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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

#101

Post by afarah1 »

paintbox wrote: post #54
afarah1 wrote: 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...

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.

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.

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

#102

Post by wslh »

mhluongo wrote: post #11
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. 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-...

> 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.

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

#103

Post by weinzierl »

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…

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.

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

#104

Post by harrisoned »

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.

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

#105

Post by pjc50 »

dguest wrote: post #60
kubb wrote: post #17

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.

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 paste…

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).

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

#106

Post by NicuCalcea »

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.

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.

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

#107

Post by speed_spread »

Klaster_1 wrote: post #84
salomonk_mur wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 0.001% of the population.

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.

It's even more useful to destabilize a country's economy, finance covert operations and straight out launder money!

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

#108

Post by DanielHB »

koyote wrote: post #67

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 busines…

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).

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

#109

Post by dormento »

earnesti wrote: post #62
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…

Can you elaborate on the technicals? Is it a phone app? Does it work through QR codes or NFC? Is there a Pix "card"?

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.

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

#110

Post by homebrewer »

DeathArrow wrote: post #68
earnesti wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the technicals? Is it a phone app? Does it work through QR codes or NFC? Is there a Pix "card"?

>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.

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.

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