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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

economist.com

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

#71

Post by sometimes_all »

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.

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

#72

Post by guax »

pearlsontheroad wrote: post #38
oulipo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#73

Post by NiloCK »

Etheryte wrote: post #42
Asraelite wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> crypto is all proprietary What?

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.

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/0x388c818ca8b9251b393131c08a736...

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

#74

Post by rafaquintanilha »

bestouff wrote: post #5

> 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.

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.

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

#75

Post by earnesti »

pjc50 wrote: post #47
londons_explore wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>> 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.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

cubefox wrote: post #63

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 fo…

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by dtquad »

bestouff wrote: post #5

> 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.

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.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

DeathArrow wrote: post #65
SwiftyBug wrote: post #8

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. They protect against tracking and provide anonimity. That might be valuable.

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by souenzzo »

dguest wrote: post #12
coliveira wrote: post #6

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.

Is there anything preventing a merchant in e.g. the US from using Pix?

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.

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

#80

Post by Guestmodinfo »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #8

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…

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
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