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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

#481

Post by holografix »

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…

Can we just agree that a system where every user/member needs to keep a large if not the entirety of the history of transactions is never going to work well?

Fine keep using crypto as a store of “value” but as a way to handle day to day transactions it has failed.

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

#482

Post by c7b »

seanalltogether wrote: post #4

Given the fact that the central government uses taxes to fund the creation and managements of a countries currency, it makes perfect sense that in the digital age it should also be funding the infrastructure to send digital transactions with that currency. I wonder how differently the internet would have developed if microtransations were free and easy to transfer.

> Given the fact that the central government uses taxes to fund the creation and managements of a countries currency

That's not a fact, in fact it's typically the other way round, issuing a currency is generally profitable and the profits typically flow into the general government budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage It's managed by the central bank, though, btw, which is considered separate from the government for governance reasons.

Of course, none of that stands in the way of creating public payments infrastructure.

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

#483

Post by danielmarkbruce »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #441
WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

On top of that, the BIS isnt even needed for global real time payments. A company like Wise (formerly transferwise) or any similar entity can just hold accounts in each country and if the local settlement is real time they can also do real time global settlement by just updating their db and sending the money real time in the receiving location.

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

#484

Post by hei-lima »

Pix is amazing, really. The technical side is incredible—I remember reading or watching some really good content about the architecture, but I can’t recall exactly where and haven’t been able to find it again. All payments have to be completed in under 100ms, which is impressive considering how resilient the infrastructure needs to be to handle thousands of transactions per second.

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

#485

Post by anodari »

rebanevapustus wrote: post #99
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.

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

Where did you get this idea of a 'very corrupt authoritarian oligarchy'? Brazil is not much different from any other democracy and is far less oligarchic than Trump's USA. Also, PIX is managed by our independent central bank."

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

#486

Post by owebmaster »

birdflyinghigh wrote: post #453
owebmaster wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't include Messenger and Instagram as they are from meta so Telegram, Google Chat, TikTok, Snapchat and many more.

So just like that every single user will just switch to some other app and in a weeks time, and everything will just resume from where it was left off? Maybe you just overestimate a little average user's capacity to do just that. Well I hope I live to see it.

If whatsapp is down, people will find another way to communicate, there is nothing inherent to whatsapp that can't be found somewhere else. I wish to see it too.

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

#487

Post by chupchap »

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…

How are you paying for a cab with crypto while travelling? For international payments, cards like Wise is simple and it works. You raised question about currency and the govt that manages it. The same question is true for most crypto as well; extreme volatility is not good for a currency.

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

#488

Post by manquer »

dyauspitr wrote: post #383
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.

UPI from India is a much better system in my opinion since it’s decentralized and doesn’t give all the power to the central bank.

How so ? While it is P2P protocol, the network is pretty centralized.

UPI is owned by NPCI(gov entity) and runs on top of IMPS both the networks are strongly regulated by RBI the central bank.

There is fair amount of regulation and KYC/ AML requirements before an app/service gets direct access to the network and even then it can be pretty challenging. WhatsApp struggled for years to get UPI integration .

Holding money in a wallet has even more regulations than merely transferring it .

Payment networks tend to centralize by their nature. I see pix or UPI as competitor to Mastercard or VISA , they have proven it is possible to run a network far cheaper than claimed

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

#489

Post by rmsaksida »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #435
m463 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wikipedia doesn't say much about it. I wonder about a few things. Is it safe? I'm pretty sure everyone not carrying cash is very good for physical safety, but can someone be coerced into emptying their bank account at knifepoint? Are there scams? Can stolen money be retrieved?

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).

Yeah Pix lets you choose limits. There's decent granularity for those, you can pick max $ per day, per transfer, per period, and per device. There's a caveat that when you increase a limit it takes a day or two to come into effect (basically to avoid people being forced to increase their limits by criminals).

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

#490

Post by tekla »

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…

You don't have a no international transaction fee card? They're trivial to get
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