Brazilian here! For people from other countries, I can say with 100% certainty: There's not a single chance of Brazil's Pix going away — even if a far-right government wins and aligns with the USA. Even then, it's impossible. The ONLY way this could ever happen is if the USA invades Brazil.
Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
251–260 of 397 posts
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's needed in Europe is federation of the existing systems, not one winner taking it all.
That's exactly what's happening, see the EU digital euro scheme. It's planned to be free of fees too, modeled around how SEPA was done for wires. There has been massive resistance by the incumbents of course, including banks (since they too charge a fee on top of visa). It's been in the backlog for years but the US sanction against ICC judges leading to them being cut off from most things including payment triggered…
From what I remember the bank started to federate around a payment network to outcompete the digital euro. I hope the digital euro wins, I hope they don't fumble it.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#253I 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…
They can federate the systems, I know Singapore’s PayNow connects to Malaysia and Thailands systems
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Twint is in Switzerland for more than 10 years, hardly a new idea
Swish is even older.
The issues with Twint:
- Switzerland hasn't gotten Apple to open up NFC payments at the same conditions as the EEE, at least not yet.
- Twint is part of the EMPSA which hasn't really delivered anything tangible. On the contrary there's now a real push from EPI and EuroPA to make Wero interoperable with non-Eurozone networks. Hopefully Twint will get on board too.
- Transaction fees are on the higher side, consequently merchants don't have any reason to push Twint or disincentive debit card payments.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Such a naive take. Like the US government espionage is not deeply embedded in even the most basic infrastructure, let alone payment gateways. They probably spend millions on huge data pipelines straight to the fucking pentagon.
A sizable amount of Americans are completely hoodwinked by capitalists that have made their material lives worse in every capacity. Thinking that an accountable entity, a democratic government, as a worse than the unaccountable centrally planned dictatorship (a corporation) is just laughable but America has been a laughable place for quite a while as we prefer helping corporations over literal people.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
> US officials involving themselves in your national market because they are unhappy with the market share of their companies in it
Just to clarify, for anyone who’s been paying attention to the matter, it’s clear that the true reason for that Section 301 investigation is not due to Pix stealing market share of MC/Visa. In fact, if you check Brazil’s central bank own data, Credit Card usage has not gone down since Pix came in. What Pix really replaced was physical cash.
The fact is that Brazil’s (current) government has been publicly on the other side of Americans interests for a long time, even before Trump’s term. e.g. blatantly ignoring Iran sanctions https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sen-cruz...
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are incorrect. What went down were apps from banks that use PIX, not the core infrastructure. That is responsibility of the banks. It means private banks like Itau and Nubank rely on Amazon, not the Central Bank. They relied on those hyperscalers for their operation, and their gateways went down with it. PIX has sovereign, private infrastructure on brazillian soil managed by Banco Central. NIC.br and other essent…
This is a minor technicality, if private banks are down then the SPI is basically useless. Banks can send money to each other but clients can’t see it. > What went down were apps Plus, this is an oversimplification. Transaction authorization, Fraud/AML screening, account validation are not just part of an “app”, they are core functionality of private banks operations, and they are made scalable by big cloud providers…
> The true scaling burden is on private banks not the BCB
Exactly. That is one of the aspects that allow for the system to be sovereign and scalable. Banco Central controls the core, and that's all it needs to.
This is good design. Descentralized, modern, resilient and efficient.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context is important, the Brazil's President said that about USA investigations with allegations that Pix is a "unfair business practices"[0] he is not at all saying that Pix is "100% powered by Brazil", in his political proselytism he does make clear that Brazil and USA are partners by centuries and should keep being. 0. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cm2vrnq17vdo
Please, he literally went on national TV on Brazil’s Independence day to claim that “We will defend PIX from any attempt at privatization. PIX belongs to Brazil, it's public, free, and will remain so.” Lula has been historically hostile to the US for ideological reasons. He’s done plenty to undermine that relation, stemming from attacking the dollar dominance, ignoring Iran sanctions, to indirectly financing the Ukra…
Most of these could could be put another way as protecting sovereignty (and that would be the most charitable interpretation IMHO). Examples:
- "being hostile for ideological reasons" becomes entirely warranted when you consider the many CIA regime-change operations in the past.
- "Undermining the relation" (with the US) is just being smart about how much dependency one has on external factors, like exchange rates and infrastructure.
- The "investigations" are political posturing. PIX is not "unfair business practice", its a modern, cheap, state-of-the-art payments system that is better than what private businesses like MasterCard and Visa are willing to offer. I can think of plenty of ways they could offer actual value to customers so they can still be relevant. The fact that they don't, and chose to try and lobby against it tells me that its a lot cheaper to just buy some politicians and manufacture some controversy instead.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock.
We have? SCT inst has been rolled out almost everywhere
> Switzerland is not part of SEPA
We definitely are. Transfers in EUR from/to CH IBANs use SEPA rails. CHF accounts can also send or receive EUR transparently (usually at a bad FX rate, but it just works).
> I don't understand what they solve. [...]
> 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.
You answered your own question. We need pan-European payments systems on top of the existing banking infrastructure. Payments and transfers aren't the same thing. By moving to mobile wallets with QR code and NFC payments, this opens up interoperability beyond Europe too.
Re: Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
#260I 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…
China's UnionPay and AliPay are to various extents are integrated with the systems in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia [1]. Each country has its own system, but integrates with others.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/china-indonesia-have...