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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

#91
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

And maybe even some other government which was an ally until a new old president is elected.

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s a pretty sweeping generalization about 200M+ people!

A statistic isn't a generalization.

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

#95
post #47

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.

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.

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

#96
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Apps as in applications, contracts are not apps.

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

#97
post #15

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...

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.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. They protect against tracking and provide anonimity. That might be valuable.

For 0.001% of the population.

Yes, and they are not exclusively, but largely, criminals.

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

#99
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.

The Brazilian government is a *very* corrupt authoritarian oligarchy. I would take any US company over that any day.

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

#100
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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.

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