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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

#621

Post by dguest »

irjustin wrote: post #494
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.

This is how they all work including western union. It's not a secret but it's not really talked about either. No one pays FX fees on each transfer. Single large rebalancing transfers allows them to actually move money at optimal times and rates with bulk discounts. Then they can currency hedge and get larger spreads on the actual fx rate.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how is the "single large rebalancing transfer" accomplished? I don't know of any machine where dollars go in one side, are destroyed, and euros are created on the other side.

My assumption was that it usually comes down to finding someone else with money in both currencies (i.e. a large bank or government) and exchanging one for the other. Of course that's unsatisfying: it's not just turtles all the way down.

Ultimately if I'm running out of, say, USD, and have a lot of CAD, I have to to buy a bunch of something for CAD and sell it in USD. If you wanted a "zero banking" currency transaction I guess the way to do it is to park on the Canadian side of the border, buy imports to the US, walk across to the US, and sell them.

Or maybe there's a magic money shredding / printing machine that I didn't know about. I guess an international treaty could actually authorize such a thing.

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

#622

Post by Vinnl »

dtquad wrote: post #77
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.

There are alternatives to both inefficient government-run monopolies and US tech giant monopolies. Even a small country like Denmark has multiple software and finance companies doing apps and software in the digital payments and banking field.

You would think, but is it in practice? In the Netherlands (and I believe many/most other countries), practically all non-cash payments are handled by either Visa or Mastercard. Technically a duopoly, but that's not a huge improvement either.

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

#623

Post by galactus »

ty6853 wrote: post #512
Spivak wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Unless of course you try to transmit it to someplace your bank or the government doesn't like, or the bank has dumb AML controls. In which case the transaction will likely get held up if it can be sent at all. If you try to transfer from somewhere boring like from the USA to Canada of course you can send $25k no problem (most of the time anyway, my bank has interrogated me and locked up my account before for attempti…

“ Meanwhile you could transfer $25k in crypto to Dubai”

Thats a use case 99.99999999999999999% of humanity does not care at all about.

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

#624

Post by weinzierl »

owebmaster wrote: post #249
weinzierl wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to use Pix as a tourist without Brazilian tax number or permanent residence. Technically a pre-paid option should be possible, but I could not find anything about something in that vein.

I think remitly works https://blog.remitly.com/money-transfer/complete-guide-brazi...

From what I understand it supports transferring money to an account identified by a Pix key. I don't see that you can get a Pix key there.

Similarly Revolut has an announcement but I don't believe it is available yet.

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

#625

Post by norman784 »

Voultapher wrote: post #600
souenzzo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIX are free for persons. Companies may* pay for pix services. My bank (that is not a good bank) charges a fixed amount of 4 BRL (aprox 1 USD) per transaction (to send PIX. not to receive) PIX in "maquininhas" may cost ~1% to the seller. * may: banks are allowed to charge.

To give some reference, using stripe you pay 2-3% for credit card payments and PayPal charges you ~5% of the transaction amount. Apple store and Steam take 30%. So honestly 1% sounds like a great deal.

I think comparing Steam and to some extend Apple with payment methods, they are stores and it cost money to store apps and games and for this one I'm not 100% sure, but I read a while ago that they also pay taxes for you in the country you sell, while pure payment processing services are just a proxy to move money from one account to another. You could argue that 30% is high for that, but we aren't discussing it here.

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

#626

Post by asdfadf12 »

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…

>What we may however end up with, are dozens of systems like Pix,

Lol It's not that we may ended up like that, systems like Pix are built for the sole purpose of domestic transaction.

Globally, Visa / Mastercard trumps crypto.

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

#627

Post by lnauta »

palmotea wrote: post #215
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…

> 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…

This is exactly what has been playing out in the Netherlands the past couple of months: the weather institute (KNMI) released their own weather app that is functionally the same (in some cases superior) as the commercial apps that want your consent to track and serve ads.

The commercial parties sued KNMI, even though they use the public data provided by KNMI. Luckily they lost: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/02/knmi-weathers-legal-app-sto...

And as a bonus, there was some Streisand Effect when this was in the news, and people have been moving to the KNMI app in droves.

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

#628

Post by oulipo »

forty wrote: post #27
oulipo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestig, but this is also worrying to know that the government now knows exactly what you bought, where, when, and for how much. They can also (if there's a rogue government) create fake transactions to implicate you in things you haven't done

Is it much more worrying than having Visa being able to do that? Especially when you see how the US is going downhill, I think it'd rather take the risk of having to deal with hypothetical local fascist state.

Yes, it is more worrying. But indeed both are bad

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

#629

Post by enopod_ »

There's a similar system here in Switzerland, called Twint. It is run by a group of banks though, and I don't know if the central bank is involved. Each bank issues its own App. It had a slow start, but suddenly got a lot of traction, and nowadays you can pay literally everywhere with it. Online shops, regular shops, restaurants, the bars in the stadium of your favorite football club. Person to person payment is also possible. You can also easily create a QR code if you set up a stand at a flea market or something like that, but it's not necessary, since all you need is the cell phone number of the recipient. Everybody with a cell phone is using it, even my grandma. It's a huge success. It works like a regular bank transfer between bank accounts. The banks get no information about what was paid with it, only the amount and from where to whom. The only downside: The banks set fees according to the market, so it's in competition with bank transfers, but also with credit cards like Visa and Master, or Paypal. It's still possible to pay very small amounts of cash like CHF 2.- or 3.- though. Recently, I had a walk with my kid and we walked past a stand where kids sold self made popcorn and cookies. They asked 1.- per piece, and they accepted Twint. I bought some things and paid by Twint to the cell phone number of the kids dad they gave me. :)

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

#630

Post by oulipo »

Wilder7977 wrote: post #29
oulipo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestig, but this is also worrying to know that the government now knows exactly what you bought, where, when, and for how much. They can also (if there's a rogue government) create fake transactions to implicate you in things you haven't done

There is virtually no difference with a private entity which can be compelled by the government to do the same, plus has its own profit motive which could also create incentive to do it. There must be a non-repudiation and integrity check to verify transactions (e.g., in Estonia I sign digitally all my transactions), so the latter problem is easier to mitigate.

Yes but in a private entity, the government still has to do some work (which is in the public eye) to do it, there can be more whistleblowers, etc

So there would be more safeguards

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