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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

#151

Post by jeroenhd »

dd_xplore wrote: post #143
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

I can see the usability aspect, but using an insecure protocol like SMS for something like payment sounds like an absolutely awful idea.

RCS might work as it's a bit more secure (and more importantly: doesn't have a 2G/3G compatible version that criminals might trivially abuse); it even has an optional money sending API in its protocol.

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

#152

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

I can see that Visa and Mastercard are freaking out, not because Pix can take over their business model, but because it can give ideas to other countries doing the same.

I've spent three months earlier this year in Brazil and never used Pix once. Not because I didn't want, but because I couldn't, or let's be honest: my time was not worth the hassle. To be able to pay with Pix, one needs to get a CPF (Brazilian Tax ID). Then to open a bank account, mostly local banks only accept Pix, with which you can tie your CPF. It's possible but it's definitely not straightforward the slightest. All the while Visa and Mastercard work everywhere in the country, I almost never had to pay in cash, even some sellers in the streets accepted regular credit cards.

Pix is certainly great, but locally only, and if every country comes with its own system and Visa or Mastercard disappear, we are going to go back to how people used to travel 50 years ago: with a lot of USD bank notes hidden in your hotel room or elsewhere ...

Pix is a good local idea, but the world needs something better.

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

#153

Post by rickdeckard »

reese_john wrote: post #137
vitorgrs wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Pix contactless payment. Both Samsung and Google wallet support. Samsung added a few weeks ago. Google added 1 or 2 years ago. You can actually pay QR Code Pix now with Samsung by just opening the camera too. Apple refuses to implement Pix on Apple Pay, and regulatory agencies are trying to change that... Pix integration with Google Pay it's just amazing. Imagine the situation in the US as if every app or web…

USD is a hard currency unlike the BRL. It is not supposed to move that fast by design. Google “Regulation E”. Brazil has no such strong provisions for protecting unauthorized transfers out of your account

> USD is a hard currency unlike the BRL

How much does this matter in the context of paying in BRL, to a BRL merchant, in Brazil?

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

#154

Post by jeroenhd »

raron wrote: post #90
pimeys wrote: post #32

In 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 does several things. You can already send instant payments if you fill out IBAN and such, but entering order numbers, account references, and other such cruft for purchasing products is a pain. Companies receiving such payments also need to connect payment to a user and update their digital processes somehow. Wero offers such a solution so you don't have to find a PSD2 processor (which will probably cost just as much).

For interpersonal transactions I don't really see the advantage here, but for commercial use cases it's got a solid product and purpose.

Wero doesn't stand to benefit much from payment fees as European payment fees are already rather slim compared to, for instance, American ones (crazy things like percentages of purchase price with a minimum amount!).

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

#155

Post by potamic »

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…

As long as the foreign companies operate within the country under the country's laws, it shouldn't be a big problem. But being dependent on only one vendor and not having redundancy in the system is a problem though. This is why cash is important to provide the ultimate redundancy against all technological and infrastructural failures.

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

#156

Post by jeroenhd »

throwaway473825 wrote: post #112
rkachowski wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sweden has a similar "initiative" set up by a consortium of banks (Swish), as do many other European countries. Usually these systems raise their fees after being established, sometimes even higher than Visa/Mastercard. Brazil's Pix is something else. It wasn't created by private entities to make money.

Wero's Dutch predecessor, iDEAL, has been an established part of online payments for 20 years now.

As barely anyone has a credit card and very people want to deal with the faff of manually entering billing codes or account numbers, iDEAL usage is near universal for online payments. I don't recall fees ever going up as an end customer.

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

#157

Post by jeroenhd »

throwaway473825 wrote: post #114
burnJS wrote: post #74

Brazil can do this. Why can't we?

Most likely because your country's banks are heavily lobbying against such initiatives. It's easy to blame Visa and Mastercard, but the reason why the EU doesn't have this is that the EPP (the largest political group in the European Parliament) answers to European banks, which don't want it.

The EU is literally working on an alternative as we speak: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

I think the cryptocurrency-based implementation is stupid and a product of its time, but the EU is investing a lot of money into a system to push Visa and Mastercard out.

Many countries have their own payment systems already, often widely successful. Integration between these systems has been annoying but things have started to centralize on two or three systems across Europe now.

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

#158

Post by melting_snow »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #152

I can see that Visa and Mastercard are freaking out, not because Pix can take over their business model, but because it can give ideas to other countries doing the same. I've spent three months earlier this year in Brazil and never used Pix once. Not because I didn't want, but because I couldn't, or let's be honest: my time was not worth the hassle. To be able to pay with Pix, one needs to get a CPF (Brazilian Tax ID…

> but because it can give ideas to other countries doing the same

This is happening right now in Europe. You have systems like Blik, Twint, Swish etc.

I know that at least Blik is working on making it possible for international payments.

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

#159

Post by ____mr____ »

reese_john wrote: post #144
DoctorDabadedoo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

> American companies are great to do business with.

US officials involving themselves in your national market because they are unhappy with the market share of their companies in it, with the implicit threat of stopping other areas of trade if you dont allow the companies to gain a larger market share makes US companies too untrustworthy to do business with. If Trump implements a trade ban for Brazil, will these hyperscalers continue providing the service at their own risk, or are they going to prioritize their state over their customers? I would assume the answer will be the latter. Given that, I believe it is in Brazil's (and most other states) best interest to divest and reduce partnerships with companies operating in the US

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

#160

Post by someonenice »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #152

I can see that Visa and Mastercard are freaking out, not because Pix can take over their business model, but because it can give ideas to other countries doing the same. I've spent three months earlier this year in Brazil and never used Pix once. Not because I didn't want, but because I couldn't, or let's be honest: my time was not worth the hassle. To be able to pay with Pix, one needs to get a CPF (Brazilian Tax ID…

There is India's UPI (launched in 2016), Singapore PayNow (Launched 2017) that works in a similar way. And they also work across each platform.. UPI users in India can transfer to Paynow users in Singapore and vice versa.

[1] https://www.dbs.com.sg/personal/deposits/pay-with-ease/payno...

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