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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

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Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#31
post #13

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 ama…

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

> 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.

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#32
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.

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#33
post #19

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 ama…

> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. Pix can't facilitate cross-border micro payments.

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.

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#35

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.

> 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.

> crypto is all proprietary

What?

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#36
post #19

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 ama…

> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. Pix can't facilitate cross-border micro payments.

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.

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#37
post #23
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. Pix can't facilitate cross-border micro payments.

> 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 ra…

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 :)

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#38
post #13

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 ama…

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

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.

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#39

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 ama…

> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.

...except for inflation.

Re: Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

#40

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.

> 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.

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.
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