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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

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

#671
post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

> it's not just turtles all the way down If you drill far enough... well anyway > I don't know of any machine where dollars go in one side, are destroyed, and euros are created on the other side. The Treasury is the machine you're looking for. And the wire transfer, SWIFT, usually, is the tool of choice. In a sense, yes dollars are "destroyed" in that they leave that monetary system. Banks like BoA hold a few kind of…

> The Treasury is the machine you're looking for... In a sense, yes dollars are "destroyed" in that they leave that monetary system.

So are you saying there's an procedure where the US treasury takes USD out of circulation, and the ECB introduces the equivalent in Euro, according to some official exchange rate? How do they set the exchange rate?

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

#672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazilian here. - no card - technically not a specific app, its a payment method that any app with a checkout flow (for example) can chose to implement. - you register some id with your financial institution of choice (any of CPF - equivalent to SSN, CNPJ - for businesses, phone number, email or a randomly generated key). - keys are fully portable, as in you can revoke em or change the bank institution they're associ…

> its a bank transfer why can't we just use qr codes with ibans in that case?

That's something I've wondered for a long time. Especially know when real time bank transfers aren't allowed to cost more than regular bank transfers (usually free), there's really no point in creating a seperate system.

But it seems to me like banks don't really want to make bank transfers more comfortable for small transactions.

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

#673

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)".

I think it's kind of a status thing that you can afford a short word domain like wise.com. But yeah, in conversation I still call them transferwise.

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

#674
It's surprising how far Brazil has come in terms of financial transactions. Truly something amazing.

It's also unsurprising to see outlets like The Economist somewhat criticise this, along with fintech corporations, because the government is offering a free and high quality alternative to something that companies would have done exactly the same but for money.

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

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

it's a 1:1 when you convert a stable to USD - some exchanges might take a small fee like 0.01% or so ... On Coinbase it's a 1:1 https://www.coinbase.com/en-de/converter/usdc/usd

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

#676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should focus on getting rid of KYC, instead of giving up on privacy and security.

Are there any reasons we can't have both KYC and privacy/security ?

Is this a real question?

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

#677
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs to implement Pix. I truly believe that is a system which can replace SWIFT with just a intermediary, with a virtual currency that exchange rate between the 2 countries in the operation, this way the world can have a freedom outside dollar and really fast transactions.

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

SEPA payments are quite expensive though, which most likely explains the prevalence of local payment system in every country.

The transaction cost compared to most domestic systems is absurdly high.

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

#678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Followed by gross new brand styling Could've at least gone with calling themselves "Wise.com" or something, like "Make.com" does. Got nothing on "X" though. Have yet to hear someone in person say "on X" rather than "on Twitter".

Really? You don't like the pea-soup on vomit color scheme? I've been a loyal user of wise for more than a decade, since I used them to pay for my cross-currency wedding, and I can accept the name change since they wanted to show they were more than just money transfer (but just make it "bankwise", ffs), but the new brand style was a disaster. Notice they dialed it down over time,it's now more neutral than at launch,…

I've been with them a while also and haven't noticed a huge change apart for switching the colour from blue to green?

Site from 4 years ago "The cheap, fast way to send money abroad" https://web.archive.org/web/20210305145221/https://wise.com/

vs now "Send money globally for less" wise.com

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

#679
post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major economic crisis? 4 years growing >= 3% doesn't look like a crisis to me.

I assume op is talking about if it were implemented in the US.

Sure not, he is just a common type of brazilians we have here called "viralatas".

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

#680
post #633
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs to implement Pix. I truly believe that is a system which can replace SWIFT with just a intermediary, with a virtual currency that exchange rate between the 2 countries in the operation, this way the world can have a freedom outside dollar and really fast transactions.

Here in Sweden we have Swish which seems to be very similar (just send money to anyone with a phone number/QR Code), but Swish is a private company, not government. Relatedly, most company payments here, including water/electricity/etc bills, are paid using a system called Bankgiro, which is also a private company (and you can pay Bankgiro bills using Swish, of course). And even the de facto national electronic ident…

There's a reason why our government doesn't do anything that you can squint into a monopoly, the EU comes after us with pitchforks when we implement government monopolies. So the alternative is regulating some standard that a private organization implements and hope regulations are sound enough to not be exploited, or pray self regulation works.

That's why our railways are falling apart and why we have 2500 pharmacies but people up north have to travel to the town 100k away to get meds.

I wish the government that we elect every 4 years with public voting and kindergarten bartering could take ownership of things that are essential to life in Sweden, but nop it's all privatized so the companies can optimize profits by removing utility (BankID seems to be an exception here where the incentives align between companies and citizens).

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