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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

#551

Post by leonidasv »

xeromal wrote: post #543
lucasoshiro wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pix is basically a commercial name for two services: - SPI: responsible for the payments - DICT: responsible for mapping keys to accounts The API documentation of those services are available, but only banks can use them. When a person wants to send money to another, there's an option in the bank app for sending through Pix. Then you have many options to define to whom you'll send that money: - typing the bank accoun…

This sounds really cool. Is there a verification step where you confirm that the right number or identifier was entered for the first payment to someone? That's always one of my biggest concerns and I don't want to enter a number twice as the verification.

The UX is standardized by the Central Bank and they mandate a step showing the name of the person/company associated with that Pix key before you make the payment. So you can always double-check.

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

#552

Post by azlev »

mvieira38 wrote: post #328
leereeves wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup. Despite how magical and convenient Pix is, I still consider returning to cash just for the huge privacy liability of using Pix. But it's so engrained in the culture now that you can't really use anything else

As a São Paulo citizen, I really don't recommend cash due robbery. Privacy may be a 1st world problem, but here, assault is a real concern.

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

#553

Post by ksynwa »

nindalf wrote: post #97
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...

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.

WhatsApp does handle UPI though. Were they denied in the past?

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

#554

Post by tpougy »

lucasoshiro wrote: post #496
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?

> Is it safe? Given the dimension of Pix, I never heard of someone losing money directly because of using it (for example, here in the past was common to see where credit cards were cloned) > can someone be coerced into emptying their bank account at knifepoint? There are limits of use. Banks have different settings for limiting the amount of money that will be transferred in different situations, like when using the…

> Perhaps if you contact the bank, but as far as I know it is not a feature :-( Acctually there is a feature to request the central bank to retrieve money stolen through PIX scam. It is called Special Return Mechanism (MED PIX). Link here: https://www.bcb.gov.br/meubc/faqs/p/o-que-e-e-como-funciona-...

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

#555

Post by kspacewalk2 »

Spivak wrote: post #504
WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> that's the only way to do it without incurring huge transaction fees and / or long processing time. You're joking right? I just did a $25,000 wire internationally with a currency exchange in the middle and it cost $75. It went through in one business day. You'll get more hassle trying to withdraw from your exchange than that. When I bought my house and did the wire it cost $15. Where are you getting huge transactio…

The flat fee is a small part of what that transfer costs. The real transaction fee is embedded in the exchange rate. 2% markup is not an unheard of amount, which I guess would make your total cost $515 and not $15.

There's a reason Wise is a huge business and people in Canada resort to "Norbert's gambit" to exchange currency with minimal transaction costs.

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

#556

Post by freddie_mercury »

azlev wrote: post #552
mvieira38 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Despite how magical and convenient Pix is, I still consider returning to cash just for the huge privacy liability of using Pix. But it's so engrained in the culture now that you can't really use anything else

As a São Paulo citizen, I really don't recommend cash due robbery. Privacy may be a 1st world problem, but here, assault is a real concern.

Even in America it is an issue. Younger Americans maybe don't realise how prevalent muggings used to be when cash was common.

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

#557

Post by robocat »

boznz wrote: post #506
palmotea wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm thinking, maybe controversially, centralized national payment service like this should be government-run based on my experience with Alipay which is a digital payment service in China. After dealing with many private sector services, I think a lot of things should be government run. For instance: weather apps. Private sector ones are just a vector to track and sell your location data, and they rely on governmen…

I'm in NZ and actually prefer the Norwegian Govt weather site www.yr.no, which is about as accurate as our local one, easier to use and has no adverts.

I just needed to change language to English from below the hamburger menu icon.

Looks useful for Christchurch. Cheers

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

#559

Post by FabHK »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #525
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Wise (formerly transferwise) Off-topic, but: this is possibly one of the world's dumbest rebranding exercises. I forget now how many years ago they made the change, but I've never heard anyone outside the company itself refer to it as just "Wise" without adding "(formerly transferwise)".

Runner up: Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy)

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

#560

Post by xeromal »

leonidasv wrote: post #551
xeromal wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds really cool. Is there a verification step where you confirm that the right number or identifier was entered for the first payment to someone? That's always one of my biggest concerns and I don't want to enter a number twice as the verification.

The UX is standardized by the Central Bank and they mandate a step showing the name of the person/company associated with that Pix key before you make the payment. So you can always double-check.

That's exactly what I was looking for. That sounds great
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