Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 789 posts

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

#421

Post by mqus »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #186
dguest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

Same happened in germany but sadly, dwd (the national weather service) lost. They _have_ to take money if you want their weather app.

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

#422

Post by mqus »

runeks wrote: post #86
losthobbies wrote: post #34

I wonder will the SEPA instant work like this.

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.

Isn't SEPA instant kinda mandatory by the end of this year? (it mustn't cost more than regular transfers)

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

#423

Post by owebmaster »

birdflyinghigh wrote: post #403

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,…

> 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.

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

#424

Post by dmonitor »

pjc50 wrote: post #113
seszett wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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_RrcStateCha...

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.

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

#425

Post by birdflyinghigh »

owebmaster wrote: post #423
birdflyinghigh wrote: post #403

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,…

> 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.

150 million users migrating to what? What messaging platform has this capacity of absorption, taking that many signups at once?

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

#426

Post by owebmaster »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #372
babypuncher wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Major economic crisis? 4 years growing >= 3% doesn't look like a crisis to me.

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

#427

Post by wuming2 »

runeks wrote: post #86
losthobbies wrote: post #34

I wonder will the SEPA instant work like this.

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.

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.eu/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://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/intro/events/shared/pdf/fs22...

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

#428

Post by [deleted] »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #363
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. 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 cont…

[deleted]

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

#429

Post by bjackman »

gloomyday wrote: post #402
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.

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.

It's the Economist, this kinda thing is just their weird party line

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

#430

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #418
reaperducer wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> 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 smal…

The huge transaction fees come from the occasional, but surprisingly regular, crashes in value.
Post reply on HN