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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

#441

Post by toomuchtodo »

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…

80 countries have instant/real time payment systems today [1], and the Bank for International Settlements is working on cross border interoperability [2].

Cryptocurrencies will likely never go away, and will remain in use for certain use cases from a cross border value transfer perspective, similar to gold; either the token moves or the ownership is updated. More interesting is offering digital wallets for a single or basket of currencies to anyone you can remotely identity proof in the world (similar to nsave [3]).

[1] https://www.volt.io/real-time-payments-world-map/

[2] https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm

[3] https://www.nsave.com/ | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nsave

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

#442

Post by [deleted] »

leereeves wrote: post #279
Xunjin wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs to implement Pix. I truly believe that is a system which can replace SWIFT with just a intermediary, with a virtual currency that exchange rate between the 2 countries in the operation, this way the world can have a freedom outside dollar and really fast transactions.

I'd hate to see a system like that where I live, because the government will abuse it. We've already seen Canada freeze bank accounts of protestors, and US officials put protestors on the no fly list.

[deleted]

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

#443

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

RHSeeger wrote: post #308
DeathArrow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a pretty big gray area in there. Literally every society on the planet has some form of "giving up their freedoms" in exchange for some amount of security. I would argue that it's impossible to have a stable society without that. The thing that's important is deciding which rights are worth protecting and which ones are ok to give up in exchange for security (or other reasons, presumably).

And it's not as if crypto is particularly anonymous. Transaction analysis will identify you unless you work hard at covering your tracks.

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

#445

Post by c7b »

Pix (and UPI, a related system in India with similar success) are my two go-to examples for how it makes sense for the central bank / public sector to get into the retail payment space. It baffles me that most major central banks (that are considering it at all) are considering doing so in the form of CBDCs [0]. CBDCs are like a bundle of two services, central bank money and a payment system. The central bank money part is the one that has everybody questioning its use cases, the reason why banks generally oppose it (hence making them likely to nudge their customers away from it), and it's a genuine financial stability concern that requires safety measures like holding limits [1] that complicate UX and/or the design.

The payment system is the part that imho makes complete sense, in multiple ways: more competition in a market dominated by two US networks, strategic independence wrt to a critical infrastructure, providing a public good for underbanked demographics,... I don't get why places like the ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Canada, PBC,... (the US Fed is one of the few not pushing too actively in that direction) insist on bundling the two together instead of focusing on the payment system. If you succeed there, the potential for success is massive, without needing a central bank money feature, as shown by Pix and UPI. Getting one such feature right is hard enough, I don't get why they don't just focus on that and leave the central bank money baggage by the wayside.

[0] Central Bank Digital Currency, a form of money that has similar UX to bank accounts but represents a central bank liability, as opposed to commercial bank liabilities like your usual bank account. It doesn't need deposit insurance, it's legal tender and is at the same level as physical cash economically (M0).

[1] see eg https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecb.op326~d5c223d9b...

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

#446

Post by alephnerd »

c7b wrote: post #445

Pix (and UPI, a related system in India with similar success) are my two go-to examples for how it makes sense for the central bank / public sector to get into the retail payment space. It baffles me that most major central banks (that are considering it at all) are considering doing so in the form of CBDCs [0]. CBDCs are like a bundle of two services, central bank money and a payment system. The central bank money p…

> most major central banks (that are considering it at all) are considering doing so in the form of CBDCs

Other than the EU and UK, which other major CB is considering CBDCs alone?

Numerically, most people I know in the space are heavily motivated by the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) model both India and Brazil have been using, and DPI has been a hot topic in the DevEcon space for 4 years now.

In fact, Indian and Chinese lobbyists now compete with each other across Africa for DPI related infra work (Biden admin even helped support India's evangelism of the Indian DPI model in ASEAN and Africa), and Brazil's Pix has seen significant uptake in Argentina and Uruguay.

And most regional economies like Vietnam, Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Korea have similar implantations

The big difference might be public versus private domain experience. In newer economies like BRICS and much of ASEAN, the infra and norm setting work fell onto regulators. But in more developed economies like the US, UK, or EU, similar developments could be done by the private sector.

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

#447

Post by sandos »

wink wrote: post #183
DanielHB wrote: post #55

Sweden has had a similar system for several years before PIX in Brazil. It is also integrated with the digital ID system (BankID). The main difference is that the Swedish system is ran through a private organization managed by all the major banks (and the central bank) in conjunction. So the central bank doesn't have direct access to the transaction data technically. While the Brazilian system is only interacted dire…

How recent is Swish adoption? Some Swedes I knew back in 2013-2018 seemed to mostly use Visa/MC at home.

Literally everyone uses Swish in my experience. Even idiotic criminals.

We "had" to get swish (and a debit card..) for our 12 yo daughter because cash is just not very usable here. Although the CC is still used more than swish, but for transfers between persons, or smaller companies swish is very common.

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

#448

Post by gjvnq »

catsma21 wrote: post #244
dormento wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 associ…

> its a bank transfer why can't we just use qr codes with ibans in that case?

I guess that's because pretty much nobody in Brazil knows what an IBAN is

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

#450

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

m463 wrote: post #437
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably it has the same simple safeguards that a US system like Zelle or Venmo have. I needed to pay my sister-in-law $1300 the other day, and forgot that I have a $500/day transaction limit in place for such transfers, at my own choosing (setup when I opened the account).

I thought zelle was riddled with fraud?

Perhaps. I use it to get cash to family members, no issues.
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