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Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

elciudadano.com

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Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#141

Post by propagandist »

reese_john wrote: post #129

It is worth noting that despite all this cheap sovereignty talk from Brazil’s president, in practice Brazil would not be able to operate Pix at that scale without heavily relying on American hyperscalers companies. Brazilian institutions are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to US cloud providers, specially AWS, to be able to process that many transactions. Earlier this year, when sa-east-1 was down, major banks…

So they get to decide when a transaction is in their national interest and do business on that basis?

That sounds like "sovereignty" to me. You don't need to be fully protectionist to be sovereign.

If you have an ax to grind with Lula, just say so.

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#142

Post by martheen »

mrkramer wrote: post #7

Pix is for domestic use right? So tourists who come to Brazil still use Visa and Mastercard as well as Brazilian tourists who travel abroad. Visa and Mastercard are companies of the past, crypto and stablecoins will destroy them sooner or later.

Cross border payment with QR codes are already a thing in plenty of Southeast and East Asian countries. Crypto and stablecoins aren't needed (nor wanted, due to money laundering risks).

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#143

Post by dd_xplore »

pkphilip wrote: post #98

India's UPI is also extremely quick and easy to use - instant transfers with just the person's phone number or via a QR code or via a UPI id which looks like an email id. We are talking about 19-20 billion transactions per month. Apart from UPI, there are other interbank transfers methods such as NEFT, IMPS, RTGS etc. All quite convenient and easy to use.

In some setups UPI doesn't even internet! Just an SMS is sufficient

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#144

Post by reese_john »

DoctorDabadedoo wrote: post #136
reese_john wrote: post #129

It is worth noting that despite all this cheap sovereignty talk from Brazil’s president, in practice Brazil would not be able to operate Pix at that scale without heavily relying on American hyperscalers companies. Brazilian institutions are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to US cloud providers, specially AWS, to be able to process that many transactions. Earlier this year, when sa-east-1 was down, major banks…

Only reinforces the point that relying on american infrastructure as a critical piece of your stack, in 2026, is a liability.

This is not a real problem outside of niche industries

American companies are great to do business with.

Most countries, including Brazil, simply don’t have the capability to pull this on their own. Not enough tech talent nor infrastructure

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#145

Post by znnajdla »

bpavuk wrote: post #124

a question for Ukrainians who maybe rode to Brazil and got to try Pix: is it this fast? is monobank faster or slower than Pix?

They're not really comparable because Pix is interbank while monobank in Ukraine is a single bank.

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#146

Post by wurstburst »

reese_john wrote: post #129

It is worth noting that despite all this cheap sovereignty talk from Brazil’s president, in practice Brazil would not be able to operate Pix at that scale without heavily relying on American hyperscalers companies. Brazilian institutions are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to US cloud providers, specially AWS, to be able to process that many transactions. Earlier this year, when sa-east-1 was down, major banks…

Don't get me wrong. But mentioning Brazil's president on this meter just adds even more politics to the discussion. Which global systems don't depend somehow on US infrastructure? Do you have the same opinion about the European leaders that are creating/created cloud infrastructure? I believe just one of the parts is really into adversarial talks lately. Brazil is just following what other countries are also doing.

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#147

Post by pyrale »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #108
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Theirs is a more corporate surveillance, though.

The thing about US' corporate suveillance system, and why the US government is so tolerant about it, is that US government branches either buy or are given all the data they need.

You don't get government surveillance or corporate surveillance, you get government surveillance or government and corporate surveillance.

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#148

Post by eb0la »

pelasaco wrote: post #132

The only problem I actually face with Pix in Brazil is: Some stores only accept Pix and don’t want Visa or cash. As a tourist, you end up unable to access a lot of things because, well, we don’t have Pix. While I was in Brazil, some thugs with pistols came into a bar where I was. They forced people to send a Pix payment to a specific account, and their money was gone. In the credit card era, I guess the companies, in…

Reminder: always travel with a spare phone with a broken screen just in case.

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#149

Post by reese_john »

wurstburst wrote: post #146
reese_john wrote: post #129

It is worth noting that despite all this cheap sovereignty talk from Brazil’s president, in practice Brazil would not be able to operate Pix at that scale without heavily relying on American hyperscalers companies. Brazilian institutions are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to US cloud providers, specially AWS, to be able to process that many transactions. Earlier this year, when sa-east-1 was down, major banks…

Don't get me wrong. But mentioning Brazil's president on this meter just adds even more politics to the discussion. Which global systems don't depend somehow on US infrastructure? Do you have the same opinion about the European leaders that are creating/created cloud infrastructure? I believe just one of the parts is really into adversarial talks lately. Brazil is just following what other countries are also doing.

> But mentioning Brazil's president on this meter just adds even more politics to the discussion.

This quote is literally from the linked article — he is mentioned there

> Do you have the same opinion about the European leaders that are creating/created cloud infrastructure?

I don’t understand the question, I think it’d be great to have an European AWS equivalent just for the sake of competition, but as far as I know, we are very far from that

Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard

#150

Post by jeroenhd »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #93
cloche wrote: post #46

> Since 2022, Mastercard Brazil’s CEO, Marcelo Tangioni, has voiced his concerns: “Pix is great, beneficial for the industry. What’s not great is that it falls under the Central Bank. It can’t regulate and compete at the same time”. Why not? This is such an American point of view that sounds similar to why the IRS doesn't offer easier tax filing options.

[flagged]

> Pix is already 100% surveilled

Visa and Mastercard are 300% surveilled: once by the Brazilian government, once by the payment providers themselves, and then finally by the American government.

There are privacy implications of cashless societies, but these foreign companies are worse in every aspect.

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