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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

#581

Post by vasco »

idiotsecant wrote: post #569
leonidasv wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much do you trust your government with your money? When you use Pix, your money is not in custody of the government. The money goes to/comes from a standard commercial bank, just like a wire transfer. What the government (Central Bank) does is just the infrastructure for moving money between bank accounts. The point about not being a global standard is valid, though. Although there are initiatives in progress t…

That doesn't particularly address the point. Say the government decides that they don't like the political party you're supporting, or maybe you've been doing something they consider morally unclean like gambling or consuming pg-13 media. Let's say the government decides that your payments can no longer use the payment infrastructure. Now imagine it's effectively the only practical payment method. It's a permissioned…

How do you propose to get money into and out of crypto in this world where your government doesn't want you to pay for anything? Or we just assume everyone starts as a crypto millionaire in this example?

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

#582

Post by blackoil »

nirui wrote: post #206

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. Due to it's commercial origin, Alipay is filled with unwanted ads and traps. Almost every time I made a payment with it, a pop up prompts me to enlist their Ant Financial LOAN service either now, or being prompted for the same ques…

In UPI (similar Indian system), govt backed system acts as a central conduit between apps, banks, payment service system. So, the user can easily switch apps/banks. This prevents any hard monopoly but ensures competition and innovations at all levels.

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

#583

Post by lmz »

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…

You do know that 3 out of the 4 most populous countries have currencies with restrictions on foreign exchange? Send a lot of money out internationally and they will ask for reasons and documents as evidence.

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

#584

Post by blackoil »

nicce wrote: post #9
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.

Payment systems take huge fees. It is always good if they get back to the country and not elsewhere. Digital paying is something fundamental. Like electricity.

> Payment systems take huge fees

That is the monopoly cost. UPI is free for both payee and payer. Whatever it costs banks to operate it is covered by reduced cost of dealing with cash/consumer.

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

#585

Post by happosai »

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 much do you trust your government with your money?

Eh, the money was printed by government and any value it has is based on how much people trust their government. Using government payment processor is small potato compared to those...

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

#586

Post by cyberax »

hei-lima wrote: post #484

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.

I once looked at the requirements to be able to handle all the debit/credit transactions in the US, and you can do that on _one_ mid-range server easily. With regular PostgreSQL, no need for anything exotic.

Of course, the real deployment will need redundancy, failover, multiple levels of audit records, etc.

But still, modern computers are _powerful_.

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

#587

Post by sneak »

olalonde wrote: post #282
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…

> I've even had homeless people ask me for Pix instead of change on multiple occasions. Sounds like WeChat Pay. It's been years now that beggars in China only carry QR codes. > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. They solve a different problem or have the potential to: predictable/unbiased money issuance and on/off ramp for payment platforms.

I was expecting China to be totally cashless when I went last year. While everyone accepts digital payments, almost everyone also accepts cash just fine.

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

#588

Post by sneak »

amrocha wrote: post #519
kardos wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. KYC has a purpose though -- prevention of fraud, money laundering, etc. Getting rid of KYC without a similarly-effective solution for those things seems unlikely. Ideas?

Here’s an idea, get rid of cryptocurrencies and the need for KYC basically vanishes.

If you get rid of cocaine, the need for rehab centers also vanishes.

There is no way to “get rid of cryptocurrencies” at this point save for shutting off the internet. It is not within the power of the state to prohibit, any more than prostitution or cocaine.

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

#590

Post by ilirium »

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…

You have bizarre logic here. For example, in a topic discussed about GPUs, someone would say that it's not possible to run databases on GPUs, so GPUs don't have any chance of succeeding.

> How much do you trust your government with your money?

Do you trust crypto companies? Mt. Gox, FTX, Bybit…

Do you know that crypto companies must follow government rules, regulations, and laws? Russians were banned from using many crypto exchange platforms. China has strict rules for its citizens. You can buy and sell crypto in Brazil, but you must use only Brazilian reals.

Pix isn't global, but no one government person outside of Brazil can block this system.

MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and UnionPay work worldwide, but only a few countries regulate them, can block their usage, and can use data for tracking and statistics.

Pix is free to use, so no one needs to pay an additional "tax" to MasterCard and Visa (it's about 3%).

Google and Apple cannot say that if you want to pay, you must use only our devices.

> Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil

Now, try to buy ice cream from street vendors using any crypto coins.

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