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Nice to see at least one country managed cut out the middleman that is visa/mastercard as well as the merchant services. We in Switzerland didn't get that luc

Nice to see at least one country managed cut out the middleman that is visa/mastercard as well as the merchant services. We in Switzerland didn't get that lucky. Instead we have a new middle man Twint (partially owned by the banks?) which charges much higher fees to merchants than the credit card companies did. P2p is free which they claim is paid by the bank fees but p2b is of course not. When being pushed why their fees are so high they give you the run around. Of course again the perfect racket because the end customer doesn't know about the fees, they just want to use the app and if as a merchant you don't accept this payment method you loose the business. Because of the fee you also loose usability for the P2p payments. P2b payment is done via qr code, they do everything to prevent you from being able to do a p2p payment with a qr code as it would allow businesses to do p2p payments instead of p2c. For p2p you need to enter someone's phone number or IBAN even if they are standing right next to you.

rbanffy 3y ago
I believe banks in Brazil are also free to require a fee from the sender (maybe the receiver as well, not sure) in b2b transactions. P2p fees was one of the items in the previous president's FUD campaign against his opposer, the current president.
- rodrigodlu 3y ago
  It's not the sender, but the receiver. CNPJ's ("SSNs" for Juridic/Business entities) pay a % of the received money. Many banks, specially the neobanks/fintechs are making it free for small business tho. I have a business to sign contracts for soft dev and I was charged once for a pix transaction between another business account on a different bank. That bank is not my primary anymore, I started transferring using the old system (TED) to avoid it. TED takes ~15 minutes (from 0800 to 1700) instead of <1 sec (24h/7d), so not a big loss for internal transfers. Still using the dumb bank because of other reasons, but not primary. So competition working as intended in this case.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    And to think some countries still use checks... ;-)
luizcdc 3y ago
> Nice to see at least one country managed cut out the middleman that is visa/mastercard as well as the merchant services. For debit payments, sure. Credit card payments have infinitely better fraud protection than Pix (which has none), though.
soligern 3y ago
The middleman hasn’t been cut out of credit payments which a lot of people end up using, at least in the US.

rbanffy 3y ago

I believe banks in Brazil are also free to require a fee from the sender (maybe the receiver as well, not sure) in b2b transactions. P2p fees was one of the items in the previous president's FUD campaign against his opposer, the current president.

rodrigodlu 3y ago
It's not the sender, but the receiver. CNPJ's ("SSNs" for Juridic/Business entities) pay a % of the received money. Many banks, specially the neobanks/fintechs are making it free for small business tho. I have a business to sign contracts for soft dev and I was charged once for a pix transaction between another business account on a different bank. That bank is not my primary anymore, I started transferring using the old system (TED) to avoid it. TED takes ~15 minutes (from 0800 to 1700) instead of <1 sec (24h/7d), so not a big loss for internal transfers. Still using the dumb bank because of other reasons, but not primary. So competition working as intended in this case.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  And to think some countries still use checks... ;-)

luizcdc 3y ago

> Nice to see at least one country managed cut out the middleman that is visa/mastercard as well as the merchant services. For debit payments, sure. Credit card payments have infinitely better fraud protection than Pix (which has none), though.

soligern 3y ago

The middleman hasn’t been cut out of credit payments which a lot of people end up using, at least in the US.