Visa is trying hard to take over Japan at the moment and it's painful to watch. I'm really rooting for Pix, because the Visa MasterCard monopoly isn't doing us any favours
Could you elaborate? Genuinely interested.
Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
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Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#102It's surprising that Visa and Mastercard are even private companies. I expected that the government would be in charge of money and not let a group of people impose a 1-3% tax on their population. In the US, credit cards account for "71% of nationwide retail sales dollars". Governments aren't competent enough to do tech stuff well and they would never make something that works in a different country as well as credit…
The US is controlled by finance capital, the elections are just to choose it's spokesperson.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#103Brazil can do this. Why can't we?
Vietnam has a system like this too, QR based and free. India has UPI.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#104In EU we have multiple national systems, but now they are trying to unify them to the IBAN system, so you can pay in the same way by opening your bank app and scanning a QR code: https://wero-wallet.eu/ My bank (N26) should support this later this year. I hope it becomes as big and successful as Pix.
Wero is just another private company trying get their cut of payment fees. You can do the same thing with SEPA Instant Payment (or some member states outside of the Eurozone have their own similar thing). I don't see why Wero should exists, their business model seems like "trying to get money for the same service you can get for free".
I couldn't have said it better. I don't understand what they solve.
We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock. Switzerland is not part of SEPA but IBAN is used so it is trivial to send payments to foreign accounts that have an IBAN.
I always say that the day Trump decides to block Visa/MasterCard outside the US is the day we get instant payments and finally get rid of cards.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#105In EU we have multiple national systems, but now they are trying to unify them to the IBAN system, so you can pay in the same way by opening your bank app and scanning a QR code: https://wero-wallet.eu/ My bank (N26) should support this later this year. I hope it becomes as big and successful as Pix.
Wero is just another private company trying get their cut of payment fees. You can do the same thing with SEPA Instant Payment (or some member states outside of the Eurozone have their own similar thing). I don't see why Wero should exists, their business model seems like "trying to get money for the same service you can get for free".
wero is a european initiative set up by a consortium of banks that is built layered upon instant payments. it's not a private company like paypal or visa, its an attempt at making European payment infrastructure
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#106Visa is trying hard to take over Japan at the moment and it's painful to watch. I'm really rooting for Pix, because the Visa MasterCard monopoly isn't doing us any favours
Could you elaborate? Genuinely interested.
Visa and MasterCard are basically redundant except for international transactions. We already mostly use QR code payments, which is a semi-open standard and somewhat vendor agnostic(with caveats). It works internationally.
Japan has it's own card companies, and payment systems. Recently, some train lines have started adding support for Visa, but trust me that if you use it in rush hour you will be considered a knob head by everyone behind you as contactless is much slower than the native cards and can't keep up with a fast walking pace. Of course part of the problem here is Sony being greedy and making the international adoption of Felicia hard, but it's complicated.
The cards are most useful for tourists, and the best argument to introduce cards is international compatability. But international interop doesn't have to look like this, it's just how the playing field ended up looking.
Last, Visa and MasterCard are both known for being strict on what goods and services they are happy accepting, and it's not ok that so much power is consolidated in two entities in one country.
I'm not an expert on payment systems, but when I see the large scale advertisements Visa especially are pulling off in Tokyo I see a foreign company trying to disrupt and gain market share while not really benefiting locals who do have mostly moved beyond the need for card payment. I.e my reaction isn't "yay, finally Visa is here too save me" it's "oh no, how will they disrupt and destroy"
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#107People underestimate how difficult it was to transfer money before Pix, even between local banks. The process was hard to use, it could take days and the fees were huge, depending on your bank. Pix solved all these problems. What happens also is that many sellers provide discounts when using Pix, because you dodge the expensive fees charged not only by Visa and MasterCard, but the fees operators (banks, fintechs) cha…
I think we need to put this in context for folks who are not from Brazil. Comparatively, a domestic bank wire in Brazil before Pix was already easier and faster than one in the US today. I don't recall the bank fees being bad either. The issue is that bank wires were never designed for buying lunch at the food court. They're not instant and not user friendly to set up. Pix is alien technology next to the stuff we hav…
Pix is ok - but it’s clunky to use and has a single point of failure.
On the former - paying is:
Unlock phone
Launch app
Authenticate
Choose to pay with pix
Scan QR code
Enter amount
Authenticate again
Wait
Payment made
Show cashier your phone
On the single point of failure side of things - I was at an event in Brasilia a month or so back, pix grinds to a crawl, taking 10+ minutes per transaction, and the drinks queues rapidly got out of hand. As nobody accepts cash any more, and because nobody has a card any more, this meant they sold practically no drinks.
So it ain’t bad but tbh passing bits of paper back and forth is still easier.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> Pix is already 100% surveilled And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled? Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games). At least with Pix, the costs get lower for the end users.
Of course they are. Theirs is a more corporate surveillance, though. I'm genuinely afraid of what the brazilian government can do with this sort of data.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#109Read: The USA does not like what they cannot control!! I am glad to see the EU following Brazil with its own payment system. Visa/MasterCard/Paypal era is gone!!
Considering the times we're living in, each country should consider implementing own payment system, and never abandoning cash for digital currency. Both systems should coexist and complement each other but we aren't living in a perfect world.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as a non-expert, I think Pix has much bigger scope. Pix is account-to-account. One can buy real estate, pay bills, make person-to-person and business-to-business transactions, government payments, recurring payments. The funds also settle instantly. Most people don't experience the full scope of Pix which is impressive.
Sounds like pix is very similar to the Swedish swish. Phone numbers are used for identity, payments are instant, businesses often have qr codes with their identity etc.. It's like WhatsApp but with money!
The Swish system is private, which means that the fees are as high as the market can bear. In many cases cards are cheaper.
If the e-krona happens, that would be a better comparison.