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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

economist.com

661–670 of 789 posts

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

#661

Do not put your money into Pix because Brazil's government has become extremely authoritarian and anti democratic, including jailing political opponents.

Oh boy here we go, the bolsonaristas are here to claim that Bolsonaro and his cronies definitely didn't try to overthrow the current government in favor of a military dictatorship and that there's definitely not a mountain of evidence pointing in that direction. Nope, it has to be some deep state commie conspiracy of course.

It was not Bolsonaro who was put in jail, it was his political opponent.

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

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say your post has the logical flaws, not confronting any of the core criticism and instead misdirecting to other topics. Creating efficient payment rails for its own currency is one of the most obvious roles for government imo. If the government provisions the currency, why would they not also provision the infrastructure (like the printing of the paper money). That said, you’ve not offered a good rebuttal to…

I don't offer any solution for the problems you mentioned, and I don't think it is possible. If we want to have global money and a global payment system, they would be controlled by governments, international organizations, God, Devil, Cthulhu, Spaghetti Monster... There is no magical solution. We, as a society, need to establish competing social institutions, and try to control them, and try to force them to compete…

Sounds like you're trying to solve a byzantine generals problem.

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

#663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say your post has the logical flaws, not confronting any of the core criticism and instead misdirecting to other topics. Creating efficient payment rails for its own currency is one of the most obvious roles for government imo. If the government provisions the currency, why would they not also provision the infrastructure (like the printing of the paper money). That said, you’ve not offered a good rebuttal to…

>Digital payments does present a uniquely frictionless route for tyrannical governments to assert power should they ever decide to weaponize it…unlike paper money which is harder to control. This is true, and there's already a proposed law to ban paper money in Brazil.

Digital payments also present a uniquely frictionless route for a functioning democratic government to tax goods and build a better society

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

#664

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…

It's so nice to have an example of how nice things could be if we don't let corporations nickle and dime us for crappy rent-seeking service.

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

#665
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash is arguably more secure and likely less traceable and easier to use if you don't trust governments. I don't see much use case for crypto other then illegal activities (although possibly not always immoral)

That’s right crypto is also very traceable by the very public nature of the ledger

Somehow Monero (XMR) gets around this, used in the biggest European underground pharmacy Archetyp.

Each transaction is somehow only known by sender and receiver

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

#666

As a foreigner that visited Brazil for some weeks, I found the ubiquity of the PIX payment system to be a handicap for tourists visiting the country. PIX is only for locals as you need to register with a CPF (Brazil ID number which is hard and tedious to get as a tourist). I ran into many scenarios where the only option was to pay with PIX and the staff aren't used to tourists and look at you funny when you explain y…

https://googlethatforyou.com?q=https%3A%2F%2Foffbeatbrazilad...

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

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I've been living in Brazil for the last 20 years. Lucky you. I've been living here since i was born. :( Pix is surreal. It was launched in the Bolsonaro (mal)administration, designed by the proverbially incompetent public work force, and is as Orwellian as can be. Its code is nowhere to be found. The funniest thing is that is has been adopted feverishly by the rabid right wing crazies, the same lot who want to dest…

Correcting the blatant misinformation about the topic: - PIX project started in 2016, public launch in 2020 - It was not "launched" by any President; the Brazilian Central Bank is an independent authority, with it own mandate, not a branch of the executive power - PIX was co-developed with institutions of the financial sector - It's a protocol that participants must implement, not an app. The specification is even on…

Your arguments are pretty lame. Pix was indeed launched in the Bolsonaro administration, but it is incidental. You are flailing around the bulk of my argument, which is about the source code openness, without actually attacking it.

It might as well be illegal today.

Art. 16 da Lei nº 14.063, de 23/09/2021: estabelece que os sistemas de informação e de comunicação desenvolvidos exclusivamente pela administração pública são regidos por licença de código aberto, permitida a sua utilização, cópia, alteração e distribuição sem restrições por todos os órgãos e entidades públicos.[0]

Art. 16 of Law No. 14,063, of 09/23/2021: establishes that information and communication systems developed exclusively by the public administration are governed by an open source license, allowing their use, copying, alteration and distribution without restrictions by all public bodies and entities.[0]

[0]https://www.gov.br/governodigital/pt-br/plataformas-e-servic...

So, lets open up its code!

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

#668
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…

> 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. This is exactly what I'm talking about and I'm not certain whether you're sarcastic .. Paying $75 on a 25k amount with a transaction time of 24 hours to complete is absolutely insane. You'd have used USDT or USDC or any other stable coin, you would have paid <$1 of fee and got the t…

How about the exchange rate padding when you go from crypto to useful currency and back?

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

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has SEPA payments. They are very fast and reliable, and separate from Swift.

We also have Wero now, which unifies the mobile payment systems in belgium, France and Germany, with more to follow. Promises to be a unified mobile payment system across Europe within a couple of years.

Sadly no one I've mentioned Wero to knows about it so I've never used it. I feel like banks were too set in their old ways and PayPal ate their lunch.

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

#670

I've worked with banking tech for almost 20 years in Brazil. The Pix system is great, but before that we already had TED which was slower but very reliable (the main downside is that it that it closes outside commercial hours for post processing). There are a lot of a lot of other things like Boleto (which are use for billing) and more recently the "Open Finance" system which allows different institutions to share cu…

While "third world" isn't a modern term and you should try to avoid it, it's also not correct by any means. If we consider 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countries to be analogous to high, medium, and low income countries, Brazil is easily a medium income country[1], and considered to be in the higher end of that bracket, for what it's worth.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=BR-XT

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