of that, it will provide the said information to
| government agencies if asked.
| hooverd wrote:
| Google isn't, but there might be a startup that will in
| the next batch.
| xinayder wrote:
| In a sense it didn't change much. It's not like the
| government can access your transaction data all the time.
| They still need to go to court and request a warrant for
| that, to break your bank secrecy.
|
| It's not different from what we had before.
|
| EDIT: it didn't actually change a thing. Banks are still
| required to maintain transaction data private, and agencies,
| including the government, MUST obtain a warrant to break
| transaction data secrecy.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's those entire thing called "laws" and "constitution"
| that forbids this.
|
| And if a government decides to just ignore those, it will
| also have no need to watch your transactions or create fake
| ones.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > I receive a push notification from my Brazilian bank before
| Wise finishes running the animation of confirmation of
| withdrawal. It's like magic.
|
| After I had to add a special animation for one email system so
| that user was sure that "the core functionality of encrypting"
| was indeed working (it took milliseconds in reality), your
| experience doesn't surprise me that much. But, in my "IoT"
| system we have a mix of devices. Our service can handle most
| requests in sub millisecond, but some devices (gprs) need at
| least minimum 1 second (20sec is still within time limit) to
| respond only because of slow connectivity. And then I have a
| parking ticket machines where you press button, wait 2 seconds,
| it beeps, then after 2sec it changes screen to "printing
| ticket", then after 2s you get the ticket, where everything can
| be a local action (free ticket without payment). Technology is
| wild.
| seszett wrote:
| The parking ticket machine might make things deliberately
| slow because the printer needs to warm up or something.
|
| Maybe it needs up to 5 seconds to warm up if it's in deep
| sleep, so splitting this into three 2s periods provides the
| least frustrating user experience.
|
| As soon as you need to deal with real hardware things always
| start to get complicated.
| pjc50 wrote:
| More likely it's warming up the mobile comms state machine,
| without checking if it's actually needed. Unlike mobile
| phones which try to keep their data connection somewhat
| live, IoT things often drop back to the lowest state to
| save power (and possibly SIM cost)
|
| https://www.sharetechnote.com/html/Handbook_UMTS_RrcStateCh
| a...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| And programmed on BASIC Stamp on some godforsaken
| discontinued hardware. :)
| yetihehe wrote:
| More likely it was written by some cheap interns and
| requires getting unique ticket id from server for
| "controlling" purposes. Then there is one part time
| employee (met him, small talked a little) who goes from
| car to car with terminal and checks if those tickets are
| valid. I have some experience with gprs systems here, so
| probable flow:
|
| - press button
|
| - gprs roundtrip about button press with "no payment,
| free ticket" (2s)
|
| - machine shows "printing ticket", asks server what to
| print (aka the idiotic unnecessary step)
|
| - gprs roundtrip (2s)
|
| - printer warmup? (?s)
|
| - prints ticket
|
| > to save power (and possibly SIM cost)
|
| Nope, costs per sim are monthly per card, until you hit
| the data limit, then per MB. Those machines typically
| have enough power to keep connection alive.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| More likely a parking machine needs to be accessible to
| all users, and some people get confused when technology
| works too fast.
| desiderantes wrote:
| Perhaps if you get confused by fast things you shouldn't
| be driving?
| inetknght wrote:
| Perhaps if you're driving, the things around you need to
| give you time to react to other things around you. Fewer
| things are more frustrating than getting honked at
| because you pressed a button, then got distracted by a
| car pulling up which you needed to look at to be aware
| of, then missed the printer asking if you want a receipt,
| and then having to press another button to talk to
| someone to ask for a reprint which, of course, holds up
| the line of cars growing behind you while someone gets
| paged to come to the kiosk.
| desiderantes wrote:
| So you wrote this new scenario where the parking ticket
| machine does NOT print a ticket unless you confirm it
| (after you already pressed the button)? And you get...
| mildly inconvenienced by some honking. Yeah you shouldn't
| drive.
| dmonitor wrote:
| The cell providers also get really opinionated about how
| much / how often your IoT device talks to the cell towers
| when they seek to approve your device.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Even if it's free, doesn't it have to put the ticket cookie
| in some database?
| yetihehe wrote:
| Other machines can do it with single roundtrip (2s pause
| between pressing and printing). That one single
| manufacturer is slower than everyone, but hey, maybe the
| app (which requires location, phone number and vehicle
| number) will be faster?
| m00dy wrote:
| > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| Pix can't facilitate cross-border micro payments.
| diggan wrote:
| > Pix can't facilitate cross-border micro payments.
|
| No reason it couldn't. Bizum (mobile payments in Spain)
| started with just Spain but can now be used for payments
| across & to/from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Andorra.
|
| Bizum is also a member of European Mobile Payment Systems
| Association which I think will eventually lead to all members
| being able to make transfers to other members, but that might
| a somewhat dream rather than actual reality today.
| m00dy wrote:
| there's a lot of reasons that it won't happen anytime soon.
| Those countries use euro as their main currency, also
| culturally and historically connected, which you can call
| them latins. Why don't you add Denmark to that group ? You
| can't because it will take ages :)
| burmanm wrote:
| But for similar application, you could use MobilePay
| (Vipps?). That works across Finland, Sweden, Norway and
| Denmark.
|
| So although only Finland uses Euro (and rest have their
| own currency), you can easily transfer money between
| persons using just their mobile number as an example.
| mndgs wrote:
| You can, just the central bank /regulator of that country
| needs to want it. Example: Sweden, which now transacts on
| SEPA, jointly with EUR currency.
| graemep wrote:
| All Eurozone countries, all bu one an EU member (and that
| one is very small has a very close trade deal with the EU)
| so not really cross border except from a certain legalistic
| angle.
|
| The practicalities are very different from transferring
| between say Brazil and the US.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > so not really cross border except from a certain
| legalistic angle
|
| Is this a joke? Of course it's cross-border, it crosses
| international borders. It works because the countries
| involved put in the work to make it easy. The fact that
| you can't use Pix in the US has no bearing.
| graemep wrote:
| > The fact that you can't use Pix in the US has no
| bearing.
|
| The comment I replied to was claiming Bizum operating
| "cross border" showed that Pix could do so, so it is very
| much relevant in context.
|
| It is a very special case of cross border. It is
| technically cross border but does not have the
| difficulties of cross border in all of the rest of the
| world outside the EU.
|
| In any case it is arguable whether these are separate
| countries or just states of the EU. It has a common
| currency, a parliament that can legislate (in certain
| matters - rather like the US Congress) for the whole EU,
| courts, a central bank, a public prosecutor and many
| other "national" institutions etc. it also have the
| symbols of a state such as a flag and a national anthem
| (albeit both shared with the Council of Europe), EU
| passports state they are EU as well as the issuing
| country's name etc.
|
| Even if you do regard it as a cross border one it is very
| much atypical and cannot be replicated elsewhere.
| Y_Y wrote:
| The United Nations has a flag and anthem too.
|
| The umbrella interoperability initiative that includes
| Bizum is Swiss (neither EU nor Eurozone).
|
| Maybe you have a radical viewpoint, or maybe you're just
| unfamiliar with the subject matter, but individual EU
| countries are very much separate entities,
| notwithstanding many helpful treaties.
|
| There are lots of transnational entities like the EU and
| monetary unions like the Eurozone.
|
| There's nothing so special about this arrangement that
| means it couldn't happen elsewhere.
|
| https://empsa.org/news/leading-european-mobile-payment-
| solut...
| graemep wrote:
| > The umbrella interoperability initiative that includes
| Bizum is Swiss (neither EU nor Eurozone).
|
| and yet Switzerland is not one of the countries where
| Bizum can be used?
|
| The UN does not have a common currency or a parliament
| etc.
| diggan wrote:
| > All Eurozone countries, all bu one an EU member (and
| that one is very small has a very close trade deal with
| the EU) so not really cross border except from a certain
| legalistic angle.
|
| So what? Sweden has it's own Swish system, Sweden is well
| integrated in EU, Europe and Eurozone yet it only works
| within Sweden AFAIK.
|
| That Bizum works across four countries is not a given
| just because they're all within the Eurozone. Just like
| how Brazil and US would need to figure out how to send
| electronic money between themselves if Pix was available
| in both countries, so did Italy<>Spain<>Portugal when it
| came to Bizum, which is a private company btw.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Brazil used to have capital controls. It seems like it
| doesn't any more and is aiming for full convertibility:
| https://www.ibanet.org/The-new-Brazilian-foreign-exchange-
| an... , but it's worth thinking about in these systems.
| Etheryte wrote:
| A more apt description would be it doesn't currently do it,
| there is no technical limitation. You can send cents across
| borders just fine with Wise and others without any fuss.
| m00dy wrote:
| it's not about technical expertise but more about being a
| global power.
| miltava wrote:
| That's true for the moment, specially because you'd need an
| agreement between both countries.
|
| But payment processors in Brazil are already offering
| "international pix", that Brazilians can use to pay foreign
| companies. It's the same experience as pix for the customer
| but behind the scenes the company deals with the cross border
| payment.
|
| There are even stores accepting pix in Portugal:
| https://www.publico.pt/2025/01/23/publico-
| brasil/noticia/pix...
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| ...except for inflation.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Bitcoin being down 10% in the last week doesn't promise price
| stability.
| lclc wrote:
| Bitcoin goes up and down in value, BRL (or any other
| government currency) only goes down compared to real goods.
| krunck wrote:
| That's because Wall Street investors use it as a hedge
| against their traditional investments which, as you know,
| are not so stable right now.
| earnesti wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the technicals? Is it a phone app? Does it
| work through QR codes or NFC? Is there a Pix "card"?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Can you elaborate on the technicals? Is it a phone app?
|
| Isn't paying with some phone apps the default in China? And I
| think transferring using phone apps has some success in
| Africa, too.
| homebrewer wrote:
| I used Alipay (which is an Android application where you
| add a debit or credit card) for absolutely everything when
| I was there in October of last year. Sure seemed like
| everyone else was using it too.
|
| Except for Hong Kong, they have their own thing. I just
| used Google pay there.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Does HK still have Octopus?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card
|
| I remember encountering that before London launched
| Oyster, probably inspired by it. Worked in station
| vending machines as well as for tickets.
| dewey wrote:
| Yep, Octopus is everywhere. Alipay HK is also almost
| everywhere. Different app than mainland China but
| basically the same.
| rapfaria wrote:
| You can have several unique keys, a few are unique to the
| whole system (like your phone number, Physical Persons
| Register (CPF)), but you can have several randomly generated
| per bank. Usually you tell someone your phone number,
| otherwise the random generated string is a big string, and
| you actually show them a QR code so they can transfer to your
| account, and vice-versa.
| fdgjgbdfhgb wrote:
| You use your bank's phone app. You can scan a QR code or you
| can send money to someone if you know their "id string", like
| a phone number, an email or a random string of numbers - you
| choose the "id string" format you want, and you can have
| different "ids" linked to different bank accounts. There are
| no physical cards.
| aembleton wrote:
| What happens if you miss-type the email or phone number
| when making a payment? Is there any confirmation of the
| persons name?
| cesarb wrote:
| > Is there any confirmation of the persons name?
|
| Yes, and it's a small privacy leak in Pix: it shows the
| person's name and part of their CPF.
| abecedarius wrote:
| That doesn't sound small?
| luisrudge wrote:
| It helps to prevent scams because you know who the money
| is going to (not foolproof, of course). CPF in Brazil is
| not as fragile or sensitive as the SSN in the US. You
| can't easily wreck someone's life just because you know
| their name and CPF. CPF numbers are shared pretty much
| everywhere since it's a unique identification code for a
| single person. All businesses ask for it when they're
| generating invoices/receipts etc. You basically use your
| CPF everywhere and there's virtually no risk in sharing
| it. That's not to say that identity theft is not a thing
| in Brazil. It definitely is, however the damage is
| usually not as bad as the stories you hear in the US and
| the blame is usually put on the banks / service providers
| for not doing the proper KYC to verify the documents.
| It'll be a headache for the person, but usually something
| that is quickly fixed.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Before Pix, people already needed to put the full number,
| the CPF, and Bank agency number, so it's an improvement
| compared to old Brazilian transfers.
| gjvnq wrote:
| assuming that the typo didn't lead to an
| invalid/unregistered key, you will see the recipient's
| bank, full name and masked CPF number in the confirmation
| screen.
|
| I really dislike the lack of a more anonymous way to
| transfer money but given how prevalent scams are here I
| feel like there was no better option.
|
| Also, before PIX bank transfers required a person's full
| name, full CPF number, full account and branch numbers so
| arguably PIX is helping to improve privacy a little bit.
|
| However the big issue is when people register their phone
| numbers as PIX keys because it means strangers can easily
| get full names from phone numbers.
| maleldil wrote:
| It's a protocol. You make payments through your bank app. You
| can make payments directly, basically a bank transfer, or
| through a QR code.
| mndgs wrote:
| True that, ISO 20022 based.
| dormento wrote:
| Brazilian here.
|
| - no card
|
| - technically not a specific app, its a payment method that
| any app with a checkout flow (for example) can chose to
| implement.
|
| - you register some id with your financial institution of
| choice (any of CPF - equivalent to SSN, CNPJ - for
| businesses, phone number, email or a randomly generated key).
|
| - keys are fully portable, as in you can revoke em or change
| the bank institution they're associated with any time.
|
| - you can generate a QR code on the spot so the person paying
| can just scan it
|
| - transfer is pretty much instant (under 5s seems to be the
| norm)
|
| - no NFC (so works with any crappy phone)
|
| - since its a bank transfer, and since bank transfers are
| insured up to 200k (afaik), its pretty safe.
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| > you can generate a QR code on the spot so the person
| paying can just scan it
|
| You can also generate a R$0,00, print it and leave to the
| other person input how much will be transferred.
|
| PS: Pix is so trivial to us that only in places like HN we
| can see how amazing it is
| owebmaster wrote:
| Brazilian banking system is quite well developed for a
| long time. Let's see if Pix being ubiquitous can help the
| country better develop economically, with better wealth
| distribution, innovation and high-paying jobs
| catsma21 wrote:
| > its a bank transfer
|
| why can't we just use qr codes with ibans in that case?
| jowea wrote:
| You can use QR codes with your Pix address. I don't see
| why it would matter that much? I think the IBAN system is
| mostly used in Europe.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| Because the underlying "account" is not necessarily a
| Bank Account.
| gjvnq wrote:
| I guess that's because pretty much nobody in Brazil knows
| what an IBAN is
| owebmaster wrote:
| > - no NFC (so works with any crappy phone)
|
| It is possible to pay using NFC now
| vitorgrs wrote:
| There's NFC support now... You can now use Pix inside
| Google Pay (with NFC or QR code etc as well).
| badocr wrote:
| It's a functionality of banking apps. Yes, transfers are done
| either via a QR code or via one or more "Pix Keys", that the
| person/bussiness authorizes in their baking app. These keys
| can be the brazilian equivalent of your SSN, a cell phone
| number, an e-mail address or a randomly generated UUID-
| formated one.
| rpgbr wrote:
| It's a framework laid out by Central Bank and mandatory for
| medium and large-sized banks and payment companies. (For
| small ones, it's optional.)
|
| Pix has several rules that makes up for a nice UX, such as
| being free for personal use and a 10-second limit to get a
| response after a transaction.
|
| Pix is an open source specification, btw:
| https://github.com/bacen/pix-api
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| Pix is basically a commercial name for two services:
|
| - SPI: responsible for the payments
|
| - DICT: responsible for mapping keys to accounts
|
| The API documentation of those services are available, but
| only banks can use them. When a person wants to send money to
| another, there's an option in the bank app for sending
| through Pix.
|
| Then you have many options to define to whom you'll send that
| money:
|
| - typing the bank account information
|
| - using the Pix key (which can be an phone, email, CPF/CNPJ
| (brazillian documents) or a generated key)
|
| - scanning a QR code
|
| Note that the two latter options don't require the account
| information. That resolution is done by DICT.
|
| After that, you type how much you'll send (sometimes the QR
| code already contains this information). Then it'll send
| through SPI.
|
| And yeah, it's really, really fast.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| They protect against tracking and provide anonimity. That might
| be valuable.
| salomonk_mur wrote:
| For 0.001% of the population.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| To be fair, you don't know when you might need this.
| Crypto's useful in authoritarian countries as a means of
| financing activities the dictator doesn't want you to
| partake in, like independent media funding, or to move
| savings to another country in case of a "sudden" foreign
| currency operation restrictions.
| speed_spread wrote:
| It's even more useful to destabilize a country's economy,
| finance covert operations and straight out launder money!
| relistan wrote:
| Yes, and they are not exclusively, but largely, criminals.
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| It might be valuable for a minority of people, but it is an
| active detriment for most. I want to know where my money is
| going, and I want my bank to be able to get it back in case
| of theft or fraud.
| strobe wrote:
| at same time you don't wanna to ask bank for permission to
| spend your money every time:
|
| "Can I buy some milk today? No!, let's visit our branch
| first and give some papers which will require significant
| time/effort to get for you."
|
| Most just not experiencing things like this but once that
| happen it is hard to ignore this possibility.
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| I do want permission from my bank, actually. Of course
| not for milk, but for a car or house, for sure.
| werdnapk wrote:
| A major point of crypto is based on tracking as the ledger
| (blockchain) is completely public.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| The identity of the user is secret. Others will just see a
| public key.
| kgen wrote:
| Only in theory right? The moment you use it with a
| service that requires credentials or an email or a
| physical address to mail to, it's not, unless you somehow
| wash it through an anonymous pool somehow
| Guestmodinfo wrote:
| I wish we could make a comparison with Indian payment system
| calld UPI. I feel both are similar and I wish if we could know
| and compre all such govt run initiatives. UPI is Indian govt
| initiative and very reliable
| pastelsky wrote:
| UPI is great in terms of UX, but I don't think it's super
| reliable - especially big public banks go down all the time.
| The UPI base service had multiple incidents in the last 1
| month too.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| The main difference is UPI is decentralized whereas Pix is
| centralized to the central bank of Brazil.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Is there any way to use Pix as a tourist without Brazilian tax
| number or permanent residence.
|
| Technically a pre-paid option should be possible, but I could
| not find anything about something in that vein.
| auadix wrote:
| You don't need a permanent residence, but to use PIX you have
| to get an ID called CPF. This is your IRS number, as you
| said, tax number. It's easy to get but it takes time, you can
| have one as national from different country.
| jowea wrote:
| This is true but the next step is a Brazilian bank account.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Is there an online bank that allows to create an account
| just with the CPF and no proof of permanent residence?
| jowea wrote:
| I googled a bit, seems that maybe Bradesco bank allows it
| but it's a lot of paperwork and you need to be physically
| present at the bank branch.
| owebmaster wrote:
| I think remitly works
|
| https://blog.remitly.com/money-transfer/complete-guide-
| brazi...
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Banco Rendimento supports it, I believe.
| accurrent wrote:
| While I agree cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance, my
| experience with qr systems has been a mixed bag. The country I
| live in has a fairly good qr code payment system. But there was
| one day when the largest bank went down and that was chaos
| (cash very much has a role to play). We also supposedly have
| linkage with India's UPI. Unfortunately, it was impossible for
| me to actually use that linkage thanks to the way upi works (I
| think only some subset of banks are supported).
| xenospn wrote:
| QR codes are problematic. First of all, you can't really
| verify it with your naked eye. It can take you to a fake site
| that looks just like the original. Using phone numbers is
| vastly superior.
| cesarb wrote:
| > It can take you to a fake site that looks just like the
| original.
|
| At least with PIX, you scan the QR code directly on your
| online banking app, so there's no risk of going to a "fake
| site" (and the app also displays the information extracted
| fron the QR code, it's not a blind payment).
| vitorgrs wrote:
| There's also "Pix Copia e Cola" (Pix Copy and Paste)
| LtdJorge wrote:
| QR codes carry data. It might be a URL or it might not.
| Perizors wrote:
| In the case of Brazil, besides QR codes, you can also make
| payments using the user unique key, which can be its phone
| number, social security number, email or a random generated
| key.
| cesarb wrote:
| > you can also make payments using the user unique key,
| which can be its phone number, social security number,
| email or a random generated key.
|
| And you can also use the bank account number, effectively
| replacing older bank transfer mechanisms like DOC and TED.
| rglullis wrote:
| > I've been living in Brazil for the last 20 years.
|
| If you have moved about 15 years before that, you'd have
| experienced the hyperinflation years and you've come to
| understand why Brazilian (retail) banking systems were always
| pushing the state of the art.
|
| (You'd also understand that cryptocurrencies are not meant to
| compete with payment networks that have institutional backing,
| but that's a lesson for another day)
| dewey wrote:
| I guess you could say the same thing without sounding so
| condescending.
| bberrry wrote:
| Have you had any significant issues with scams? In my home
| country we have a huge problem of scammers calling and tricking
| elderly people to transfer their savings with a similar instant
| payment app.
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| We have scams just like any other place and technology. I
| don't think that Pix made it easier.
|
| btw, Pix is not an app, it is a service/infrastructure that
| can be used by any bank
| jowea wrote:
| Yeah it is a thing, lots of different scams to watch out. And
| being held at gunpoint and made to send a transfer is also a
| concern.
| xenospn wrote:
| Brazil is amazing. I bought a coconut from an old man who was
| walking barefoot on the beach using my phone.
| noman-land wrote:
| Why was he using your phone?
| mondobe wrote:
| Why was the beach using your phone?
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| It's truly remarkable and makes any interaction with a US-based
| payment system look ancient in comparison. One to two business
| days to make an ACH? Ugh, please. People still using paper
| checks? Get with the times.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| The good thing is that Pix shows it will work for many, many
| years.
|
| The bad thing is that Pix shows it will work for many, many
| years.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| >>I've been living in Brazil for the last 20 years.
|
| Lucky you. I've been living here since i was born. :(
|
| Pix is surreal. It was launched in the Bolsonaro
| (mal)administration, designed by the proverbially incompetent
| public work force, and is as Orwellian as can be. Its code is
| nowhere to be found.
|
| The funniest thing is that is has been adopted feverishly by
| the rabid right wing crazies, the same lot who want to destroy
| everything 'government'.
|
| I take pleasure in listing three of the problems:
|
| 1. Lack of Transparency
|
| 2. Potential for Abuse
|
| A government-controlled payment system centrally-controlled,
| with no auditability? Oh please give me more (/s)
|
| 3. Censorship and Political Control
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| Bolsonaro didn't even know what Pix was:
|
| https://exame.com/economia/questionado-por-apoiador-
| bolsonar...
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| But i have said nothing about Bolsonaro's lack of awareness
| -- his monumental ignorance is a known fact, mind you, and
| that is not the core of my argument.
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Correcting the blatant misinformation about the topic:
|
| - PIX project started in 2016, public launch in 2020
|
| - It was not "launched" by any President; the Brazilian
| Central Bank is an independent authority, with it own
| mandate, not a branch of the executive power
|
| - PIX was co-developed with institutions of the financial
| sector
|
| - It's a protocol that participants must implement, not an
| app. The specification is even on GitHub. I don't know what
| you mean by "its code is nowhere to be found".
|
| - The Brazilian Central Bank is acknowledged as a _benchmark_
| , rather than "proverbially incompetent public work force"
| mndgs wrote:
| It's based on ISO20022 messaging standard. Networking and
| security is typically custom in each country/standardized
| payment system.
| dkga wrote:
| There you go: https://github.com/bacen/pix-api
| Xunjin wrote:
| The world needs to implement Pix. I truly believe that is a
| system which can replace SWIFT with just a intermediary, with a
| virtual currency that exchange rate between the 2 countries in
| the operation, this way the world can have a freedom outside
| dollar and really fast transactions.
| leereeves wrote:
| I'd hate to see a system like that where I live, because the
| government will abuse it. We've already seen Canada freeze
| bank accounts of protestors, and US officials put protestors
| on the no fly list.
| tialaramex wrote:
| This doesn't make sense as a prioritization.
|
| Oh no, my government might be run by nazis -> Let's make
| the government services crap
|
| The nazis don't need to use your crap government services,
| so you're just pointlessly making things worse, this is the
| same delusion as "But it's illegal". Why on Earth would
| crooks care whether what they're doing is legal?
|
| I suggest:
|
| Oh no, my government might be run by nazis -> Ensure this
| does not happen OR leave
| gessha wrote:
| The nuance is it does put you in a vulnerable position.
| It's the financial equivalent of putting all your eggs in
| one basket. It looks super convenient to pay with Wechat
| and Pix but I can't imagine how bad it would be if I get
| on the government's bad side.
|
| I really want a system where I can transfer money
| effortlessly but I also want a guarantee that I won't be
| restricted access to my banking.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Unfortunately you've described the essential American
| view of government.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Yup. Despite how magical and convenient Pix is, I still
| consider returning to cash just for the huge privacy
| liability of using Pix. But it's so engrained in the
| culture now that you can't really use anything else
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The govt already has full access to your bank account!
| Always did and KYC ended privacy.
|
| Preventing convenient payment technology only hurts the
| rest of us. If you want redundancy buy gold coins.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| We should focus on getting rid of KYC, instead of giving
| up on privacy and security.
| kardos wrote:
| Indeed. KYC has a purpose though -- prevention of fraud,
| money laundering, etc. Getting rid of KYC without a
| similarly-effective solution for those things seems
| unlikely. Ideas?
| mndgs wrote:
| Won't happen. Ever. Or concede to money laundering.
| throttlebody wrote:
| Are there any reasons we can't have both KYC and
| privacy/security ?
| leereeves wrote:
| You're comparing Pix to bank transfers. I'm comparing Pix
| to cash.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Cash still exists, as well as the gold mentioned. Barter,
| haha. Didn't advocate against those.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| Europe has SEPA payments. They are very fast and reliable,
| and separate from Swift.
| graemep wrote:
| I have only come across SEPA as a means of making transfers
| between bank accounts. Can it be used for payments too
| (e.g. instead of a credit card)?
|
| It is also single currency - Euro only, right? Swift is
| global.
|
| Dealing with many currencies and laws (e.g. countries with
| capital controls) is very complex.
| amelius wrote:
| Also, does it support micropayments?
| mndgs wrote:
| Yes, min transfer 0.01 EUR
| mndgs wrote:
| SEPA also works for SEK now, other EU currencies are in
| pipeline.
|
| Swift is just a messaging standard and a message exchange
| network (distributed). SEPA is that, plus a settlement
| system (in a nutshell). That allows for speed and much
| more (instant payments, request to pay, pay by phone
| number, credit/debit transfers, etc).
|
| You're bound to deal with currencies once you make any
| kind of transaction that originates in one currency and
| settles (finishes) in another.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Love that you tell us how amazing the government run digital
| currency but end it with a throw away statement about how the
| open source version will never "stand a chance". Just like how
| no one uses Linux and Firefox died 20 years ago.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Cryptocurrency != OSS.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| >Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| Until this line I forgot crypto was even competing!
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Pix sounds great for most people and probably a good
| replacement for government issued paper notes and metal
| coins. But, the crypto purists like crypto that is not
| controlled by the government or the banks. Pix would
| obviously fail at attracting those crypto fans.
| olalonde wrote:
| > I've even had homeless people ask me for Pix instead of
| change on multiple occasions.
|
| Sounds like WeChat Pay. It's been years now that beggars in
| China only carry QR codes.
|
| > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| They solve a different problem or have the potential to:
| predictable/unbiased money issuance and on/off ramp for payment
| platforms.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I wish the homeless in London did this, I'd happily give a
| few pounds here and there if it were easy to. Back when I had
| cash on me at all times, I would think nothing of it, just
| toss a coin. Now in our cashless society, I found myself at a
| loss to do anything about the people suffering in front of me
| phillc73 wrote:
| You could try carrying cash again, especially just a few
| coins for the homeless.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _You could try carrying cash again, especially just a few
| coins for the homeless._
|
| I make a point of carrying cash. Especially for buskers.
| It's just so simple to push the "cash back" button at the
| PoS when I'm buying something else.
|
| (I miss the days when you could buy a CD from a talented
| busker.)
| paleotrope wrote:
| You could donate to your chosen homeless assistance charity
| and just carry cards that explain how to get assistance
| from the same org.
| mulderc wrote:
| Maybe not true everywhere but in all the towns I have
| lived in the homeless were well aware of organizations
| that provide assistance. No need to carry a card about
| it.
| bananalychee wrote:
| Can't even be penniless these days, you need a fancy
| electronic device, a data plan and reliable access to an
| outlet before you can beg for charity. Sad world.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| And then people won't give you money because "look at
| them with their phones! I'm sure that could have paid
| rent for a month"
| reaperducer wrote:
| _> I 've even had homeless people ask me for Pix instead of
| change on multiple occasions.
|
| Sounds like WeChat Pay. It's been years now that beggars in
| China only carry QR codes._
|
| I saw a guy at a freeway offramp in north Texas with a Venmo
| (?) address scrawled on a piece of cardboard.
| seydor wrote:
| What about tax evading people? Is the system used to tax audit
| people?
| Fidelix wrote:
| Yes. Every single transaction is open for the government to
| inspect. There is zero privacy in pix in relation to
| government surveillance.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Is the system used to tax audit people?
|
| You bet. Every pix transaction is reported to the brazilian
| authorities.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I've been saying for over a decade that crypto makes no sense
| for micropayments and the only reason traditional methods don't
| work is because they are run by rent-seeking middlemen like
| VISA.
|
| Watching the Indian and Brazillian governements solve this
| problem by by building the payment networks themselves and
| removing the profit incentive has felt vindicating.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > removing the profit incentive
|
| You're far too optimistic. The current administration is
| trying to work itself out of a major economic crisis and
| there's nothing they would like more than to tax the crap out
| of every single Pix transaction.
| owebmaster wrote:
| Major economic crisis? 4 years growing >= 3% doesn't look
| like a crisis to me.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I've been living in Brazil for the last 20 years.
|
| > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| Yeah, if you enjoy having your money one hundred percent
| controlled by the brazilian government. I can't think of a more
| frightening proposition. You do realize this is the country
| that once suddenly confiscated everybody's money directly from
| their bank accounts, right?
|
| Why did they do that? Runaway inflation. Just like its fellow
| latin american neighbors, Brazil has mismanaged all of its
| currencies and it will inflate the real to zero just like all
| the others, it's merely a matter of time. Just look at the
| country's economic situation. BRL is an absolute garbage
| currency. Why would you even want to hold onto this crap?
| You're better off holding USD if you can. You're better off
| holding real property if you've got the capital. You're better
| off holding bitcoins.
|
| Cryptocurrency? They're basically the light at the end of the
| tunnel. You say you've lived here 20 years. Surely you know
| that judges are basically gods in this country. And we have
| judges admitting _in writing_ that it 's essentially impossible
| for them to seize or in any way touch your bitcoins without
| your secret keys. Do you seriously believe they have no chance?
| In _this_ place? They 're basically the solution to nearly
| every single problem in the "government is stupid" category.
|
| Surely you know that the brazilian government sucks at pretty
| much everything except taxing you. And you're advocating for a
| system that essentially implements nation wide financial
| surveillance. Because our number one priority is to make
| taxation of an already heavily taxed people even more
| efficient, right? So that the politicians and judge kings can
| enjoy their world tours on tax payer money?
|
| Pix is very convenient. That's all it is, and unfortunately
| that's all it needs to be to win the hearts of people. People
| won't be smiling after the government starts blocking their Pix
| keys for arbitrary reasons, preventing them from participating
| in society.
| ks2048 wrote:
| If you're thinking worst-case scenarios - what about if the
| government simply puts you in a cell and beats you until you
| give them your crypto keys?
|
| The only hope for any system is if the people fight to not
| live within these kinds of fascist states. Crypto is not some
| magic solution - and has a lot of downsides which are
| mentioned often.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > what about if the government simply puts you in a cell
| and beats you until you give them your crypto keys?
|
| The thought does occur to me. Quite frequently in fact.
|
| My parents lived through the military dictatorship. They
| once asked me to stop posting online because they were
| afraid I'd become some kind of target. I'm not kidding.
|
| > The only hope for any system is if the people fight to
| not live within these kinds of fascist systems.
|
| Brazilians in general tend to agree with you. That's the
| end game of quite a lot of brazilians. "The only solution
| for this place is the airport", they say.
| timewizard wrote:
| Wow. Reminds me of cash. Which has all those same properties.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
|
| Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil - it's not even used in
| other Mercosur countries, what's the chance of having that
| adopted in other countries... And, that's problem #1.
|
| How much do you trust your government with your money? A system
| like Pix don't stand a chance to get a worldwide adoption -
| maybe people are naive but governments won't unify to adopt a
| common system controlled by just a single entity / country.
|
| What we may however end up with, are dozens of systems like
| Pix, one for each country, union, etc. Still cryptocurrencies
| as-is remain relevant (see point 1)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _try to use Pix outside of Brazil_
|
| Try to use cryptocurrency for anything other than a few very
| specific transactions at a number of places in the world so
| small that it's a rounding error.
|
| _Still cryptocurrencies as-is remain relevant_
|
| And somehow less relevant than cash.
|
| I can take cash from any country in the world to my local
| bank, and deposit it into my account. I can get a dozen
| different foreign currencies at my local branch in minutes,
| and almost any other currency in the world can be delivered
| to me by FedEx the next morning for a flat $10 fee.
|
| I can take cash to any other country in the world and get it
| converted into the local currency, whether that's paper or
| digital in almost any city.
|
| Crypto is great if you do a very few, very specific things in
| a vanishingly small number of places. But if I'd tied my
| finances to crypto instead of cash, I'd have been stuck many
| times in foreign lands.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > I can take cash from any country in the world to my local
| bank, and deposit it into my account.
|
| If you are at a institution bank, probably but that's a
| non-existent use case - I never had Argentinian Pesos,
| Turkish Lira or Bulgarian Lev I suddenly needed to deposit
| into my bank account !..
|
| > Try to use cryptocurrency for anything other than a few
| very specific transactions at a number of places in the
| world so small that it's a rounding error.
|
| I'm not sure whether you travel much, but I always travel
| as a digital nomad. I pay small transactions with local
| cash or mostly bank cards as everybody does. But big
| amounts? That's where crypto comes into play. I've paid in
| crypto transactions worth a few thousands dollars because
| that's the only way to do it without incurring huge
| transaction fees and / or long processing time.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The huge transaction fees come from the occasional, but
| surprisingly regular, crashes in value.
| dakial1 wrote:
| Pix proposition is very valuable for governments, as it is
| the best way of controlling transactions, inside the country
| and cross-border.
|
| To you second point, I think the pix penetration/popularity
| proves that the majority of the people trust the government
| for that. There are 2 key reasons for its success: It was
| mandatory for Banks to adhere to the system and there are no
| fees for using it.
|
| Once multiple countries have their own PIX, they just need to
| build a federation structure to connect them and allow cross-
| border transactions.
|
| Crypto-currencies have their place with people who don't
| trust the government, want to speculate and/or simply want to
| do tax evasion, but they are not and probably never will be
| mainstream as a transaction medium.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| iTunes / Steam vs piracy is relevant here.
|
| Most people want something that works well in the ways they
| care about.
|
| People turned to piracy because it was a superior
| experience to the then-distribution-models.
|
| Then, the majority of people didn't care that iTunes /
| Steam cost money and had DRM, because it provided a
| superior experience to piracy.
|
| People want an outcome, easily, reliably: they don't care
| about the method of getting that outcome.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 80 countries have instant/real time payment systems today
| [1], and the Bank for International Settlements is working on
| cross border interoperability [2].
|
| Cryptocurrencies will likely never go away, and will remain
| in use for certain use cases from a cross border value
| transfer perspective, similar to gold; either the token moves
| or the ownership is updated. More interesting is offering
| digital wallets for a single or basket of currencies to
| anyone you can remotely identity proof in the world (similar
| to nsave [3]).
|
| [1] https://www.volt.io/real-time-payments-world-map/
|
| [2] https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm
|
| [3] https://www.nsave.com/ |
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nsave
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies will always be relevant for people show any
| to exploit others by moving money across borders in ways that
| governments can't control (e.g., organized transnational
| cyber criminal gangs).
| holografix wrote:
| Can we just agree that a system where every user/member needs
| to keep a large if not the entirety of the history of
| transactions is never going to work well?
|
| Fine keep using crypto as a store of "value" but as a way to
| handle day to day transactions it has failed.
| m463 wrote:
| wikipedia doesn't say much about it.
|
| I wonder about a few things.
|
| Is it safe? I'm pretty sure everyone not carrying cash is very
| good for physical safety, but can someone be coerced into
| emptying their bank account at knifepoint?
|
| Are there scams? Can stolen money be retrieved?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Presumably it has the same simple safeguards that a US system
| like Zelle or Venmo have. I needed to pay my sister-in-law
| $1300 the other day, and forgot that I have a $500/day
| transaction limit in place for such transfers, at my own
| choosing (setup when I opened the account).
| m463 wrote:
| I thought zelle was riddled with fraud?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Perhaps. I use it to get cash to family members, no
| issues.
| tekno45 wrote:
| what system protects you from being coerced at knife point?
| m463 wrote:
| Writing a personal check? Stolen cellphone?
|
| Cryptocurrencies are full of scams because you can't put
| the money back, and some are anonymous.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Wise's unsupported business list is two pages long
| https://wise.com/us/acceptable-use-policy
|
| and the transaction size limits is also too low, for me (I
| think you can send multiple in quick succession though)
|
| to avoid random fintech platform and bank scrutiny for normal
| transactions and the higher scrutiny given to international
| transfers, I've used crypto for over a decade. For investment,
| to pay or be paid by vendors in other countries. Places where
| paypal/wise/revolute/n26 will flag, hold, or western union was
| the only option. This hasn't changed in that decade, only more
| onramps and offramps for crypto has changed for more
| proliferation.
|
| once our crypto is within our respective domestic
| jurisdictions, cashing out typically has an extremely fast,
| non-scrutinized option, similar in speed to Pix
|
| another comment mentioned that the Bank of International
| Settlements is working on instant cross border transactions, I
| suspect the scrutiny and transaction size limits will remain
| inferior to the unlimited size that crypto provides, and lack
| of scrutiny that a transaction converted to a domestic
| transaction will provide.
|
| Been using stablecoins for a decade and the transaction costs
| have dropped as blockspace has become more abundant, and the
| stablecoin issuers create and redeem for free.
|
| there is also the benefit of not needing the domestic currency
| or banking rails, since the crypto ecosystem has many
| investment options for different risk profiles, and many
| vendors to pay for goods and services.
|
| It is very common that people do not find this competitive
| because they aren't aware they have a problem, or don't have a
| problem. But many people do encounter a friction once they
| branch out into another industry to try to change their
| circumstances, or earn larger amounts. That attracts enough
| people to crypto.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Standard workflow in Brazil:
|
| - You need to buy something from person XZ, whether an
| individual, small business, or huge business.
|
| - XZ sends you an invoice (including relevant taxes).
|
| - You pay the invoice. XZ knows you've paid.
|
| - At year end you can download all your invoices, including any
| taxes already paid, for doing your taxes. (Brazil taxes make
| American taxation look simple.)
|
| Standard workflow in America:
|
| - "Do you want cash, mail a check, or PayPal/Venmo/Cashapp?"
|
| - "Umm do PayPal but friends and family please... also it's at my
| wife's email that still has her maiden name"
|
| - Zero detail on invoice (maybe a receipt printed on thermal
| paper or a random email) which you lose by tax time
| yetihehe wrote:
| Standard workflow in Poland for normal people:
|
| - You buy something and pay the stated price with money,
| phone/card or "blik" (free cashapp).
|
| - Your taxes are already prefilled by your employer. If you
| have some "tax relief" items, you add it on webpage and make
| some clicks to confirm. If no reliefs, you don't need to do
| anything.
| DanielHB wrote:
| - At year end you can download all your invoices, including any
| taxes already paid, for doing your taxes. (Brazil taxes make
| American taxation look simple.)
|
| I disagree, although it is VERY complex the US system is much
| worse. At least the Brazillian one you don't need to pay for an
| application (TurboTax & similars) to file your taxes.
| xinayder wrote:
| And the Receita (IRS) app has an option to pre-fill the tax
| declaration form, which works wonders most of the times. It
| requires a manual review to certify that everything is
| correct, but from the times I had to declare my taxes (I'm
| living abroad so I don't have to do it anymore), it was as
| easy as loading the pre-filled details and just verifying if
| everything was correct.
| guax wrote:
| This is misleading and borderline false.
|
| Most people don't have to do much during tax season nor keep
| any receipts. You download the declarations of your bank,
| receive one from your work. Fill them out on a free software
| and you're done in 15min.
|
| Only gets somewhat complicated If you have lots of deductibles
| and you have to prove them, that's the same everywhere.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I'm a Brazilian. Everything here can be paid through pix. It's
| very convenient, fast reliable and, for a country like ours where
| walking on the streets with money is a risk, safe.
|
| There's only one reason I don't use it: there's no FLOSS app
| (AFAIK) to use it.
|
| Something as common as the dominant payment system should not
| depend on proprietary software.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| > Something as common as the dominant payment system should not
| depend on proprietary software.
|
| Name one dominant payment system worldwide that doesn't? Banks
| are proprietary, credit cards are proprietary, paypal, crypto
| is all proprietary.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nearly all of cryptocurrency is fully open source and
| properly FOSS
| Asraelite wrote:
| > crypto is all proprietary
|
| What?
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think a steelmanned version of their comment is that
| crypto apps are proprietary, which I think is mostly true.
| There are open source apps, but most of the big ones are
| all proprietary.
| NiloCK wrote:
| I still don't really get this. Do you mean that frent-
| ends have proprietary code?
|
| Contracts on-chain can be slightly inscrutable in their
| bytecode format, but it's pretty uncommon for smart
| contracts to not be published with source code and a
| verifiable build.
|
| Example, picked randomly from a transaction in a recent
| block: https://etherscan.io/address/0x388c818ca8b9251b393
| 131c08a736...
| Etheryte wrote:
| Apps as in applications, contracts are not apps.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I interpreted it as: crypto is proprietary in that it is
| bespoke. Crypto prior to ethereum didn't even have a
| concept of compatibility. Forks of existing crypto could
| be considered proprietary with respect to each other and
| with respect to the original project being forked. The
| need for bridging to other chains/coins as well as the
| need for on/off-ramps also speaks to the somewhat-
| proprietary nature of modern cryptocurrencies.
|
| All that said, however, crypto _isn 't_ proprietary
| compared to traditional banking or other payment transfer
| tech in the ways that make crypto, well, crypto - the
| lack of third party intermediaries. Anyone can develop
| for crypto, and the capabilities of the network can be
| extended by properties of crypto tokens.
|
| Any individual crypto token or network may be open source
| or proprietary with respect to its development and
| acceptance of outside contributions, but the ecosystem as
| a whole is amazingly interconnected and interoperable.
| This seems incongruous conceptually when crypto is framed
| in terms of being proprietary, because crypto is
| constantly reinventing itself in plain view, through
| entirely new networks and tokens, and out of sight,
| through the efforts of working groups and individuals to
| support and maintain existing projects.
|
| I think it's entirely fair to call crypto proprietary,
| and also fair to find it not to be, but there's a world
| of difference between how proprietary bitcoin or even
| ethereum is compared to something like xrp. Who controls
| the network and who controls development are the key
| differentiating features among these axes to my mind.
|
| Crypto could potentially be the best or worst of both
| open and proprietary worlds, but in the best case, crypto
| can be open in ways that are good, and only proprietary
| in ways that are necessary and sufficient.
| logicchains wrote:
| You mention crypto; it's not a dominant payment system, but
| nor is it proprietary; there are open source wallets and the
| blockchains are open source.
| fusionadvocate wrote:
| Good were the days when you only could get robbed by what you
| had in your pockets.
|
| Nowadays one goes around with a direct link to his or her
| entire bank account. And criminals know this in Brazil. They
| will rob your phone, but what they really want is to use you as
| an ATM. Private banks are not held accountable to the massive
| and rampant identity fraud in banking, where criminals will
| launder criminal transactions.
|
| The private sectors does not care. Somebody who opened an
| account yesterday receiving R$5000,00 at 2 in the morning in
| the middle of the street? Nothing suspicious... This same
| account cashing out at an ATM the same next day? It is OK to
| me...
|
| Brazilian banks need to be held accountable to 'know your
| customer' laws ASAP and be held liable for criminal activity
| undertaken on their systems.
| souenzzo wrote:
| Do you use/recommend any FOSS payment system?
|
| I could not find any VISA foss software.
|
| if there is any payment system that MAY be FOSS in the future,
| it is PIX. Not apple wallet.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Contactless pix will (has? It's been a bit since I had to
| worry about payment rails) allow pix integration with Apple
| Wallet.
| thisissomething wrote:
| > there's no FLOSS app (AFAIK) to use it.
|
| Does this mean that you also don't use your bank Android/iPhone
| APP? So your entire financial life is handled via a browser?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The money is, of course, not open source, so there will never
| be any FLOSS app for it.
| afarah1 wrote:
| WhatsApp is omnipresent for communication in Brazil, and WhatsApp
| Pay was ready before Pix, but the government blocked the launch
| to launch Pix first.[1] I rarely see this mentioned.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/brazil-
| suspends-w...
| jowea wrote:
| Well I'm thanking the government for saving us from yet another
| Facebook monopoly thorough first mover advantage and network
| effects.
| afarah1 wrote:
| It's an interesting topic for study. Being the first to
| launch wasn't the only factor, but certainly an important one
| - WhatsApp Pay is available today, but it's nowhere near as
| popular as Pix. That's why I mentioned it. With that being
| said, I don't think people need "saving" from choosing to use
| a service. It's not certain that WhatsApp Pay would really
| take off as much as Pix did. I also don't think one should be
| thankful for having one monopoly replaced by another (in the
| sense of market dominance, you can still use alternative
| payment methods). Imagine instead of WhatsApp Pay it was
| WhatsApp itself. Meta is no saint, but at least messages are
| E2E encrypted. How would GovApp look like? As mentioned in
| the article, Pix has every transaction go directly through
| the central bank, as opposed to going through commercial
| banks like traditional payment methods. It may provide great
| usability, but also concentrates power and risk, as written
| in The Economist. So far there is no indication this power
| has been used in any malicious way, or that any significant
| breach occurred, but the infrastructure for that is there,
| and governments change. That should at least be in one's
| mind, if one values some kind of personal financial freedom.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Good to hear your words loyalty and patriotism, dear citizen!
| I will contact your local commissar and make sure he
| increases your social credit score by 5 points.
|
| But we must also be realistic if we want to win against our
| eternal enemy Eastasia, and admit that Facebook coin would
| never be a monopoly because Visa, Mastercard and cash exist.
| jowea wrote:
| Thanks, maybe someday I will finally be promoted to
| Internet Shill First Class.
|
| But seriously, it would still be a monopoly on the UPI-like
| segment. Visa and Mastercard charge fees that make them
| less attractive to some users and make it harder on some
| users. There are good reasons Pix replaced much of physical
| cash use that cards didn't. And Visa and Mastercard are
| also American companies. Don't they sell transaction data?
|
| And meh, at least I can vote for my president, but not even
| the Facebook shareholders can vote Zuckerberg out IIRC.
| Although Zuck can't arrest me so I don't know.
| Vilian wrote:
| it's kinda funny seeing us-american always baffled that
| we have a somewhat functional democracy in contrast to
| their corporatocracy
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Visa and Mastercard are agents for the customer, who
| benefits greatly from instant and convenient
| transactions, fraud protection, currency conversion, and
| credit lines. The merchant pays them for access to these
| customers, and I have to say that the fees are small for
| what an amazing service these networks provide. I don't
| think neither their fees nor their profits are
| outrageous.
|
| While Pix is a very impressive system, they offer no
| benefit to the customer over credit/debit cards. Only
| benefits to the merchants. For inter-personal
| transactions it is great, and for micro businesses. But
| as soon as your business grows beyond that, you will want
| to accept card payments.
|
| If Visa and Mastercard sell transaction data, can you
| point me to where I can purchase this data? Everybody is
| saying this is the case, but forgive me for having
| doubts. Is this what you are talking about?
| https://usa.visa.com/solutions/visa-commercial-data-
| solution...
|
| From what I understand, they are selling data in the
| aggregate, not individual transactions.
| paintbox wrote:
| It's a question of national security not to let Meta eat that
| cake, and Brasil made the right choice.
|
| Tangentially related, I've heard talk of EU alternative to VISA
| and Mastercard, which I also believe is the right direction.
| DanielHB wrote:
| These systems are not a direct alternative to
| Visa/Mastercard. They offer no credit and give no fraud
| protection and no way to revert transactions (ie you can
| never get your money back once you send it).
|
| Although they can replace a lot (most?) of existing
| transactions that are currently done through credit cards,
| there is still a place for them.
| afarah1 wrote:
| WhatsApp Pay is available today in Brazil. The official
| reason for blocking the launch was missing paperwork, but
| word on the street at the time was that it was to favor Pix.
| This is all mentioned in the Retuers article. The reasons for
| favoring Pix are left for one to speculate. You say national
| security, the other says financial surveillance and control
| over the population. Time will tell.
| xinayder wrote:
| I'd much rather let the Central Bank handle my instant
| payments, than Meta.
| afarah1 wrote:
| So do most Brazilians, as today that choice is available.
| It's interesting how being the first to launch
| contributed to that preference, regardless of the
| widespread usage of WhatsApp. There are other interesting
| factors to consider. For example, a lot of people had
| WhatsApp but no bank account. As mentioned in The
| Economist's article there have been changes to the
| banking sector brought by Pix as well. Anyway, an
| interesting case study, and that's why I mentioned it.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| Why? Your own government can do a whole lot more to you
| than a foreign corporation.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Well, I can vote so that the thing my government does to
| me is something I want.
|
| The foreign corporation will always be exclusively
| interested in doing things to me that generate revenue
| for them.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| > Well, I can vote so that the thing my government does
| to me is something I want.
|
| You better hope that your interests closely align with
| those of millions of your compatriots.
|
| And that no one with political power has a personal
| vendetta against you.
| Vilian wrote:
| >You better hope that your interests closely align with
| those of millions of your compatriots.
|
| corporation NEVER has my interests in mind, so
| coordinating millions is easier
|
| >And that no one with political power has a personal
| vendetta against you.
|
| same argument can be used with corporations
| ave_b_2011 wrote:
| Financial surveillance would happen either way. It's either
| from your government or to a foreign company, bundled and
| sold en mass.
| afarah1 wrote:
| In this case, maybe. But it's not the only option. The
| old payment system was a bit more private, as payments
| went through commercial banks and one needed a court
| order to access transaction history. According to The
| Economists' article the instant payment system in other
| countries adopts a similar scheme, which is more private
| than Brazil's, and which could have been adopted here
| too. Also, there exists technology today enabling private
| micro-transactions, such as Monero. But governments -
| including Brazil's - prevent exchanges to offer it.
| Europe is no different.[1] One may argue this prevents
| abuse, which may be true, but it also prevents financial
| privacy.
|
| [1] https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/support-
| for-mon...
| thisissomething wrote:
| With everything that Pix offers but WhatsApp Pay doesn't, I
| don't think WhatsApp Pay would hold a candle even if it
| were launched before.
| dkga wrote:
| Control over the population? That's some conspiracy theory.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i hate this expansion of national security justification and
| securitization rhetoric - whether it is the US justifying
| tariffs or deportation or Brazilians justifying no fair play
| under the law or trying to jail presidential candidates.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > or trying to jail presidential candidates.
|
| not trying, jailing. Soon, we will have the second jailed
| presidential candidate in less than 10 years. Many
| Brazilians do believe that this is a sign that the Justice
| System is working, tho.
| nindalf wrote:
| Same in India. WhatsApp wanted to use the payment system UPI
| but wasn't granted permission to do. Same reason I think - one
| app that handled all communication and all payments would have
| been too powerful.
| ave_b_2011 wrote:
| This is presented as problematic, but I don't think it's a
| negative thing.
|
| You wouldn't want a foreign company with billions of dollars in
| their war chest in charge of your countries payment system.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Isn't that what any other payment system and most of the
| banks around the world are - a foreign company with billions
| of dollars in charge of payment system in a country.
|
| VISA, Mastercard, HSBC, UnionPay, ICBC, Santander... Or is
| this all Brazilian technology?
|
| The difference is that Meta is privacy data hoarder, not that
| it's a foreign company. And it's not "in charge of countries
| payment system", because that's pretty-much impossible, but
| "one of the payment systems in the country".
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| That's why China created UnionPay, so it wouldn't be held
| hostage to a large foreign corp (Visa, MC) for CC payments.
|
| But most countries didn't have that capability. Kudos to
| Brazil for putting something together for domestic digital
| payments so as not to rely on a foreign company.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| actually, foreign capital and foreign investment is good -
| and fair play before the law facilitates that.
|
| securitization and anti-globalization makes us all poorer,
| worse off, and more prone to conflict. lawfare is an
| addictive drug and can lead to serious outcomes, as history
| in Brazil shows any number of times - like even with the
| current president.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| What people outside of Latin America don't realize that "they
| were missing some documentation" is just not true for companies
| of the size of Meta. They have the best lawyers in the world
| and I'm pretty sure they used them to prepare all the
| documentation for this big launch. "You're missing a document"
| means: we're just fucking around and not letting you in.
| diego_moita wrote:
| Good!
|
| The president of the Brazilian Central Bank is accountable.
| Zuckaberg isn't.
| caioariede wrote:
| Not to mention that soon, it will be able to pay in installments
| using Pix, that's called Pix Parcelado.
| kubb wrote:
| Sometimes there's no point in having market solutions. You need
| one thing that works for everyone and is free. It's cheaper and
| easier this way.
| dguest wrote:
| The worst is a market facade for a government service. Examples
| in the US:
|
| - Weather apps: various governments do the (very expensive)
| computing and provide the data for free. Private companies
| insert adds, or charge you. I use Yr, which is run by Norway
| and has no adds or fees. They are just sourcing public data
| [1].
|
| - Taxes: the government does all the bookkeeping and
| enforcement, tax prep industry copies and pastes numbers into
| forms it lobbies to obfuscate.
|
| [1]: https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-
| us/articles/360004008874-Weather-f...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Another variant is the "playing at shops" privatization, such
| as seen in the UK railway system. Lots of different,
| fragmented entities, none of which naturally corresponds to a
| train service as a whole, obfuscating where the money goes
| (it's the train landlords or ROSCOs).
| internet_points wrote:
| They did the same to Norwegian rail. In fact, one of the
| main companies that got involved in the enshittification of
| Norwegain rail was British Go-Ahead Group.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| We had the same in The Netherlands. Several weather apps that
| requested to share all your data with a bunch of partners,
| had ads, etc.
|
| Then our national weather institute launched their own app
| without tracking or ads, and the existing weather apps all
| immediately joined up to sue them over it. Thankfully they
| lost the case.
|
| https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-
| contact/Organisati...
| mqus wrote:
| Same happened in germany but sadly, dwd (the national
| weather service) lost. They _have_ to take money if you
| want their weather app.
| tchalla wrote:
| DWD offers the app for 2,49EUR one time payment.
|
| https://www.warnwetterapp.de/katversion.html
| xinayder wrote:
| Fun fact, before Pix, every bank was trying out different
| digital wallet solutions. It was a pain to go to a store and
| realize they support Bank A's digital wallet, which, not
| surprisingly, doesn't interoperate with Bank's B.
|
| I went to buy acai at a shop one day and didn't have cash. Only
| way I could pay was with Itau's iti, but I only had money in my
| PicPay account.
|
| Pix was a godsend that saved us from the thousands of
| different, non-interoperable digital wallets the fintechs were
| creating.
| pedrovhb wrote:
| As a Brazilian - Pix was a pleasant surprise, especially in that
| for once it feels like we're not lagging behind. It's convenient,
| free, instant transfers across banks. You can also easily create
| or programmatically generate QR codes or pastable codes with
| preset receivers and amounts. Great UX all around, and it quickly
| became the de-facto standard in how people send money.
|
| It's technically quite impressive - it's a large scale thing and
| it works really well. I can think of maybe one or two times in
| these years where I saw downtime, and in both cases it was
| working again after a few minutes. The usual experience with the
| government building technical solutions is to have something that
| makes little sense, is slow, and goes down frequently with even
| the most predictable usage peaks, but with Pix they really seem
| to have nailed it.
|
| It does feel a bit weird to have so many payments go through the
| government's systems, and it definitely feels like it puts them
| in a position of having more information than they should.
| There's a lot of Orwellian surveillance potential there, as any
| transfers are necessarily tied to both users' real identities. I
| don't think there's a realistic way around this, though.
|
| Another concern is that people can expose some of their
| information without necessarily being aware of it. You can
| register e.g. emails and phone numbers as Pix "keys", and then
| anyone can initiate a transfer to those keys and your full name
| will pop up so you can confirm or cancel the transfer. I've seen
| some clever advice around this - "When using a carpooling app
| (often details are arranged off the platform using WhatsApp), put
| the driver's phone number on Pix. If a name comes up and it
| doesn't match the name or gender of the driver's profile,
| something is up". Obviously though there's potential for misuse
| and I'm sure the vast majority of people don't think about this
| when registering their Pix keys. You can, however, just use
| randomly generated uuids as keys as well, a different one for
| each transaction if you so desire, so this one can be a non-issue
| with more awareness.
|
| Overall though it's a very convenient thing which works
| surprisingly well, and the downsides are theoretical at this
| point. IMO it's a rare case of our government nailing something.
| losthobbies wrote:
| I wonder will the SEPA instant work like this.
| runeks wrote:
| Yes, I believe that is the goal:
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...
|
| But I think adoption is slow because everyone in the EU already
| has credit cards and fees are not paid by consumers.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Fees are always paid by consumers in one way or another...
|
| That said the EEA capped interchange with the explicit goal
| of making these fees painless to business owners, i.e.
| similar to the actual cost of handling cash, and we have PSPs
| charging as little as 0.5~0.7%.
|
| While adoption is indeed slower than in developing countries
| since people are used to card payments (rather debit than
| credit by the way), the popularity of mobile wallets such as
| Swish, Vipps, BLIK, ... is actually pretty significant in a
| good number of countries, and at the same time, an increasing
| portion of the population uses Apple/Google/Samsung/... Pay
| and doesn't care about the physical card anymore. Given that
| the EU has forced Apple to open up its NFC payment feature,
| we can perfectly imagine a pan-European federated payment
| scheme take off in the near future, using EPI/Wero in the
| Eurozone and interoperable local players outside.
| mqus wrote:
| Isn't SEPA instant kinda mandatory by the end of this year?
| (it mustn't cost more than regular transfers)
| wuming2 wrote:
| In the first half of 2024 SEPA Instant CT accounted for 15%
| of the total number of credit transfer transactions processed
| by euro area retail payment systems: https://www.ecb.europa.e
| u/press/stats/paysec/html/ecb.pis202...
|
| With the harmonisation and almost free nature of ECB TIPS,
| becoming mandatory for all European payment service providers
| by the end of 2025, that figure will keep growing: https://ww
| w.ecb.europa.eu/press/intro/events/shared/pdf/fs22...
| StefanBatory wrote:
| It is something like Polish Blik / Chinese WeChat payment system,
| I understand?
| souenzzo wrote:
| yes! Nice to know that polish also have one!
| DanielHB wrote:
| Sweden has had a similar system for several years before PIX in
| Brazil. It is also integrated with the digital ID system
| (BankID). The main difference is that the Swedish system is ran
| through a private organization managed by all the major banks
| (and the central bank) in conjunction. So the central bank
| doesn't have direct access to the transaction data technically.
|
| While the Brazilian system is only interacted directly through
| your bank application, the Swedish application is a separate
| application tied to your bank account in the backend. Given
| the... quality of bank apps this is a huge plus. The Swedish
| Swish app is MUCH easier to use because it only does one thing.
| My Brazilian mother does not know how to send PIX because her
| bank app is very confusing and the PIX option is just one of
| many.
|
| The BankID system of Sweden though is even more impressive than
| money transactions, pretty much everything government related
| (including healthcare, taxes, etc) and most private institutions
| (bank apps, Swish, digital contract signatures) is done through
| the unified BankID login.
|
| People raised concerns over privacy, but the main problem really
| is that since these systems cut out the middle man
| (Visa/Mastercard) and have no fees you also have no fraud
| protection which is something to keep in mind when using them.
| Once you send the money it is gone, the banks will not give it
| back to you even if you got scammed. It creates a whole sort of
| scam industry in both countries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID
| xinayder wrote:
| This is the difference in Brazil. Because it's ran by the
| Central Bank, there are some fraud protections. For example, if
| you receive money by mistake, you have the option to return a
| transfer to the original sender. And if you don't do that
| almost immediately, the sender can actually sue you and get the
| bank to revert the transaction (once proven you've deliberately
| chosen to not return the money).
|
| There are also other security features tailored for the crime
| aspect of Brazil (since some people argue Pix increased the
| number of flash robberies); you can limit how much money you
| can transfer via Pix during day and night time, and even
| request a second confirmation before the transfer actually goes
| through. And if you prove you've been robbed, the bank can
| easily revert the transaction and you can get your money back.
| DanielHB wrote:
| It is still not the same as credit cards, credit card fraud
| protection doesn't require any sort of legal process.
|
| Also these kind of limits can also be put on credit (and
| debit) cards.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > credit card fraud protection doesn't require any sort of
| legal process
|
| Credit card fraud protection uses a private-only legal
| process. What is the worst kind of legal process.
| svantana wrote:
| > the main problem really is [...] no fraud protection
|
| It's a problem for the victims, but I don't think it's why
| there's a scam epidemic in Sweden - scammers don't care if you
| get reimbursed or not. I believe the root issue is the ease and
| speed of transactions - it's easy to get fooled in a moment of
| confusion, and before you realize what happened, the money is
| out of reach of the authorities - as cash, crypto or in foreign
| accounts.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I work in Swiss banking. We also have such a system for
| payments. Its very popular and used by most people. I keep
| saying they should use it as SSO, if you can authenticate
| payments you damn well can authenticate login requests. It
| makes no sense to go to an online shop, log-in with your shop
| account or google, and then when you pay, authenticate the
| payment with TWINT. And banks could even use it to login to
| their e-banking. Currently literally every bank has its own
| 'Access' App, that is almost the same but slightly different.
| And to my irritatingly they don't consistently encode TWINT
| information the same way into the normal banking transactions.
|
| Our developer phones have like 40 apps on them to log into
| different test system, its madding.
|
| In our system the pay system is also 'half' branded so you have
| to download 'TWINT-<bank>' not just 'TWINT'. Making it
| unnecessarily confusing and its literally the same app (from a
| user perspective).
|
| It seems this Bank Id is an even earlier system adopted for
| modern SSO use-case.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Yes BankID is the real MVP of digital systems, I heard some
| talks about the EU making one valid for the whole block.
| Hopefully it will fix all the countries.Everything is done
| through BankID in swedish-only institutions.
|
| Put house on sale? bankid. Book a doctor appointment? bankid.
| Login to bank? Bankid. Open bank account? bankid. Sign
| contracts? bankid.
|
| Heck I moved my pension (like a lot of money) to a different
| institution by just using BankID. Didn't have to call/email
| anyone, the process took 5 minutes (with about a month to
| actually process the transaction).
| jowea wrote:
| Interestingly enough Brazil also has a system to use Bank
| login to authenticate on government systems.
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| >Yes BankID is the real MVP of digital systems, I heard
| some talks about the EU making one valid for the whole
| block.
|
| Sweden is actually in a pickle here. The dominant but
| private BankID doesn't satisfy all security requirements
| for the EU's digital identity wallet. It just isn't
| profitable.
|
| The government is now working on a public government eID
| with a higher security standard, but many Swedes might
| still be left out since adoption will take some time.
|
| This is one of many reasons why eIDs shouldn't be run by
| for-profits corporations, and sadly nothing would likely
| have happened without pressure from the EU.
| nicolinox wrote:
| Revolut is simplifying this, also in Switzerland. You
| checkout with the "Pay with Revolut" option. It's instant,
| magic and safe. You don't need to copy card details, just
| authorise the push notification.
|
| I have also used it on airline websites, Aer Lingus and Wizz
| Air.
| dkga wrote:
| I live in Switzerland - TWINT has other differences as well.
| To start, its settlement is not immediate as Pix's. As you
| point out, it is also not standardised.
| carlos_rpn wrote:
| My suggestion would be to create an account for her with Nubank
| or Mercadopago, which are easier to use, faster to login than
| any banking apps, and have PIX more readily available after
| login, and then keep some money on the new account just for the
| kind of purchases she'd use pix for. I do that for myself just
| for ease of use.
| Maken wrote:
| In Spain we have Bizum, which is also a independent payment
| system run by all the local banks.
| wink wrote:
| How recent is Swish adoption? Some Swedes I knew back in
| 2013-2018 seemed to mostly use Visa/MC at home.
| sandos wrote:
| Literally everyone uses Swish in my experience. Even idiotic
| criminals.
|
| We "had" to get swish (and a debit card..) for our 12 yo
| daughter because cash is just not very usable here. Although
| the CC is still used more than swish, but for transfers
| between persons, or smaller companies swish is very common.
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| >have no fees
|
| Both Swish and BankID have fees. After all, they're run by for-
| profit corporations.
|
| Those apps also reduce competition in the banking sector since
| they're controlled by a few banks which generally have very
| high fees on their other services.
|
| What's even worse, since BankID is private, there's no
| individual right to get it, and I've personally experienced
| banks abusing their oligopoly (buy this extra service or you
| won't get BankID from us).
|
| The Swedish situation is a nightmare which nobody should try to
| emulate. Fortunately, the Swedish government has finally
| announced plans to introduce a public government eID, although
| 20 years too late.
| sandos wrote:
| I have never heard a single person complaining about BankID
| really. The only downside is the huge risks, especially for
| older people. We basically took control of an elderly family
| members bankid to avoid them being scammed.
|
| This is something they really need to work on, just add an
| optional extra layer or cool-down, to slow everything down.
| You dont necessarily HAVE to have your transactions be
| immediate, waiting a few days would have been fine in our
| cases.
| Vilian wrote:
| i mean, the bank can be a fraud protection, inter for example
| ask for a monthly payment for security, not sure how good tho
| wuming2 wrote:
| Hopefully ECB's TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service
| will enable the same widespread adoption. With a price of 0.002
| euro per transaction it's guaranteed to become the most
| convenient solution.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Doesn't pretty much every country in Europe already have such a
| service?
| wuming2 wrote:
| They are mostly based on previous generations SEPA DD and CT.
| Italy's Satispay as example. ECB TIPS further improves on
| that.
| Maken wrote:
| This seems to be more akin to Wero, the German-French system to
| replace both debit cards and online payment platforms.
| wuming2 wrote:
| I don't speak French but BdF presents a side by side
| comparison: https://www.banque-france.fr/fr/a-votre-
| service/particuliers...
|
| As far as I understand SEPA ICT was developed by the Euro
| Payment Council. An industry body. ECB TIPS, albeit
| maintaining compatibility with the scheme, provides an
| harmonised service across the entire Eurosystem and beyond.
| cubefox wrote:
| Theortically it would now be possible to implement a similar
| service in the US using FedNow:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow
|
| Of course in practice it is a chicken-egg situation. Few people
| will use it over established credit based systems unless there
| are other incentives.
|
| Credit card companies, including PayPal & Co, are essentially
| rent seeking: They are middle men that technologically aren't
| needed anymore for instant cashless payments, but they still
| exist because they can extract enormous amounts of profits via
| fees. But countries like Brazil and India show that they can be
| replaced with free or almost free systems based on instant bank
| transfers.
|
| It's true that credit cards still have the use case of providing
| a "chargeback" service. But this isn't possible with ordinary
| cash either. Moreover, most people likely buy online from
| trustworthy shops like Amazon, so this isn't often a problem in
| practice. In expectation people spend way more money on credit
| card fees than they ever save with chargeback. Chargeback is like
| an overly expensive insurance that hardly anybody needs.
| parpfish wrote:
| Doesn't the US already have direct bank transfers with Zelle?
|
| I don't know why cashapp and Venmo took off but Zelle stayed
| unknown
| cubefox wrote:
| Zelle is not instantaneous I believe. It would be hard to buy
| things e.g. at a store.
| nwah1 wrote:
| Credit cards don't just offer chargeback capabilities. They
| offer pro-active fraud protection. They alert you for all kinds
| of threats, data breaches, double-charges, etc. They will
| sometimes lock your card and not let a payment go through, if
| it is suspicious, unless you perform extra confirmation via
| email/text/push. They offer virtual cards that you can activate
| or deactivate with any given vendor, to improve your privacy,
| security, and control.
|
| Having your card stolen, either physically or virtually,
| becomes much less scary.
|
| When used responsibly, with rewards programs, the numerous
| benefits over cash make sense _even_ in the unusual case where
| cash payments get a discount.
|
| Zelle and debit cards have similar kinds of protections that
| make it safer than cash, and there's an audit trail. Though, it
| is more dangerous than credit cards.
|
| And, obviously, credit cards let you borrow money which
| provides flexibility to allow payments even if your paycheck
| hasn't yet arrived. And occasionally, going into debt
| intentionally can be wise, when making an investment.
|
| Government programs could offer these kinds of features, but
| betting on long-term competence, customer service, and
| innovation in the public sector is a losing proposition.
|
| Having both public and private options works as an intermediate
| approach.
|
| But, particularly for lending, the process of determining
| credit-worthiness is not a government specialty, and making it
| subject to the political process seems like a losing
| proposition for taxpayers.
|
| Payments are a more valid area for government involvement, but
| even then, I'm not sure what it could offer that Zelle doesn't.
| cubefox wrote:
| > Credit cards don't just offer chargeback capabilities. They
| offer pro-active fraud protection. They alert you for all
| kinds of threats, data breaches, double-charges, etc. They
| will sometimes lock your card and not let a payment go
| through, if it is suspicious, unless you perform extra
| confirmation via email/text/push. They offer virtual cards
| that you can activate or deactivate with any given vendor, to
| improve your privacy, security, and control.
|
| > Having your card stolen, either physically or virtually,
| becomes much less scary.
|
| I assume Pix and UPI (India) offer indirect fraud protection
| by keeping payment records. At least in Brazil and India,
| fraud does not seem to be so bad as to require the regular
| use of credit cards.
|
| > When used responsibly, with rewards programs, the numerous
| benefits over cash make sense even in the unusual case where
| cash payments get a discount.
|
| Nobody was talking about cash. Neither Pix nor UPI nor FedNow
| are cash. Cash = coins and bills.
|
| > And, obviously, credit cards let you borrow money which
| provides flexibility to allow payments even if your paycheck
| hasn't yet arrived. And occasionally, going into debt
| intentionally can be wise, when making an investment.
|
| That's balanced by the fact that it can also be highly
| unwise. Moreover, for most payments, borrowing money is
| simply unnecessary.
|
| > Zelle and debit cards have similar kinds of protections
| that make it safer than cash, and there's an audit trail.
| Though, it is more dangerous than credit cards.
|
| Again, cash is irrelevant here. Moreover, any advantage of
| instant payment systems with fees hold only insofar they (the
| advantages) more than outweigh the cost of the fees. The
| expected value has to be positive compared to UPI & Co. Which
| seems unlikely.
| koyote wrote:
| So this sounds just like PayID in Australia or what was payM in
| the UK (which got shut down a couple of years ago due to lack of
| use), minus the QR code generation part.
|
| It's used between private people to make it easier to send money
| to one another without having to type in bank account details,
| but never really used to pay businesses (except under the table).
|
| How come this is so popular in Brasil for paying businesses vs
| using a card or your phone to tap and pay (which seems more
| convenient)?
| DanielHB wrote:
| Brazil has massive amounts of fraud so credit cards are very
| inconvenient, card cloning and websites leaking credit card
| numbers is a huge problem. Banks are super aggressive about
| blocking cards if they see suspicious transactions. Tap and pay
| is popular in Brazil as well, but only for physical
| transactions. For online small purchases PIX is definitely the
| best option.
|
| PIX (and similar systems like Sweden's Swish/BankID), don't
| have fraud protection, once you send the money it is gone with
| no contest possible. But when you send a payment with PIX there
| is 0 risk your account's money will get highjacked, at most you
| lose your one transaction.
|
| But PIX is also accepted in many physical places because it has
| smaller fees, with some stores and informal commerce not
| accepting cards. I used to work at an IT service provider in
| Brazil around 2012 and one of the projects my company did was
| monitoring of those card machines. They actually kept GPS
| information of the machines and blocked them if they were moved
| around. Those card machines are surprisingly expensive in
| Brazil (or at least they used to be).
| moefh wrote:
| > once you send the money it is gone with no contest possible
|
| That's not true; PIX requires your bank to provide a way
| (called "MED"[1]) for you to request a reversal up to 80 (!)
| days after a transaction. It can only be used in case of
| fraud, and it may take up to 7 days for the bank to analyze
| the situation and deny/allow your request. If it's allowed,
| you'll get the money back in up to 4 days.
|
| If the bank denies the request (i.e., if they conclude there
| was no fraud) you can always sue the transaction recipient;
| you'll have access to all necessary information since they
| must be registered with some financial institution to be able
| to receive a PIX transaction.
|
| So it's not as easy as a credit card, but I think it's fair
| for a free payment service.
|
| [1] in Portuguese: https://www.bcb.gov.br/meubc/faqs/p/o-que-
| e-e-como-funciona-...
| guax wrote:
| The pix revolution is for very small business: food stalls, mom
| and pop shops, seasonal sellers, street vendors, independent
| and informal professionals (plumbers, electricians, etc).
|
| Brazil adopted banking cards very fast and I remember using
| them virtually everywhere in debit or credit mode as early as
| my first card in 2008, I never had to carry money around. But
| they require two things that are a problem in a Brazil sized
| country with a Brazil density and infra structure: cell
| coverage and equipment. So small towns, small shops,
| independent professionals, etc would not have them or even be
| able to use them sometimes. Even today there are lots of places
| with internet but not cell coverage (radio, fiberglass or other
| infra but no cell tower).
|
| This was changing on its own recently, many companies launched
| new machines that are cheaper and allow more small vendors to
| accept cards (+ working over the internet). This is still worse
| than the free approach of pix (for normal people) and a
| potentially lower fee for companies. Plus it allows people to
| buy with something they will have on them way more than their
| wallet, their phones.
|
| I was in Brazil last week and I had to use pix only a few times
| to pay: parking (beach lot), tire fix (very small shop on the
| road) and thats it, everywhere else I used my credit card. Even
| though they accept pix, its not that huge of a difference for
| traditional business as far as I can tell, the payment terminal
| will also facilite pix transactions.
|
| ps. you can tap and pay with pix too!
| https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/14615541
| pjc50 wrote:
| > payM in the UK (which got shut down a couple of years ago due
| to lack of use)
|
| I'd never even heard of this! Certainly never seen anyone
| offering it. Guess it got run over by lack of state capacity
| during Brexit etc.
|
| > paying businesses vs using a card or your phone to tap and
| pay
|
| These schemes (izettle etc) have higher costs. The poorer the
| country the more significant a low-cost business TX option is.
| sometimes_all wrote:
| Can we please have one post regarding a payment system (which
| works well by most accounts) not be taken over by crypto shills
| and skeptics whatabouting everything? I've had enough in the past
| 5 years and I hope it stops soon.
|
| Most people are simple, they want to pay, and get paid, in their
| local currency. There's a homegrown software which enables them
| to easily do just that. That's a great technological and social
| achievement, it would be great if we could discuss that, and not
| crypto, which is not the main subject here.
| horatioh13 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/A6jeC
| throwway232423 wrote:
| Pix is huge and so much better than anything in the world. VAI
| BRASIL
| harrisoned wrote:
| I agree its an amazing payment method, it worked for me for most
| of the time. Still, we depend on bank's stability and technical
| availability for it to work. Once i needed to pay for something
| and forgot my card at home, at that same time my bank was going
| trough technical issues and i couldn't pay.
|
| Despite rare reliability issues, my fear about it is that it
| requires a phone. Being so popular, i fear when places will
| refuse any other form of payments and accept only PIX, making
| anybody not using a phone unable to buy their products, with the
| common assumption that everybody uses it ("don't you guys have
| phones???"). You can't install banking apps on rooted phones or
| alternative mobile OSs (or is very very hard), so you are trapped
| with Android or IOs to use it.
|
| I hope it doesn't come to that, but it seems it's going that way.
| jowea wrote:
| I think almost everywhere will still accept debit cards, at
| least until paying by Pix becomes faster.
| felipc wrote:
| Pix has really spurred up small local businesses. It's so much
| easier to buy digitally from local stores now, or even just a
| person starting up a business because it required no setup, no
| fees or anything.
|
| If I need to buy a gift for someone from a store at the mall, for
| example, I just text them, they send me pictures with the
| options, I pay instantly via pix and they send the product
| through local delivery. The whole thing takes 5 minutes of my
| time and the purchase shows up on my door in 30 minutes. I saved
| on time, gas and parking, and meanwhile the store made a sale
| through a local employee instead of me buying online from their
| national franchise for example (if it's a franchise of course).
| Win win for everyone.
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| Do you have numbers showing that causation or at least a
| correlation?
| Beijinger wrote:
| Pix ou presente?
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| Despite a global move towards a cashless society, 54% of
| Brazilians now opt for cash withdrawals.1
|
| 2024 has seen a surprising reversal, as _cash usage makes an
| unexpected comeback_ , defying predictions that the world was
| moving toward a cashless society. With rising cybersecurity
| threats, concerns over financial privacy, and economic
| instability, consumers and businesses are increasingly turning
| back to physical currency as a preferred transaction method.2
|
| 1) https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazils-shift-
| bac...
|
| 2) https://www.adeptswipe.com/cash-makes-a-shocking-comeback-
| as...
| forinti wrote:
| I keep a few bills in my wallet, but I hardly ever carry it
| around.
|
| Everybody accepts cards and Pix. Even beggars on the street use
| pix.
|
| If I revert back to using public transport I will probably have
| a use for cash, but that's the only situation I can think of
| where it would make sense.
| luqtas wrote:
| most places i visited (remote rural places like districts of
| > 300 people up to big cities) have a rechargeable card
| system where you can buy at any terminal
|
| some buses in the surburbs of big cities only accept cards
| nowadays and you can recharge it online in 3 minutes (ofc if
| you are a citizen... brazilian goverment websites is a huge
| UX pile of shit; police, mail etc.)
| forinti wrote:
| These systems are all built to help the bus owners, not the
| passengers.
|
| Usually you have to go register for a card somewhere. It's
| just not practical, especially if you're just visiting.
| I've never seen a place where you could buy a card at a
| newsstand for a week or something like that.
| luqtas wrote:
| if you are visiting a city and you are exclusively using
| the bus, in 2 or 3 travels the card pays itself for not
| dealing with coins and physical money... you can
| literally buy them in 5 minutes, no need to have a CPF
| exposed or whatever [they are called TOURIST CARDS for a
| reason]
|
| around Paraty -> Angra dos Reis region you can literally
| visit/stop in more than 25 beach spots with the buses who
| circulate that area
|
| and it's really nice that it helps the bus drivers. it
| even saves some time on embarking, which can add up in
| longer routes. godspeed on a single card (state agnostic)
| for the entire public transportation system (metro, bus,
| trains) in Brazil
| guax wrote:
| I believe it's more related to economic crisis and informal
| work (tax evasion). Brazil is very cashless for normal
| transactions.
| jowea wrote:
| Yeah there was a big thing where the government announced
| some new rules relating to reporting transactions to the
| local IRS equivalent. I believe that's the main reason for
| the fall in Pix usage.
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| It's only tax evasion if the activity results reportable
| income. Just assuming everyone, who does not use your
| favourite cashless platform, is a criminal, is bad marketing.
| guax wrote:
| There is very little reason why a Business would prefer
| cash other than have some freedom in how it's reported.
| This is considering how much of a hassle and risk is
| involved in having large sums.
|
| There is even less reason why a person would, most people
| in regular jobs get paid via bank accounts (Brazil even
| have a special kind with no fees for it). Now informal (non
| registered and non tax paying) employment is cash heavy:
| house cleaning, small repairs, produce vendors, etc.
|
| I don't even think is criminal, it's kinda Business as
| usual in Brazil.
|
| Money usage fell in Brazil, pix is the most used method,
| 37% of the workers are informal (no formal labour
| contract). They would mostly not be required to even report
| because of low income, the evasion in this case is being
| done by the employer, where they don't pay labour and the
| social security equivalent.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That second link is completely wrong about Brazil though. Not
| uninformed, just every time Brazil is mentioned, it says the
| complete opposite of the reality.
|
| And the claim in the first article is about using cash at any
| time. And it's by a ridiculous small margin. So in fact it's
| claiming that almost half of the population doesn't use cash at
| all.
| luqtas wrote:
| more than 50% of the rural brazilian population doesn't hav
| internet access (that's 36 million people) [0]
|
| the central bank admin. director says physical money is still
| the base of brazilian transactions [1]
|
| [1] https://exame.com/economia/dinheiro-em-especie-ainda-e-a-
| bas...
|
| [0] https://www.ecommerceupdate.org/noticias/brasileiro-esta-
| dei...
| dakial1 wrote:
| According to Brazil's Central bank (and other sources) cash
| usage is 22%, there is no move whatsoever towards cash.
|
| Source:
| https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/cedulasemoedas/pesquisabrasil...
| lukev wrote:
| Pix is super interesting. I have two questions to which Google
| wasn't able to provide quick answers:
|
| 1. Is there an easy way for a US resident to sign up for a Pix-
| enabled account (e.g. at a Brazilian bank?)
|
| 2. Can Pix be used easily for online payments?
|
| If both are true, it seems like it could be used as a drop-in
| replacement to crypto for small-value transactions which are
| currently infeasible in the US due to transaction overhead and
| fees.
| guax wrote:
| 1. Yes and No. I assume Wise or another will offer this at some
| point with better conditions. A vendor called recarga pay offer
| this already but charges 4% on transactions. 2. yes, and it is
| used a lot.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| My info is several years out of date so take with a grain of
| salt. Pix is a phenomenal in country payment system. One of a
| couple of the best next gen payment rails.
|
| But its design is very much hard to work with for international
| transactions. It has some risk rules and design choices that
| make this true. I believe this is intentional as Brazil wants
| to maintain pretty conservative currency controls.
|
| But! Similar things could have been said about pix and online
| shopping rails. It wasn't great for that as it wasn't the
| primary use case. And that is changing fast so maybe the
| international use case will improve.
|
| UPI in India for instance does international work well in a
| similar conservative currency environment.
| jowea wrote:
| 1. I'm not sure but I'm gonna guess no. Aren't Americans
| notoriously hard to offer banking services to due to anti-money
| laundering regulations?
|
| 2. Yes, it's quite easy
|
| Wasn't the Fed going to launch their own take on UPI with
| FedNow?
| ty6853 wrote:
| America via FATCA requires foreign banks to snitch out all US
| persons, without any warrant or accusation of crime, to the
| American IRS, either directly or through exchange agreement
| for same information through their reporting to the foreign
| government.
|
| The requirements are fairly simple, but the liability is
| extreme so that most banks across the world generally are
| loathe to do this unless you have some kind of resident visa
| and professional+ income or a large net worth.
|
| If the foreign (Brazilian) bank fails to do so then US cuts
| off their access to USD.
|
| As a practical matter casual offshore banking for middle
| class or lower Americans is closed off, the message broadcast
| loud and clear from the government is they would prefer you
| to use crypto as a substitute.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I remember when I was creating my first bank account, I had
| to sign under a lot of papers stating that I am not an
| American citizen and that I'm not lying because of this.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 1. It is possible (Try PicPay), it is not easy, as you need to
| provide documents that can only be obtained through Brazilian
| bureaucracy.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On #1, Bank of America operates in Brazil so maybe they offer
| it.
| cosmaioan wrote:
| It is interesting that I did no see in the comments the costs of
| using Mastercard & Visa as a reason for governments to find
| alternatives for their economies.
|
| Both Visa and MC are US companies so there is where the profits
| go ....
|
| From US Senate hearing : "This is classic, classic monopolistic
| behavior. Yet you're testimony...is you don't want any
| competition...I'm having a hard time finding that position
| defensible, let alone sympathetic...it's unbelievable the amount
| of money you're making."
|
| Margin 50% ....
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U
| djoldman wrote:
| There's a lot to discuss here. Focusing on one thing however:
|
| > But unlike India, where UPI is run by an industry body, Pix is
| managed entirely by the BCB.... the BCB alone runs Pix's
| infrastructure and controls the encrypted database that stores
| all transactions.... This concentration of power in a central
| bank is unusual, and has led to criticism. "Now we live in a
| democracy, but imagine if this existed under an autocracy and all
| your information was available to the government," says the head
| of one prominent fintech company. He thinks citizens in richer
| countries would balk at the government having Pix's level of
| access to all financial transactions. Also, if the system is ever
| hacked or breaks down, the fallout would be greater than if a
| single bank were attacked.
|
| _(Just looking at the privacy aspect)_ For something like Pix to
| have a chance at long term success in the US, there 'd have to be
| unambiguous regulation absolutely prohibiting access by the
| government to transaction information that could be tied to a
| person. Preferably, it would be technically impossible to tie a
| transaction to a person/entity without going to the bank that
| facilitated the transaction and a warrant signed by a judge.
|
| 10 years down the road:
|
| IRS: "if we could look at that, it'd be great..."
|
| Police/FBI/NSA: "think of the children..."
|
| etc.
| vitorsr wrote:
| See relevant regulation for the Pix payment system and protocols:
|
| https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/pix?modalAbert...
| (Brazilian Portuguese)
|
| See also relevant regulation for the instant payment system
| (SPI):
|
| https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/sistemapagamen...
| (Brazilian Portuguese)
| apojomovsky wrote:
| https://archive.ph/A6jeC
| sschueller wrote:
| This is were many central banks have failed. It is the job of the
| central bank to ensure payments can be made by everyone and to
| stabilize the currency.
|
| As payments have shifted from cash to digital this control has
| shifted to private sometimes foreign entities with their own view
| of what payments are permitted and which aren't.
| lvass wrote:
| We have a saying in Brazil that absolutely no part of our
| government works, except for our IRS. Pix is such a huge win for
| them. Brazil has a huge informal/illegal economy that employs
| more people than those who are lawfully employed (40M vs 39M). We
| have an effective tax plus legal compliance rate of around 60%,
| that really stifles down anyone attempting to open a legit
| business in an already harsh environment. Pix has not yet been
| used to crack down on the informal sector, but with sufficient
| motivation and some data analysis, it absolutely can be.
| Vilian wrote:
| >no part of our government works
|
| after learning a bit about other countries, i would argue that
| we are better than most, we just compare ourselves with first
| world european countries, but even when comparing with USA we
| are fine in a lot of fronts
| nirui wrote:
| I'm thinking, maybe controversially, centralized national payment
| service like this _should_ be government-run based on my
| experience with Alipay which is a digital payment service in
| China.
|
| Due to it's commercial origin, Alipay is filled with unwanted ads
| and traps. Almost every time I made a payment with it, a pop up
| prompts me to enlist their Ant Financial LOAN service either now,
| or being prompted for the same question again 30 days later (yep,
| not Yes or No, but Now or Later). It's just fucking ridiculous, I
| don't need a LOAN for a $400 projector, and I don't need a LOAN
| for a $4 hair cut (Xi should probably do something about it,
| really).
|
| I'm glad that at least people of Brazil don't have to suffer that
| kind of shit. At least their government-run program is better
| scrutinized and boring, thus more dependable, that's a good thing
| in my eyes.
| palmotea wrote:
| > I'm thinking, maybe controversially, centralized national
| payment service like this should be government-run based on my
| experience with Alipay which is a digital payment service in
| China.
|
| After dealing with many private sector services, I think _a
| lot_ of things should be government run.
|
| For instance: weather apps. Private sector ones are just a
| vector to track and sell your location data, and they rely on
| government data anyway. It'd be much better the government roll
| out an API and an app that uses it, so you can avoid the
| private sector altogether.
| derelicta wrote:
| It's funny but I always had assumed all countries had their
| own state-owned weather services, until I found out there was
| no such thing in Germany.
| cubefox wrote:
| That's not true. See
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Wetterdienst
| derelicta wrote:
| Oh well! Good to know! Next time I'll use DWD instead of
| using those weird apps. Thanks!
| cubefox wrote:
| No the DWD is not allowed to provide a weather app I
| believe. Because it would compete with commercial apps.
| It offers an app which issues weather warnings though.
| loglog wrote:
| DWD is allowed to provide a weather app, but not for
| free. So they offer it for a nominal one-time fee
| instead.
| jessekv wrote:
| Windy.com gives you ECMWF. ECMWF has a much stronger
| model.
| chneu wrote:
| That's exactly why NOAA in the US is under attack.
| Conservatives see $$$ potential if they privatize it.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I'm sure the NOAA is under attack because someone in the
| administration really wants to launch a new weather app.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| Granted this is from Trumps first term, but actually
| yeah. https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-
| nominee-accuwea...
|
| "Speaking to the The Palm Beach Post at the time, Barry
| Myers said he supported the weather service returning to
| its "core mission ... which is protecting other people's
| lives and property" instead of spending "hundreds of
| millions of dollars a year, every day, producing
| forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"" Also from the same
| article: "He told ABC News in May 2005: "We work hard
| every day competing with other companies and we also have
| to compete with the government.""
|
| Theres some more info here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think it more has to do with wanting to cut the deficit
| in preparation for tax cut extension + NOAA and other
| science agencies are politically vulnerable in a way that
| medicare/ss are not
| cubefox wrote:
| I believe in Germany the national weather service in fact
| rolled out such an app, but was then stopped by a court
| because this counted as unfair competition with private
| entities.
| praseodym wrote:
| In The Netherlands, weather companies sued the national
| weather service because their new app was seen as competing
| with their interests, but they lost the court case (summary
| proceedings): https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-
| contact/Organisati...
| pphysch wrote:
| > stopped by a court because this counted as unfair
| competition with private entities
|
| I came across this recently as well. This is one of the
| most insane aspects of our current zeitgeist.
|
| In a world where VC unicorns and megacorps commonly engage
| in dumping behavior to coerce market share, public orgs
| still need to walk on eggshells so they don't outcompete
| the "uwu smol bean" private sector. Even when they are
| providing what could be considered a public good or
| necessity, like weather info. Totally insane.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| payment services should absolutely have a public option, as
| should many other basic eservices like email, mychart, etc. the
| issue is that our government in particular is incompetent, has
| legal difficulty hiring for merit, and has public sector unions
| (which is effectively empowering people to negotiate against
| the collective democratic will of the people).
|
| i've worked on internet projects with the feds before,
| basically the current iteration of the federal government does
| not really seem capable of doing these things because of how
| the rank-and-file is structured.
|
| i think it would also be important to make sure that control
| over payment isn't abused. i recall when donations to wikileaks
| were effectively blocked by public/private coordination.
| presumably that would be even easier if it just required public
| action.
| timewizard wrote:
| > the issue is that our government in particular is
| incompetent
|
| Our federal government is huge and our state governments are
| small. Precisely the opposite of how the founders configured
| it. This is part of the problem.
|
| The states need to band together and develop a cooperative
| solution and then push it upwards to the federal level.
|
| This is a lot easier than centralized planning and management
| of an entity the size and scope of the US. We have a lot of
| offshore territories and two states. This complicates things
| more than people care to admit.
| timewizard wrote:
| Until you say something the government doesn't like and they
| decide that part of your punishment should be lack of access to
| payment services.
|
| I'd prefer a constitutional mandate or guarantee that this
| can't happen. Without it this is a noose. A convenient noose
| with lots of nice properties but a noose none the less.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Until you say something the government doesn't like and
| they decide that part of your punishment should be lack of
| access to payment services.
|
| How much worse is that than the same thing happening when you
| do something a private company doesn't like?
|
| And how much different is that than what the Federal
| government could already do? If the government says you're a
| terrorist, you're not accessing any banking.
| timewizard wrote:
| > when you do something a private company doesn't like?
|
| Well, it's completely different, because ostensibly I can
| switch to another private company. Is there an option,
| ever, for me to just change which government I subscribe
| to?
|
| > If the government says you're a terrorist, you're not
| accessing any banking.
|
| In the US this can only be true for foreign citizens. Broad
| classes of assets and liquidity are well protected for US
| citizens unless you end up in the unusual situation where
| they sue the money itself. If you have cash in your hand
| nothing can stop you from spending it.
|
| Thank you for introducing political relativism into this
| conversation, although, I'm not sure it's advanced anything
| in particular.
| uselesswords wrote:
| Why is it that apps in the US are not as (overtly)
| commercialized or gamified (like Temu) as some of their
| chinese-counterparts? Is american culture just less tolerant of
| it? You would think there is more profit to be made by doing so
| which would be very capitalistic in a sense.
| palmotea wrote:
| Governments can never do anything right! Shut it down so the
| private sector can complete with some crappy POS with ads and an
| integration with some data brokers.
| forinti wrote:
| Brazil was in constant economic chaos in the 80s and 90s, so the
| banking system invested a lot in automation and communications.
|
| I actually think it took too long for Pix to be invented. The
| piping was all there. Somebody just had to have the idea.
|
| Even in the 80s you could easily transfer from any bank to any
| other bank.
| dkga wrote:
| Well, not just the idea. The technical feats supporting Pix are
| actually amazing; it's a whole separate payments system that
| settles almost immediately, 24/7.
| cyberclimb wrote:
| As a foreigner that visited Brazil for some weeks, I found the
| ubiquity of the PIX payment system to be a handicap for tourists
| visiting the country.
|
| PIX is only for locals as you need to register with a CPF (Brazil
| ID number which is hard and tedious to get as a tourist). I ran
| into many scenarios where the only option was to pay with PIX and
| the staff aren't used to tourists and look at you funny when you
| explain you can't use PIX.
|
| Also beyond PIX, if you try to book buses, planes, or take out a
| gym membership, while you're within the country, 99% of the time
| it's shockingly impossible to pay without a CPF, even by credit
| and debit card. I've even seen this for paying the laundry
| machine.
|
| I'm sure the PIX system is great for Brazilians, and it was
| helpful having a local friend to make payments on my behalf, but
| Brazil really lives in a bubble where it seems a side-effect of
| their system is making things actively very hard for visitors to
| operate within the country.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Sounds similar to China / WeChat situation, from what I've read
| previously
| igortg wrote:
| > many scenarios where the only option was to pay with PIX
|
| I guess you want to say "only option _beyond cash_ was Pix".
| Most places should accept Passport ID to replace CPF. But if
| you found hard to pay using credit cards, that has nothing to
| do with Pix...
| dakial1 wrote:
| You mean online right? Credit/debit card payment gateways are a
| little cumbersome for foreigners not only because they are a
| small amount of customers, but also because it opens a window
| for card fraud, which in Brazil, the online stores have to paid
| for it (as it is a non-physical credit card use).
|
| Apparently Wise had a PIX functionality here in Brazil, but it
| seems that they removed it for some reason.
| silexia wrote:
| Do not put your money into Pix because Brazil's government has
| become extremely authoritarian and anti democratic, including
| jailing political opponents.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Do not put your money into Pix
|
| You do not "put your money into Pix", your money is in your
| bank account. Pix is just a bank transfer mechanism; if you
| have a Brazilian bank account, you can send and receive through
| Pix.
| tumsfestival wrote:
| Oh boy here we go, the bolsonaristas are here to claim that
| Bolsonaro and his cronies definitely didn't try to overthrow
| the current government in favor of a military dictatorship and
| that there's definitely not a mountain of evidence pointing in
| that direction. Nope, it has to be some deep state commie
| conspiracy of course.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, Pix is just a way to transfer money. You
| do "put money" into Pix.
|
| Regarding the rest, I'm not following Brazilian politics that
| closely, but if politicians try to stop a democratic transition
| of power, then any functional democracy has to deal with them.
| I don't know how you can do that without doing things like
| jailing those who were involved. We can't do whatever we want
| and then call it political prosecution.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| How do people pay for illicit drugs, prostitution, bribes, etc.?
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| This post is about how Brazil created a universal payment
| technology that most richer countries don't even dream to have.
| And a technology that works, is free, easy to use, and become
| part of reality of country that, despite having several tech
| companies, isn't exactly recognized (yet) as big player in the
| tech scenario.
|
| And you keep repeating these old-fashioned stereotypes?
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| Huh? What stereotype? It was an honest question that I
| haven't heard a good answer for how black market payments
| will work as societies go cashless.
|
| In the US, it seems that 3rd party systems like Venmo are
| lightly monitored when it comes to payments for minor crimes.
| But I imagine that would change when there is a single
| government controlled payment system with total transparency.
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| > It was an honest question
|
| Sorry if I misunderstood you, but just as tip, make it
| clear in your question. Probably the downvotes are from
| people who are tired of having Brazil being associated with
| drugs, crime, corruption and sex while it is a giant
| country with so many things to offer, and with so many hard
| working people doing their best.
|
| But answering: just like any other country. Cash, jewels,
| money laundering, etc. Pix is not a replacement (at least
| so far) for cash, is just a modern option. And I really
| question if it will be someday a full replacement. Pix is
| amazing, but for a daily use (in restaurants, physical
| stores, etc) it is still more practical to pay using cards
| as Pix takes a little time to grab the phone, opening the
| bank app, scanning the QR code, typing the PIN and hoping
| that the internet connection is good enough for that
| 8bitbeep wrote:
| > Brazil's fusty banking
|
| That's precious coming from an US publication, a country where
| checks are still used.
| dkga wrote:
| Isn't the Economist based out of the UK?
| owebmaster wrote:
| A fun fact, one of the biggest PIX players is also the company
| that acquired Cognitec1, the company behind Clojure and Datomic.
| Until not long ago, Rich Hickey was part of the staff2.
|
| 1. https://building.nubank.com.br/pt-br/nubank-acquires-us-
| comp...
|
| 2. https://building.nubank.com.br/clojures-journey-at-
| nubank-a-...
| 0_gravitas wrote:
| Ahhh this is what I was waiting to see mention of, figured
| "nubank has to be in here somewhere"
| impalallama wrote:
| > Pix has spiced up Brazil's fusty banking sector, but it gives
| the central bank a worrying amount of power
|
| Economist what you think central bank does exactly that this is
| somehow too far?
| seydor wrote:
| None of these systems is global yet. We still have to get a
| physical card with a magnet, then enter the number of this card
| and its date of issue and another 3 digit number to the google
| wallet in order to pay with our phone . And now when i buy a sex
| toy, everyone including a girl in VISA, my bank, google , my tax
| service, they all have to know.
| fluorinerocket wrote:
| My Brazilian wife always complains about how bad our American
| banks and money transfer mechanisms are.
| mzs wrote:
| There is something similar in Poland:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik
|
| It is run by the banks themselves though. I like the 2 minute
| codes aspect of it.
| bokohut wrote:
| The long game pattern and cycle is obvious for those with the
| vision to see beyond the horizon. Politics obviously has a
| foundation in the choice of countries to control and operate
| their own payments systems given the value of the data and the
| social connections it reveals, aka national security. All
| security starts at the foundation and without financial security
| one is indebted and controlled by another. As the world enters a
| new cycle around those changing patterns the basis of the control
| they seek is founded in individual continuity without exterior
| influence by their adversaries. This can be seen today with the
| financial controls that can greatly impact an entire country
| filled with individuals that have no association with the
| reasoning of why the restriction was placed to begin with. We
| have many options today for instant cross border payments and as
| more and more countries move to own and operate their own payment
| platforms so too will those cross border payments methods grow in
| adoption foregoing an adversaries oversight and control.
|
| I speak from direct experience in these words as the architect
| and founder of multiple acquired payment systems over the decades
| because this past December I was contacted by an African country
| seeking to build, own, and operate their own payment platform
| backed by their energy reserves. The concerns and threats around
| a country's monetary system are real and in time we will see more
| and more countries taking up this initiative to cut out the
| middlemen.
|
| As a bonus over and above countries moving in this direction we
| can also see businesses doing the exact same thing over the last
| decade. Thee who controls the money also has induced influence
| over the users of that money as we see this more and more through
| 'progress'. Feel free to replace the word "money" with the word
| "data" in my previous statement as well.
|
| Stay Healthy!
| hamdouni wrote:
| It would be great if we could have some sort of roaming to
| interconnect those country specific systems...
| birdflyinghigh wrote:
| Before PIX there was TED which worked normal but you usually had
| to wait up to 3 hours to clear the transfer. Now because of the
| offload caused by PIX every single transfer you make through TED
| takes up to 10 minutes, usually 2, but noone cares. The look of
| happiness people have when they scan qr-code is the same of that
| kid that just got an ice cream. The reason why Pix was adopted so
| rapidly, and is so omnipresent, is because of ease of use. You
| scan the QR-code and that's it, transaction completed. Nobody
| mentioned that half of users is unable to figure out how to get
| started with pix, that is register keys, so they ask some techie
| parents, friends or go to the financial institution to get them
| started. Before most people that were inept to type in few
| necessary numbers to complete a transfer from one bank to the
| other, now switched to Pix and all they have to do is give the
| phone number or tax ID and are ready to receive money or scan qr-
| code to sent it out.
|
| Because of that there is a total inclusion and also utter
| surveillance. So now in Brazil there are 2 problems, 60-80% of
| financial transactions are processed by the government and to add
| to the damage the entire economy is run on one point of failure
| which is WhatsApp. If at the same time, 2 of them would stopped,
| let's say for 3 weeks or maybe less, entire COUNTRY would do down
| the drain.
|
| All the alternatives are fading away, lots of people don't even
| know how to change a ringtone on the phone but know how to do
| everything through WhatsApp. Try to ask, not even demand, in
| random business to provide you with alternatives for contact,
| you'd get that look saying GTFOOH. If pix would stopped, people
| would not go to atm to withdraw money, they'd wait until it'd
| come back online. When WhatsApp stops for few hours it feels like
| Sunday morning before the picnic.
|
| Government+meta=success story of Brazil
| owebmaster wrote:
| > If at the same time, 2 of them would stopped, let's say for 3
| weeks or maybe less, entire COUNTRY would do down the drain.
|
| In less than a week most of the country would already have
| migrated to a new messaging platform.
| birdflyinghigh wrote:
| 150 million users migrating to what? What messaging platform
| has this capacity of absorption, taking that many signups at
| once?
| owebmaster wrote:
| I won't include Messenger and Instagram as they are from
| meta so Telegram, Google Chat, TikTok, Snapchat and many
| more.
| birdflyinghigh wrote:
| So just like that every single user will just switch to
| some other app and in a weeks time, and everything will
| just resume from where it was left off? Maybe you just
| overestimate a little average user's capacity to do just
| that. Well I hope I live to see it.
| sephalon wrote:
| I wish more of these government-baked payment systems would just
| use GNU Taler [1] instead of implementing their own walled
| gardens.
|
| GNU Taler ensures that the paying customer is anonymous while the
| merchant is identified and taxable. This is great for privacy,
| but not very attractive for commercial companies as your revenue
| has to be fully based on fees instead of making extra money by
| selling your customers data. The Swiss National Bank showed
| interest in adopting it some years ago, but I haven't heard much
| anymore since...
|
| [1] https://www.taler.net
| fesoliveira wrote:
| > GNU Taler ensures that the paying customer is anonymous
|
| This right here is the reason why governments won't use it.
| Governments want transactions to be traceable so that they can
| audit your taxes. I don't have any issues with that, I actually
| don't mind paying taxes, but I would never expect a government,
| no matter how progressive, to use a privacy-based protocol or
| solution.
| seydor wrote:
| .. meanwhile, the EU has been discussing about the Digital Euro
| for like 5 years
| c7b wrote:
| Pix (and UPI, a related system in India with similar success) are
| my two go-to examples for how it makes sense for the central bank
| / public sector to get into the retail payment space. It baffles
| me that most major central banks (that are considering it at all)
| are considering doing so in the form of CBDCs [0]. CBDCs are like
| a bundle of two services, central bank money and a payment
| system. The central bank money part is the one that has everybody
| questioning its use cases, the reason why banks generally oppose
| it (hence making them likely to nudge their customers away from
| it), and it's a genuine financial stability concern that requires
| safety measures like holding limits [1] that complicate UX and/or
| the design.
|
| The payment system is the part that imho makes complete sense, in
| multiple ways: more competition in a market dominated by two US
| networks, strategic independence wrt to a critical
| infrastructure, providing a public good for underbanked
| demographics,... I don't get why places like the ECB, Bank of
| England, Bank of Canada, PBC,... (the US Fed is one of the few
| not pushing too actively in that direction) insist on bundling
| the two together instead of focusing on the payment system. If
| you succeed there, the potential for success is massive, without
| needing a central bank money feature, as shown by Pix and UPI.
| Getting one such feature right is hard enough, I don't get why
| they don't just focus on that and leave the central bank money
| baggage by the wayside.
|
| [0] Central Bank Digital Currency, a form of money that has
| similar UX to bank accounts but represents a central bank
| liability, as opposed to commercial bank liabilities like your
| usual bank account. It doesn't need deposit insurance, it's legal
| tender and is at the same level as physical cash economically
| (M0).
|
| [1] see eg
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecb.op326~d5c223d9b...
| alephnerd wrote:
| > most major central banks (that are considering it at all) are
| considering doing so in the form of CBDCs
|
| Other than the EU and UK, which other major CB is considering
| CBDCs alone?
|
| Numerically, most people I know in the space are heavily
| motivated by the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) model both
| India and Brazil have been using, and DPI has been a hot topic
| in the DevEcon space for 4 years now.
|
| In fact, Indian and Chinese lobbyists now compete with each
| other across Africa for DPI related infra work (Biden admin
| even helped support India's evangelism of the Indian DPI model
| in ASEAN and Africa), and Brazil's Pix has seen significant
| uptake in Argentina and Uruguay.
|
| And most regional economies like Vietnam, Pakistan, Nigeria,
| and South Korea have similar implantations
|
| The big difference might be public versus private domain
| experience. In newer economies like BRICS and much of ASEAN,
| the infra and norm setting work fell onto regulators. But in
| more developed economies like the US, UK, or EU, similar
| developments could be done by the private sector.
| c7b wrote:
| > Other than the EU and UK, which other major CB is
| considering CBDCs alone?
|
| The ones I mentioned, eg, UK [0], Canada [1], China [2]. But
| it's really most of them [3], the US is rather the exception.
|
| [0] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/the-digital-pound
|
| [1] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/digitaldollar/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi
|
| [3] https://cbdctracker.org/
| alephnerd wrote:
| China has backed UnionPay since the mid-2000s - the
| backbone is similar to that for UPI and Pix.
|
| And most of the countries on that list are either
| implementing their own payment infra or leveraging India,
| Brazil, Russia, or China's.
|
| It doesn't hurt to have a CBDC - it gives you a seat at the
| table when norms and global regulations are made.
| c7b wrote:
| There's a difference between what you call DPI (which I
| called payment system) and central bank money. A CBDC is
| both, Pix and UPI are only DPI sans central bank money
| (so neither is a CBDC). My point is that you can get all
| of the benefits of having DPI without needing to incur
| any of the headaches that come with central bank money
| (financial stability risks, holding limits, private
| sector opposition,...). I'm all for DPI, I'm just
| questioning the bundling with central bank money.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I agree with your skepticism about CBDC, but it takes
| little to no effort to implement your own CBDC, and in
| the small chance that they did somehow take off, then you
| have a platform you can export to other countries.
|
| > I'm just questioning the bundling with central bank
| money
|
| In most countries excluding the US, EU, UK, and Canada,
| the Central Bank also sets financial regulations and
| provides the infra backbone for fintech, and in some
| cases still own commercial banks.
|
| By having central banks attached to these projects, it
| helps build a testbed so private sector players can then
| extend on.
|
| Most countries aren't like the US where private sector
| investors are open to investing in innovations, so it
| would fall to the Central Bank to begin testing and
| implementing these products.
| c7b wrote:
| > By having central banks attached to these projects, it
| helps build a testbed so private sector players can then
| extend on.
|
| Again, you can get all of that without needing a CBDC,
| just have the central bank build and run a regular
| payment system. It gets substantially more complex once
| you make it a CBDC, making the chance of success even
| smaller. For what gain? You actually introduce some
| tangible risks for the financial system, the fact that
| it's regulated doesn't eliminate that. See eg [0]:
| "Threats to financial intermediation in steady state
| arise mainly in situations where the central bank balance
| sheet expands, and triggers adjustment mechanisms that
| lead to more costly or less stable funding of the banking
| system, while in crisis times run risk may increase." The
| typical way to address those risks are holding limits,
| which add operational complexity (you need an overflow
| logic, you need a draft logic if you want to enable
| payments greater than the holding limit, and it puts a
| limit on programmability [1]).
|
| [0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2024/10
| /11/Cen...
|
| [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10628652
| alephnerd wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you. CBDCs are dumb from a
| financial standpoint.
|
| > Again, you can get all of that without needing a CBDC
|
| Yep. Pretty much.
|
| > For what gain?
|
| Because if X country is doing it, Y country should do it
| as well, and then export the associated infra to a less
| developed country.
|
| You have to remember the Cryptocurrency bubble was going
| strong until 2023 when the FTX scandal happened.
|
| Hiring a team of 20-30 engineers isn't that expensive for
| a moonshot that makes it easier to negotiate if that
| moonshot somehow actually has an impact on global
| finance.
|
| Of course, most moonshots fail, but it still doesn't hurt
| to have something back of pocket or build some infra if
| needed.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| CBDCs and privacy don't necessarily need to be at odds!
|
| Cryptography makes it possible to have both! We can have a
| payment system run by the government and at the same time not
| need to give up our privacy!
| nunesvn wrote:
| Privacy conscious people: we can still use your preferred private
| super secretive way to pay for important stuff, and use PIX for a
| Coca Cola. One thing doesn't stop the other.
| dkga wrote:
| Saying this as a user but especially as a central banker and
| financial economist: Pix is truly amazing, and in fact an
| inspiration for many other countries. Beyond the payment sphere,
| we are only now beginning to scratch the surface on the effects
| Pix (and fast payment methods in general) can have on the
| economy.
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