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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

• dotdi 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/pZGLb https://archive.ph/pZGLb
• vithalreddy 2y ago
  Same with India's UPI https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statistics https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statist...
  • alephnerd 2y ago
    Tiger Global, Seqouia, and Khosla Ventures invested in a lot of Brazilian fintech and neobank startups in the early/mid 2010s the same way they did in Indian fintech and what became IndiaStack in the early 2010s, and China's equivalent in the late 2000s. YC has also been very active in the space in both markets by the late 2010s. A lot of the work around Pix is largely thanks to the fact that neobanks like Nubank have become very competitive in the Brazilian market, and helped set higher consumer and business expectations for transaction processing and management.
    • blackoil 2y ago
      VC investments are for private solutions to build likes of Alipay in India. These are govt. initiatives to ensure no one party gets monopoly on core infrastructure of the nation.
• seanalltogether 2y ago
  Given the fact that the central government uses taxes to fund the creation and managements of a countries currency, it makes perfect sense that in the digital age it should also be funding the infrastructure to send digital transactions with that currency. I wonder how differently the internet would have developed if microtransations were free and easy to transfer.
  • c7b 2y ago
    > Given the fact that the central government uses taxes to fund the creation and managements of a countries currency That's not a fact, in fact it's typically the other way round, issuing a currency is generally profitable and the profits typically flow into the general government budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage It's managed by the central bank, though, btw, which is considered separate from the government for governance reasons. Of course, none of that stands in the way of creating public payments infrastructure.
    • seydor 2y ago
      they do physically print the money (at some cost) . And they can easily generate revenue from a payments system, if they want to (which they will at some point, of course)
    • nitwit005 2y ago
      Creating digital currency can be as simple as incrementing a number or adding a ledger entry. Creating paper currency can be quite expensive. There are tens of billions of US notes in circulation. Both are "profitable", as there is more money in the end, but governments are eating real costs to manage the physical bills.
• bestouff 2y ago
  > Pix has spiced up Brazil’s fusty banking sector, but it gives the central bank a worrying amount of power I think a largely prefer a government-run payment system than an US company monopoly.
  • rebanevapustus 2y ago
    The Brazilian government is a *very* corrupt authoritarian oligarchy. I would take any US company over that any day.
    • xinayder 2y ago
      Yet we, a developing "third-world" country, have a better functioning payment system than the US, where it takes days, or even weeks, for a wire transfer to land, and you pay a huge amount of fees for that. Cases in point: - To transfer money to a broker, I need to pay around $5 in transfer fees via ACH or wire - I want to change the custody of my stock market assets from one broker to another, and it will cost me $75 to move $60 worth of shares. Meanwhile, in Brazil, this process is free in every broker.
      • ave_b_2011 2y ago
        I don’t understand this binary. The UK was able to create a near-instant bank transfer system without monopolizing in the same way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments It costing more for instant transfers is just a regressive tax on the working poor.
        • xinayder 2y ago
          I can't find the details of the UK system, but it's not "monopolized" in Brazil. Perhaps due to the fact that the infra is provided by the Central Bank, and banks choosing to implement Pix support must implement the Pix APIs in their system.
        • marcosdumay 2y ago
• coliveira 2y ago
  Yes, now in Brazil you can hardly find anyone not using Pix. It is all digital and free. Even in Argentina and Paraguay, many local merchants are now accepting Pix.
  • dguest 2y ago
    Is there anything preventing a merchant in e.g. the US from using Pix?
    • pjc50 2y ago
      It's denominated in the Brazilian real rather than USD?
    • souenzzo 2y ago
      With BRICS, other currencies may be integrated. China also have a pix-like wechat Russia has a pix-like "BRICS Pay" And those systems can be integrated. PIX QRCode protocol already have a "currency" field, that currently only support the constant value of "BRL" USA probably will continue to use check and printed money like the ancients do.
  • HNArg024 2y ago
    Yeah, in Argentina the main digital wallet is MercadoPago. Many merchants have their terminal to accept payments with credit cards/QR, and since this past summer you have the option to accept payments with Pix too. Also it goes both ways, everyone going on vacation to Brazil can pay with MercadoPago without having to install Pix.
• SwiftyBug 2y ago
  I've been living in Brazil for the last 20 years. Pix revolutionised the way we transact in Brazil. I've used Pix to pay for things that cost only cents, and I have a friend who bought her house using Pix. The system just works for any transfer amount. And it's so easy to use. Its speed is truly baffling, and so is its reliability. Never have I failed to make a Pix payment because of downtime. I never cease to be amazed by how fast money arrives in my Brazilian account when I make a withdrawal directly from my EUR wallet on Wise. I receive a push notification from my Brazilian bank before Wise finishes running the animation of confirmation of withdrawal. It's like magic. And it's so widespread that nowadays I don't even question whether someone accepts Pix. When I get in a taxi, no matter how old the driver is, it's certain that they take (and prefer) Pix. I've even had homeless people ask me for Pix instead of change on multiple occasions. Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.
  • mhluongo 2y ago
    > Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. Does it work internationally? Does it send USD as well, or only the real? If it solves th same problems, why is Brazil considering banning self-custodial USD stablecoins? And why has there been an ongoing discussion about launching mBRL, and stablecoin pegged to the real? https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2024/brazil-considers-banning-stablecoin-withdrawals-to-self-custodial-wallets/ https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2024/brazil-considers-...
    • londons_explore 2y ago
      Nearly every non-western country has it's own e-cash type system. Everything from m-pesa in Kenya to Gcash in the Philippines to PromptPay in Thailand to Alipay in China to SGQR in Singapore to MPay in Oman.... The pattern is that these systems are nearly all fully centralised, require ID, zero privacy, usually government sanctioned, and not cross border.
      • pjc50 2y ago
        And quite a lot of Western ones like Vipps. And see this long list: https://truelayer.com/reports/alternative-payments/european-tour/ https://truelayer.com/reports/alternative-payments/european-... > require ID, zero privacy, usually government sanctioned Unfortunately systems that don't have those requirements are going to be money laundering channels. I wish it wasn't such a big concern but it's unavoidable.
• trollbridge 2y ago
  Standard workflow in Brazil: - You need to buy something from person XZ, whether an individual, small business, or huge business. - XZ sends you an invoice (including relevant taxes). - You pay the invoice. XZ knows you’ve paid. - At year end you can download all your invoices, including any taxes already paid, for doing your taxes. (Brazil taxes make American taxation look simple.) Standard workflow in America: - “Do you want cash, mail a check, or PayPal/Venmo/Cashapp?” - “Umm do PayPal but friends and family please… also it’s at my wife’s email that still has her maiden name” - Zero detail on invoice (maybe a receipt printed on thermal paper or a random email) which you lose by tax time
  • yetihehe 2y ago
    Standard workflow in Poland for normal people: - You buy something and pay the stated price with money, phone/card or "blik" (free cashapp). - Your taxes are already prefilled by your employer. If you have some "tax relief" items, you add it on webpage and make some clicks to confirm. If no reliefs, you don't need to do anything.
  • DanielHB 2y ago
    - At year end you can download all your invoices, including any taxes already paid, for doing your taxes. (Brazil taxes make American taxation look simple.) I disagree, although it is VERY complex the US system is much worse. At least the Brazillian one you don't need to pay for an application (TurboTax & similars) to file your taxes.
    • xinayder 2y ago
      And the Receita (IRS) app has an option to pre-fill the tax declaration form, which works wonders most of the times. It requires a manual review to certify that everything is correct, but from the times I had to declare my taxes (I'm living abroad so I don't have to do it anymore), it was as easy as loading the pre-filled details and just verifying if everything was correct.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• marcodiego 2y ago
  I'm a Brazilian. Everything here can be paid through pix. It's very convenient, fast reliable and, for a country like ours where walking on the streets with money is a risk, safe. There's only one reason I don't use it: there's no FLOSS app (AFAIK) to use it. Something as common as the dominant payment system should not depend on proprietary software.
  • JusticeJuice 2y ago
    > Something as common as the dominant payment system should not depend on proprietary software. Name one dominant payment system worldwide that doesn't? Banks are proprietary, credit cards are proprietary, paypal, crypto is all proprietary.
    • londons_explore 2y ago
      Nearly all of cryptocurrency is fully open source and properly FOSS
    • Asraelite 2y ago
      > crypto is all proprietary What?
      • Etheryte 2y ago
        I think a steelmanned version of their comment is that crypto apps are proprietary, which I think is mostly true. There are open source apps, but most of the big ones are all proprietary.
        • NiloCK 2y ago
          I still don't really get this. Do you mean that frent-ends have proprietary code? Contracts on-chain can be slightly inscrutable in their bytecode format, but it's pretty uncommon for smart contracts to not be published with source code and a verifiable build. Example, picked randomly from a transaction in a recent block: https://etherscan.io/address/0x388c818ca8b9251b393131c08a736a67ccb19297#code https://etherscan.io/address/0x388c818ca8b9251b393131c08a736...
• afarah1 2y ago
  WhatsApp is omnipresent for communication in Brazil, and WhatsApp Pay was ready before Pix, but the government blocked the launch to launch Pix first.[1] I rarely see this mentioned. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/brazil-suspends-whatsapps-new-payments-system-idUSKBN23V075/ https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/brazil-suspends-w...
  • jowea 2y ago
    Well I'm thanking the government for saving us from yet another Facebook monopoly thorough first mover advantage and network effects.
    • afarah1 2y ago
      It's an interesting topic for study. Being the first to launch wasn't the only factor, but certainly an important one - WhatsApp Pay is available today, but it's nowhere near as popular as Pix. That's why I mentioned it. With that being said, I don't think people need "saving" from choosing to use a service. It's not certain that WhatsApp Pay would really take off as much as Pix did. I also don't think one should be thankful for having one monopoly replaced by another (in the sense of market dominance, you can still use alternative payment methods). Imagine instead of WhatsApp Pay it was WhatsApp itself. Meta is no saint, but at least messages are E2E encrypted. How would GovApp look like? As mentioned in the article, Pix has every transaction go directly through the central bank, as opposed to going through commercial banks like traditional payment methods. It may provide great usability, but also concentrates power and risk, as written in The Economist. So far there is no indication this power has been used in any malicious way, or that any significant breach occurred, but the infrastructure for that is there, and governments change. That should at least be in one's mind, if one values some kind of personal financial freedom.
    • carlosjobim 2y ago
      Good to hear your words loyalty and patriotism, dear citizen! I will contact your local commissar and make sure he increases your social credit score by 5 points. But we must also be realistic if we want to win against our eternal enemy Eastasia, and admit that Facebook coin would never be a monopoly because Visa, Mastercard and cash exist.
• caioariede 2y ago
  Not to mention that soon, it will be able to pay in installments using Pix, that’s called Pix Parcelado.
• kubb 2y ago
  Sometimes there's no point in having market solutions. You need one thing that works for everyone and is free. It's cheaper and easier this way.
  • dguest 2y ago
    The worst is a market facade for a government service. Examples in the US: - Weather apps: various governments do the (very expensive) computing and provide the data for free. Private companies insert adds, or charge you. I use Yr, which is run by Norway and has no adds or fees. They are just sourcing public data [1]. - Taxes: the government does all the bookkeeping and enforcement, tax prep industry copies and pastes numbers into forms it lobbies to obfuscate. [1]: https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/articles/360004008874-Weather-forecasts-on-Yr-how-are-they-made https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/articles/360004008874-Weather-f...
    • pjc50 2y ago
      Another variant is the "playing at shops" privatization, such as seen in the UK railway system. Lots of different, fragmented entities, none of which naturally corresponds to a train service as a whole, obfuscating where the money goes (it's the train landlords or ROSCOs).
      • internet_points 2y ago
        They did the same to Norwegian rail. In fact, one of the main companies that got involved in the enshittification of Norwegain rail was British Go-Ahead Group.
    • Deukhoofd 2y ago
      We had the same in The Netherlands. Several weather apps that requested to share all your data with a bunch of partners, had ads, etc. Then our national weather institute launched their own app without tracking or ads, and the existing weather apps all immediately joined up to sue them over it. Thankfully they lost the case. https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Rechtbank-Den-Haag/Nieuws/Paginas/KNMI-hoeft-weerapp-niet-aan-te-passen.aspx https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisati...
• pedrovhb 2y ago
  As a Brazilian - Pix was a pleasant surprise, especially in that for once it feels like we're not lagging behind. It's convenient, free, instant transfers across banks. You can also easily create or programmatically generate QR codes or pastable codes with preset receivers and amounts. Great UX all around, and it quickly became the de-facto standard in how people send money. It's technically quite impressive - it's a large scale thing and it works really well. I can think of maybe one or two times in these years where I saw downtime, and in both cases it was working again after a few minutes. The usual experience with the government building technical solutions is to have something that makes little sense, is slow, and goes down frequently with even the most predictable usage peaks, but with Pix they really seem to have nailed it. It does feel a bit weird to have so many payments go through the government's systems, and it definitely feels like it puts them in a position of having more information than they should. There's a lot of Orwellian surveillance potential there, as any transfers are necessarily tied to both users' real identities. I don't think there's a realistic way around this, though. Another concern is that people can expose some of their information without necessarily being aware of it. You can register e.g. emails and phone numbers as Pix "keys", and then anyone can initiate a transfer to those keys and your full name will pop up so you can confirm or cancel the transfer. I've seen some clever advice around this - "When using a carpooling app (often details are arranged off the platform using WhatsApp), put the driver's phone number on Pix. If a name comes up and it doesn't match the name or gender of the driver's profile, something is up". Obviously though there's potential for misuse and I'm sure the vast majority of people don't think about this when registering their Pix keys. You can, however, just use randomly generated uuids as keys as well, a different one for each transaction if you so desire, so this one can be a non-issue with more awareness. Overall though it's a very convenient thing which works surprisingly well, and the downsides are theoretical at this point. IMO it's a rare case of our government nailing something.
• losthobbies 2y ago
  I wonder will the SEPA instant work like this.
  • runeks 2y ago
    Yes, I believe that is the goal: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_payments/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa... But I think adoption is slow because everyone in the EU already has credit cards and fees are not paid by consumers.
    • hocuspocus 2y ago
      Fees are always paid by consumers in one way or another... That said the EEA capped interchange with the explicit goal of making these fees painless to business owners, i.e. similar to the actual cost of handling cash, and we have PSPs charging as little as 0.5~0.7%. While adoption is indeed slower than in developing countries since people are used to card payments (rather debit than credit by the way), the popularity of mobile wallets such as Swish, Vipps, BLIK, ... is actually pretty significant in a good number of countries, and at the same time, an increasing portion of the population uses Apple/Google/Samsung/... Pay and doesn't care about the physical card anymore. Given that the EU has forced Apple to open up its NFC payment feature, we can perfectly imagine a pan-European federated payment scheme take off in the near future, using EPI/Wero in the Eurozone and interoperable local players outside.
    • mqus 2y ago
      Isn't SEPA instant kinda mandatory by the end of this year? (it mustn't cost more than regular transfers)
      • ta12653421 2y ago
        correct, in Q4
    • wuming2 2y ago
      In the first half of 2024 SEPA Instant CT accounted for 15% of the total number of credit transfer transactions processed by euro area retail payment systems: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/stats/paysec/html/ecb.pis2024h1~5263055ced.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/stats/paysec/html/ecb.pis202... With the harmonisation and almost free nature of ECB TIPS, becoming mandatory for all European payment service providers by the end of 2025, that figure will keep growing: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/intro/events/shared/pdf/fs22/2024-03-20_TIPS_the_European_instant_payment_settlement_engine_slides.pdf https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/intro/events/shared/pdf/fs22...
• StefanBatory 2y ago
  It is something like Polish Blik / Chinese WeChat payment system, I understand?
  • souenzzo 2y ago
    yes! Nice to know that polish also have one!
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• DanielHB 2y ago
  Sweden has had a similar system for several years before PIX in Brazil. It is also integrated with the digital ID system (BankID). The main difference is that the Swedish system is ran through a private organization managed by all the major banks (and the central bank) in conjunction. So the central bank doesn't have direct access to the transaction data technically. While the Brazilian system is only interacted directly through your bank application, the Swedish application is a separate application tied to your bank account in the backend. Given the... quality of bank apps this is a huge plus. The Swedish Swish app is MUCH easier to use because it only does one thing. My Brazilian mother does not know how to send PIX because her bank app is very confusing and the PIX option is just one of many. The BankID system of Sweden though is even more impressive than money transactions, pretty much everything government related (including healthcare, taxes, etc) and most private institutions (bank apps, Swish, digital contract signatures) is done through the unified BankID login. People raised concerns over privacy, but the main problem really is that since these systems cut out the middle man (Visa/Mastercard) and have no fees you also have no fraud protection which is something to keep in mind when using them. Once you send the money it is gone, the banks will not give it back to you even if you got scammed. It creates a whole sort of scam industry in both countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID
  • xinayder 2y ago
    This is the difference in Brazil. Because it's ran by the Central Bank, there are some fraud protections. For example, if you receive money by mistake, you have the option to return a transfer to the original sender. And if you don't do that almost immediately, the sender can actually sue you and get the bank to revert the transaction (once proven you've deliberately chosen to not return the money). There are also other security features tailored for the crime aspect of Brazil (since some people argue Pix increased the number of flash robberies); you can limit how much money you can transfer via Pix during day and night time, and even request a second confirmation before the transfer actually goes through. And if you prove you've been robbed, the bank can easily revert the transaction and you can get your money back.
• wuming2 2y ago
  Hopefully ECB’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service will enable the same widespread adoption. With a price of 0.002 euro per transaction it’s guaranteed to become the most convenient solution.
  • panick21_ 2y ago
    Doesn't pretty much every country in Europe already have such a service?
    • wuming2 2y ago
      They are mostly based on previous generations SEPA DD and CT. Italy’s Satispay as example. ECB TIPS further improves on that.
  • Maken 2y ago
    This seems to be more akin to Wero, the German-French system to replace both debit cards and online payment platforms.
    • wuming2 2y ago
      I don’t speak French but BdF presents a side by side comparison: https://www.banque-france.fr/fr/a-votre-service/particuliers/mieux-connaitre-moyens-paiement/wero https://www.banque-france.fr/fr/a-votre-service/particuliers... As far as I understand SEPA ICT was developed by the Euro Payment Council. An industry body. ECB TIPS, albeit maintaining compatibility with the scheme, provides an harmonised service across the entire Eurosystem and beyond.
      • ta12653421 2y ago
        > entire Eurosystem and beyond mmh, not really - banks who are connected to the Euro-Zone can use it, but it has not a "beyond-EU"-ambition. TIPS is just one of the two clearing-mechanisms, there is also RT1 (which is operated by a private entity and launchend long before TIPS came into place, TIPS is operated by each countries national bank in coop with ECB), since some time, there is interoperability, so you can transact from TIPS-connected entities to RT1-connected entities; RT1 is much more expensive than TIPS
• cubefox 2y ago
  Theortically it would now be possible to implement a similar service in the US using FedNow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow Of course in practice it is a chicken-egg situation. Few people will use it over established credit based systems unless there are other incentives. Credit card companies, including PayPal & Co, are essentially rent seeking: They are middle men that technologically aren't needed anymore for instant cashless payments, but they still exist because they can extract enormous amounts of profits via fees. But countries like Brazil and India show that they can be replaced with free or almost free systems based on instant bank transfers. It's true that credit cards still have the use case of providing a "chargeback" service. But this isn't possible with ordinary cash either. Moreover, most people likely buy online from trustworthy shops like Amazon, so this isn't often a problem in practice. In expectation people spend way more money on credit card fees than they ever save with chargeback. Chargeback is like an overly expensive insurance that hardly anybody needs.
  • parpfish 2y ago
    Doesn’t the US already have direct bank transfers with Zelle? I don’t know why cashapp and Venmo took off but Zelle stayed unknown
    • cubefox 2y ago
      Zelle is not instantaneous I believe. It would be hard to buy things e.g. at a store.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • nwah1 2y ago
    Credit cards don't just offer chargeback capabilities. They offer pro-active fraud protection. They alert you for all kinds of threats, data breaches, double-charges, etc. They will sometimes lock your card and not let a payment go through, if it is suspicious, unless you perform extra confirmation via email/text/push. They offer virtual cards that you can activate or deactivate with any given vendor, to improve your privacy, security, and control. Having your card stolen, either physically or virtually, becomes much less scary. When used responsibly, with rewards programs, the numerous benefits over cash make sense even in the unusual case where cash payments get a discount. Zelle and debit cards have similar kinds of protections that make it safer than cash, and there's an audit trail. Though, it is more dangerous than credit cards. And, obviously, credit cards let you borrow money which provides flexibility to allow payments even if your paycheck hasn't yet arrived. And occasionally, going into debt intentionally can be wise, when making an investment. Government programs could offer these kinds of features, but betting on long-term competence, customer service, and innovation in the public sector is a losing proposition. Having both public and private options works as an intermediate approach. But, particularly for lending, the process of determining credit-worthiness is not a government specialty, and making it subject to the political process seems like a losing proposition for taxpayers. Payments are a more valid area for government involvement, but even then, I'm not sure what it could offer that Zelle doesn't.
• koyote 2y ago
  So this sounds just like PayID in Australia or what was payM in the UK (which got shut down a couple of years ago due to lack of use), minus the QR code generation part. It's used between private people to make it easier to send money to one another without having to type in bank account details, but never really used to pay businesses (except under the table). How come this is so popular in Brasil for paying businesses vs using a card or your phone to tap and pay (which seems more convenient)?
  • DanielHB 2y ago
    Brazil has massive amounts of fraud so credit cards are very inconvenient, card cloning and websites leaking credit card numbers is a huge problem. Banks are super aggressive about blocking cards if they see suspicious transactions. Tap and pay is popular in Brazil as well, but only for physical transactions. For online small purchases PIX is definitely the best option. PIX (and similar systems like Sweden's Swish/BankID), don't have fraud protection, once you send the money it is gone with no contest possible. But when you send a payment with PIX there is 0 risk your account's money will get highjacked, at most you lose your one transaction. But PIX is also accepted in many physical places because it has smaller fees, with some stores and informal commerce not accepting cards. I used to work at an IT service provider in Brazil around 2012 and one of the projects my company did was monitoring of those card machines. They actually kept GPS information of the machines and blocked them if they were moved around. Those card machines are surprisingly expensive in Brazil (or at least they used to be).
    • moefh 2y ago
      > once you send the money it is gone with no contest possible That's not true; PIX requires your bank to provide a way (called "MED"[1]) for you to request a reversal up to 80 (!) days after a transaction. It can only be used in case of fraud, and it may take up to 7 days for the bank to analyze the situation and deny/allow your request. If it's allowed, you'll get the money back in up to 4 days. If the bank denies the request (i.e., if they conclude there was no fraud) you can always sue the transaction recipient; you'll have access to all necessary information since they must be registered with some financial institution to be able to receive a PIX transaction. So it's not as easy as a credit card, but I think it's fair for a free payment service. [1] in Portuguese: https://www.bcb.gov.br/meubc/faqs/p/o-que-e-e-como-funciona-o-mecanismo-especial-de-devolucao-med https://www.bcb.gov.br/meubc/faqs/p/o-que-e-e-como-funciona-...
• sometimes_all 2y ago
  Can we please have one post regarding a payment system (which works well by most accounts) not be taken over by crypto shills and skeptics whatabouting everything? I've had enough in the past 5 years and I hope it stops soon. Most people are simple, they want to pay, and get paid, in their local currency. There's a homegrown software which enables them to easily do just that. That's a great technological and social achievement, it would be great if we could discuss that, and not crypto, which is not the main subject here.
• horatioh13 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/A6jeC https://archive.ph/A6jeC
• throwway232423 2y ago
  Pix is huge and so much better than anything in the world. VAI BRASIL
• harrisoned 2y ago
  I agree its an amazing payment method, it worked for me for most of the time. Still, we depend on bank's stability and technical availability for it to work. Once i needed to pay for something and forgot my card at home, at that same time my bank was going trough technical issues and i couldn't pay. Despite rare reliability issues, my fear about it is that it requires a phone. Being so popular, i fear when places will refuse any other form of payments and accept only PIX, making anybody not using a phone unable to buy their products, with the common assumption that everybody uses it ("don't you guys have phones???"). You can't install banking apps on rooted phones or alternative mobile OSs (or is very very hard), so you are trapped with Android or IOs to use it. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it seems it's going that way.
  • jowea 2y ago
    I think almost everywhere will still accept debit cards, at least until paying by Pix becomes faster.
• felipc 2y ago
  Pix has really spurred up small local businesses. It's so much easier to buy digitally from local stores now, or even just a person starting up a business because it required no setup, no fees or anything. If I need to buy a gift for someone from a store at the mall, for example, I just text them, they send me pictures with the options, I pay instantly via pix and they send the product through local delivery. The whole thing takes 5 minutes of my time and the purchase shows up on my door in 30 minutes. I saved on time, gas and parking, and meanwhile the store made a sale through a local employee instead of me buying online from their national franchise for example (if it's a franchise of course). Win win for everyone.
  • lucasoshiro 2y ago
    Do you have numbers showing that causation or at least a correlation?
• Beijinger 2y ago
  Pix ou presente?
• Galatians4_16 2y ago
  Despite a global move towards a cashless society, 54% of Brazilians now opt for cash withdrawals.¹ 2024 has seen a surprising reversal, as cash usage makes an unexpected comeback, defying predictions that the world was moving toward a cashless society. With rising cybersecurity threats, concerns over financial privacy, and economic instability, consumers and businesses are increasingly turning back to physical currency as a preferred transaction method.² ¹) https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazils-shift-back-to-cash-transactions/ https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazils-shift-bac... ²) https://www.adeptswipe.com/cash-makes-a-shocking-comeback-as-digital-dominance-fades/ https://www.adeptswipe.com/cash-makes-a-shocking-comeback-as...
  • forinti 2y ago
    I keep a few bills in my wallet, but I hardly ever carry it around. Everybody accepts cards and Pix. Even beggars on the street use pix. If I revert back to using public transport I will probably have a use for cash, but that's the only situation I can think of where it would make sense.
    • luqtas 2y ago
      most places i visited (remote rural places like districts of > 300 people up to big cities) have a rechargeable card system where you can buy at any terminal some buses in the surburbs of big cities only accept cards nowadays and you can recharge it online in 3 minutes (ofc if you are a citizen... brazilian goverment websites is a huge UX pile of shit; police, mail etc.)
      • forinti 2y ago
        These systems are all built to help the bus owners, not the passengers. Usually you have to go register for a card somewhere. It's just not practical, especially if you're just visiting. I've never seen a place where you could buy a card at a newsstand for a week or something like that.
        • 2y ago
• lukev 2y ago
  Pix is super interesting. I have two questions to which Google wasn't able to provide quick answers: 1. Is there an easy way for a US resident to sign up for a Pix-enabled account (e.g. at a Brazilian bank?) 2. Can Pix be used easily for online payments? If both are true, it seems like it could be used as a drop-in replacement to crypto for small-value transactions which are currently infeasible in the US due to transaction overhead and fees.
  • guax 2y ago
    1. Yes and No. I assume Wise or another will offer this at some point with better conditions. A vendor called recarga pay offer this already but charges 4% on transactions. 2. yes, and it is used a lot.
  • kasey_junk 2y ago
    My info is several years out of date so take with a grain of salt. Pix is a phenomenal in country payment system. One of a couple of the best next gen payment rails. But its design is very much hard to work with for international transactions. It has some risk rules and design choices that make this true. I believe this is intentional as Brazil wants to maintain pretty conservative currency controls. But! Similar things could have been said about pix and online shopping rails. It wasn’t great for that as it wasn’t the primary use case. And that is changing fast so maybe the international use case will improve. UPI in India for instance does international work well in a similar conservative currency environment.
  • jowea 2y ago
    1. I'm not sure but I'm gonna guess no. Aren't Americans notoriously hard to offer banking services to due to anti-money laundering regulations? 2. Yes, it's quite easy Wasn't the Fed going to launch their own take on UPI with FedNow?
    • ty6853 2y ago
      America via FATCA requires foreign banks to snitch out all US persons, without any warrant or accusation of crime, to the American IRS, either directly or through exchange agreement for same information through their reporting to the foreign government. The requirements are fairly simple, but the liability is extreme so that most banks across the world generally are loathe to do this unless you have some kind of resident visa and professional+ income or a large net worth. If the foreign (Brazilian) bank fails to do so then US cuts off their access to USD. As a practical matter casual offshore banking for middle class or lower Americans is closed off, the message broadcast loud and clear from the government is they would prefer you to use crypto as a substitute.
• cosmaioan 2y ago
  It is interesting that I did no see in the comments the costs of using Mastercard & Visa as a reason for governments to find alternatives for their economies. Both Visa and MC are US companies so there is where the profits go .... From US Senate hearing : "This is classic, classic monopolistic behavior. Yet you're testimony...is you don't want any competition...I'm having a hard time finding that position defensible, let alone sympathetic...it's unbelievable the amount of money you're making." Margin 50% .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U
  • blackoil 2y ago
    I think more than cost; it is more a desire for sovereignty and also making everything trackable. As happened in Russia, US govt can block Mastercard/Visa from the country or can block a company like Huawei and local govt has no say in it.
• djoldman 2y ago
  There's a lot to discuss here. Focusing on one thing however: > But unlike India, where UPI is run by an industry body, Pix is managed entirely by the BCB.... the BCB alone runs Pix’s infrastructure and controls the encrypted database that stores all transactions.... This concentration of power in a central bank is unusual, and has led to criticism. “Now we live in a democracy, but imagine if this existed under an autocracy and all your information was available to the government,” says the head of one prominent fintech company. He thinks citizens in richer countries would balk at the government having Pix’s level of access to all financial transactions. Also, if the system is ever hacked or breaks down, the fallout would be greater than if a single bank were attacked. (Just looking at the privacy aspect) For something like Pix to have a chance at long term success in the US, there'd have to be unambiguous regulation absolutely prohibiting access by the government to transaction information that could be tied to a person. Preferably, it would be technically impossible to tie a transaction to a person/entity without going to the bank that facilitated the transaction and a warrant signed by a judge. 10 years down the road: IRS: "if we could look at that, it'd be great..." Police/FBI/NSA: "think of the children..." etc.
  • kattagarian 2y ago
    Encryption
• vitorsr 2y ago
  See relevant regulation for the Pix payment system and protocols: https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/pix?modalAberto=regulamentacao_pix https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/pix?modalAbert... (Brazilian Portuguese) See also relevant regulation for the instant payment system (SPI): https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/sistemapagamentosinstantaneos?modalAberto=SPI_Legislacao https://www.bcb.gov.br/estabilidadefinanceira/sistemapagamen... (Brazilian Portuguese)
• apojomovsky 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/A6jeC https://archive.ph/A6jeC
• sschueller 2y ago
  This is were many central banks have failed. It is the job of the central bank to ensure payments can be made by everyone and to stabilize the currency. As payments have shifted from cash to digital this control has shifted to private sometimes foreign entities with their own view of what payments are permitted and which aren't.
• lvass 2y ago
  We have a saying in Brazil that absolutely no part of our government works, except for our IRS. Pix is such a huge win for them. Brazil has a huge informal/illegal economy that employs more people than those who are lawfully employed (40M vs 39M). We have an effective tax plus legal compliance rate of around 60%, that really stifles down anyone attempting to open a legit business in an already harsh environment. Pix has not yet been used to crack down on the informal sector, but with sufficient motivation and some data analysis, it absolutely can be.
  • Vilian 2y ago
    >no part of our government works after learning a bit about other countries, i would argue that we are better than most, we just compare ourselves with first world european countries, but even when comparing with USA we are fine in a lot of fronts
  • matheusmoreira 2y ago
    > Pix has not yet been used to crack down on the informal sector, but with sufficient motivation and some data analysis, it absolutely can be It will. Every single Pix transaction is reported to the tax authorities. It's only a matter of time.
• nirui 2y ago
  I'm thinking, maybe controversially, centralized national payment service like this should be government-run based on my experience with Alipay which is a digital payment service in China. Due to it's commercial origin, Alipay is filled with unwanted ads and traps. Almost every time I made a payment with it, a pop up prompts me to enlist their Ant Financial LOAN service either now, or being prompted for the same question again 30 days later (yep, not Yes or No, but Now or Later). It's just fucking ridiculous, I don't need a LOAN for a $400 projector, and I don't need a LOAN for a $4 hair cut (Xi should probably do something about it, really). I'm glad that at least people of Brazil don't have to suffer that kind of shit. At least their government-run program is better scrutinized and boring, thus more dependable, that's a good thing in my eyes.
  • palmotea 2y ago
    > I'm thinking, maybe controversially, centralized national payment service like this should be government-run based on my experience with Alipay which is a digital payment service in China. After dealing with many private sector services, I think a lot of things should be government run. For instance: weather apps. Private sector ones are just a vector to track and sell your location data, and they rely on government data anyway. It'd be much better the government roll out an API and an app that uses it, so you can avoid the private sector altogether.
    • derelicta 2y ago
      It's funny but I always had assumed all countries had their own state-owned weather services, until I found out there was no such thing in Germany.
      • cubefox 2y ago
        That's not true. See https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Wetterdienst https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Wetterdienst
        • derelicta 2y ago
• palmotea 2y ago
  Governments can never do anything right! Shut it down so the private sector can complete with some crappy POS with ads and an integration with some data brokers.
• forinti 2y ago
  Brazil was in constant economic chaos in the 80s and 90s, so the banking system invested a lot in automation and communications. I actually think it took too long for Pix to be invented. The piping was all there. Somebody just had to have the idea. Even in the 80s you could easily transfer from any bank to any other bank.
  • dkga 2y ago
    Well, not just the idea. The technical feats supporting Pix are actually amazing; it's a whole separate payments system that settles almost immediately, 24/7.
  • matheusmoreira 2y ago
    All the way back in 1995, brazilian bank Bradesco launched internet banking software for the Sega Mega Drive. I wonder if it was the first banking app. https://segaretro.org/TeleBradesco_Resid%C3%AAncia https://segaretro.org/TeleBradesco_Resid%C3%AAncia
    • forinti 2y ago
      Wow, I never heard of that. That is so interesting. In retrospect, it's a great platform, because there's no risk of malware.
• cyberclimb 2y ago
  As a foreigner that visited Brazil for some weeks, I found the ubiquity of the PIX payment system to be a handicap for tourists visiting the country. PIX is only for locals as you need to register with a CPF (Brazil ID number which is hard and tedious to get as a tourist). I ran into many scenarios where the only option was to pay with PIX and the staff aren't used to tourists and look at you funny when you explain you can't use PIX. Also beyond PIX, if you try to book buses, planes, or take out a gym membership, while you're within the country, 99% of the time it's shockingly impossible to pay without a CPF, even by credit and debit card. I've even seen this for paying the laundry machine. I'm sure the PIX system is great for Brazilians, and it was helpful having a local friend to make payments on my behalf, but Brazil really lives in a bubble where it seems a side-effect of their system is making things actively very hard for visitors to operate within the country.
  • jakub_g 2y ago
    Sounds similar to China / WeChat situation, from what I've read previously
    • decimalenough 2y ago
      It's now quite trivial to connect a foreign credit/debit card to Wepay, and it worked flawlessly on a recent trip. (This was very much not the case only a few years ago.)
      • dewey 2y ago
        It might have worked for you but it's still not trivial. There's many hoops to jump through still like random ID verifications, many banks not being supported to be linked, account locks that can only be unblocked by having a WeChat contact vouch for you etc.
        • decimalenough 2y ago
          This was the case when I jumped through those hoops in 2019, but it's much more straightforward now. Passport, phone number (doesn't have to Chinese) plus credit/debit card unlocks up to RMB 50,000/mo, with no fees for transactions under RMB 200. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/wechat-enables-foreigners-to-pay-with-overseas-cards-in-china/ https://www.china-briefing.com/news/wechat-enables-foreigner...
• silexia 2y ago
  Do not put your money into Pix because Brazil's government has become extremely authoritarian and anti democratic, including jailing political opponents.
  • cesarb 2y ago
    > Do not put your money into Pix You do not "put your money into Pix", your money is in your bank account. Pix is just a bank transfer mechanism; if you have a Brazilian bank account, you can send and receive through Pix.
  • tumsfestival 2y ago
    Oh boy here we go, the bolsonaristas are here to claim that Bolsonaro and his cronies definitely didn't try to overthrow the current government in favor of a military dictatorship and that there's definitely not a mountain of evidence pointing in that direction. Nope, it has to be some deep state commie conspiracy of course.
    • carlosjobim 2y ago
      It was not Bolsonaro who was put in jail, it was his political opponent.
      • Vilian 2y ago
        And he got out, using the same justice system, because of the irregularities of the arrest, not sure if it's an authoritarian indicative or just the justice system being terrible slow
        • carlosjobim 2y ago
          Putting an elected president – current or former – in prison should never happen, in my opinion.
  • celsoazevedo 2y ago
    As far as I'm aware, Pix is just a way to transfer money. You do "put money" into Pix. Regarding the rest, I'm not following Brazilian politics that closely, but if politicians try to stop a democratic transition of power, then any functional democracy has to deal with them. I don't know how you can do that without doing things like jailing those who were involved. We can't do whatever we want and then call it political prosecution.
• djrj477dhsnv 2y ago
  How do people pay for illicit drugs, prostitution, bribes, etc.?
  • lucasoshiro 2y ago
    This post is about how Brazil created a universal payment technology that most richer countries don't even dream to have. And a technology that works, is free, easy to use, and become part of reality of country that, despite having several tech companies, isn't exactly recognized (yet) as big player in the tech scenario. And you keep repeating these old-fashioned stereotypes?
    • djrj477dhsnv 2y ago
      Huh? What stereotype? It was an honest question that I haven't heard a good answer for how black market payments will work as societies go cashless. In the US, it seems that 3rd party systems like Venmo are lightly monitored when it comes to payments for minor crimes. But I imagine that would change when there is a single government controlled payment system with total transparency.
      • lucasoshiro 2y ago
        > It was an honest question Sorry if I misunderstood you, but just as tip, make it clear in your question. Probably the downvotes are from people who are tired of having Brazil being associated with drugs, crime, corruption and sex while it is a giant country with so many things to offer, and with so many hard working people doing their best. But answering: just like any other country. Cash, jewels, money laundering, etc. Pix is not a replacement (at least so far) for cash, is just a modern option. And I really question if it will be someday a full replacement. Pix is amazing, but for a daily use (in restaurants, physical stores, etc) it is still more practical to pay using cards as Pix takes a little time to grab the phone, opening the bank app, scanning the QR code, typing the PIN and hoping that the internet connection is good enough for that
  • carlosjobim 2y ago
    There's still cash money for those things. If you ever heard about the "Operation Car Wash" bribery scandal (largest corruption case in world history), the businessmen and politicians were exchanging suitcases full of cash at a car wash.
• 8bitbeep 2y ago
  > Brazil’s fusty banking That's precious coming from an US publication, a country where checks are still used.
  • dkga 2y ago
    Isn't the Economist based out of the UK?
• owebmaster 2y ago
  A fun fact, one of the biggest PIX players is also the company that acquired Cognitec¹, the company behind Clojure and Datomic. Until not long ago, Rich Hickey was part of the staff². 1. https://building.nubank.com.br/pt-br/nubank-acquires-us-company-cognitect-the-team-behind-clojure-and-datomic/ https://building.nubank.com.br/pt-br/nubank-acquires-us-comp... 2. https://building.nubank.com.br/clojures-journey-at-nubank-a-look-into-the-future/ https://building.nubank.com.br/clojures-journey-at-nubank-a-...
  • 0_gravitas 2y ago
    Ahhh this is what I was waiting to see mention of, figured "nubank has to be in here somewhere"
• impalallama 2y ago
  > Pix has spiced up Brazil’s fusty banking sector, but it gives the central bank a worrying amount of power Economist what you think central bank does exactly that this is somehow too far?
• seydor 2y ago
  None of these systems is global yet. We still have to get a physical card with a magnet, then enter the number of this card and its date of issue and another 3 digit number to the google wallet in order to pay with our phone . And now when i buy a sex toy, everyone including a girl in VISA, my bank, google , my tax service, they all have to know.
• fluorinerocket 2y ago
  My Brazilian wife always complains about how bad our American banks and money transfer mechanisms are.
• mzs 2y ago
  There is something similar in Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik It is run by the banks themselves though. I like the 2 minute codes aspect of it.
• bokohut 2y ago
  The long game pattern and cycle is obvious for those with the vision to see beyond the horizon. Politics obviously has a foundation in the choice of countries to control and operate their own payments systems given the value of the data and the social connections it reveals, aka national security. All security starts at the foundation and without financial security one is indebted and controlled by another. As the world enters a new cycle around those changing patterns the basis of the control they seek is founded in individual continuity without exterior influence by their adversaries. This can be seen today with the financial controls that can greatly impact an entire country filled with individuals that have no association with the reasoning of why the restriction was placed to begin with. We have many options today for instant cross border payments and as more and more countries move to own and operate their own payment platforms so too will those cross border payments methods grow in adoption foregoing an adversaries oversight and control. I speak from direct experience in these words as the architect and founder of multiple acquired payment systems over the decades because this past December I was contacted by an African country seeking to build, own, and operate their own payment platform backed by their energy reserves. The concerns and threats around a country's monetary system are real and in time we will see more and more countries taking up this initiative to cut out the middlemen. As a bonus over and above countries moving in this direction we can also see businesses doing the exact same thing over the last decade. Thee who controls the money also has induced influence over the users of that money as we see this more and more through 'progress'. Feel free to replace the word "money" with the word "data" in my previous statement as well. Stay Healthy!
• hamdouni 2y ago
  It would be great if we could have some sort of roaming to interconnect those country specific systems...
• birdflyinghigh 2y ago
  Before PIX there was TED which worked normal but you usually had to wait up to 3 hours to clear the transfer. Now because of the offload caused by PIX every single transfer you make through TED takes up to 10 minutes, usually 2, but noone cares. The look of happiness people have when they scan qr-code is the same of that kid that just got an ice cream. The reason why Pix was adopted so rapidly, and is so omnipresent, is because of ease of use. You scan the QR-code and that's it, transaction completed. Nobody mentioned that half of users is unable to figure out how to get started with pix, that is register keys, so they ask some techie parents, friends or go to the financial institution to get them started. Before most people that were inept to type in few necessary numbers to complete a transfer from one bank to the other, now switched to Pix and all they have to do is give the phone number or tax ID and are ready to receive money or scan qr-code to sent it out. Because of that there is a total inclusion and also utter surveillance. So now in Brazil there are 2 problems, 60-80% of financial transactions are processed by the government and to add to the damage the entire economy is run on one point of failure which is WhatsApp. If at the same time, 2 of them would stopped, let's say for 3 weeks or maybe less, entire COUNTRY would do down the drain. All the alternatives are fading away, lots of people don't even know how to change a ringtone on the phone but know how to do everything through WhatsApp. Try to ask, not even demand, in random business to provide you with alternatives for contact, you'd get that look saying GTFOOH. If pix would stopped, people would not go to atm to withdraw money, they'd wait until it'd come back online. When WhatsApp stops for few hours it feels like Sunday morning before the picnic. Government+meta=success story of Brazil
  • owebmaster 2y ago
    > If at the same time, 2 of them would stopped, let's say for 3 weeks or maybe less, entire COUNTRY would do down the drain. In less than a week most of the country would already have migrated to a new messaging platform.
    • birdflyinghigh 2y ago
      150 million users migrating to what? What messaging platform has this capacity of absorption, taking that many signups at once?
• sephalon 2y ago
  I wish more of these government-baked payment systems would just use GNU Taler [1] instead of implementing their own walled gardens. GNU Taler ensures that the paying customer is anonymous while the merchant is identified and taxable. This is great for privacy, but not very attractive for commercial companies as your revenue has to be fully based on fees instead of making extra money by selling your customers data. The Swiss National Bank showed interest in adopting it some years ago, but I haven't heard much anymore since… [1] https://www.taler.net https://www.taler.net
  • fesoliveira 2y ago
    > GNU Taler ensures that the paying customer is anonymous This right here is the reason why governments won't use it. Governments want transactions to be traceable so that they can audit your taxes. I don't have any issues with that, I actually don't mind paying taxes, but I would never expect a government, no matter how progressive, to use a privacy-based protocol or solution.
    • jcgl 2y ago
      It’s designed with taxes in mind. Total user cashflow is still apparent at the bank, just like if you withdrew cash. And the amounts received by vendors are visible as well. So taxable there too. That’s a big part of what’s so cool about it.
  • matheusmoreira 2y ago
    Governments all over the world generally want more surveillance, not less. Brazil in particular will never use it: anonymity is literally unconstitutional in Brazil. There was a fun period where the brazilian government mandated the use of free and open source software in its computers. I remember lots of people who complained about the quality of OpenOffice. Microsoft managed to put an end to that at some point. After former president Dilma's impeachment, I think.
• seydor 2y ago
  .. meanwhile, the EU has been discussing about the Digital Euro for like 5 years
  • hocuspocus 2y ago
    Pix isn't a CBDC. The deployment of SCT inst is mostly complete and Wero (EPI) was launched in 3 countries already. Things take a bit more time when you need to push standards and regulations to 11/27/36 countries. Overall banking and payments in the EU/EEA are pretty advanced and evolving at a decent pace given the market size and number of entities involved, the PSD is world-class.
    • seydor 2y ago
      but time is everything. Those are not consumer-facing solutions. Meanwhile everyone around me uses Revolut (a UK company)
      • hocuspocus 2y ago
        Instant transfers and mobile wallets are very much customer facing. Revolut already supports the former and will probably add the latter at some point as it did with BLIK in Poland.
• c7b 2y ago
  Pix (and UPI, a related system in India with similar success) are my two go-to examples for how it makes sense for the central bank / public sector to get into the retail payment space. It baffles me that most major central banks (that are considering it at all) are considering doing so in the form of CBDCs [0]. CBDCs are like a bundle of two services, central bank money and a payment system. The central bank money part is the one that has everybody questioning its use cases, the reason why banks generally oppose it (hence making them likely to nudge their customers away from it), and it's a genuine financial stability concern that requires safety measures like holding limits [1] that complicate UX and/or the design. The payment system is the part that imho makes complete sense, in multiple ways: more competition in a market dominated by two US networks, strategic independence wrt to a critical infrastructure, providing a public good for underbanked demographics,... I don't get why places like the ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Canada, PBC,... (the US Fed is one of the few not pushing too actively in that direction) insist on bundling the two together instead of focusing on the payment system. If you succeed there, the potential for success is massive, without needing a central bank money feature, as shown by Pix and UPI. Getting one such feature right is hard enough, I don't get why they don't just focus on that and leave the central bank money baggage by the wayside. [0] Central Bank Digital Currency, a form of money that has similar UX to bank accounts but represents a central bank liability, as opposed to commercial bank liabilities like your usual bank account. It doesn't need deposit insurance, it's legal tender and is at the same level as physical cash economically (M0). [1] see eg https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecb.op326~d5c223d9b4.en.pdf https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecb.op326~d5c223d9b...
  • alephnerd 2y ago
    > most major central banks (that are considering it at all) are considering doing so in the form of CBDCs Other than the EU and UK, which other major CB is considering CBDCs alone? Numerically, most people I know in the space are heavily motivated by the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) model both India and Brazil have been using, and DPI has been a hot topic in the DevEcon space for 4 years now. In fact, Indian and Chinese lobbyists now compete with each other across Africa for DPI related infra work (Biden admin even helped support India's evangelism of the Indian DPI model in ASEAN and Africa), and Brazil's Pix has seen significant uptake in Argentina and Uruguay. And most regional economies like Vietnam, Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Korea have similar implantations The big difference might be public versus private domain experience. In newer economies like BRICS and much of ASEAN, the infra and norm setting work fell onto regulators. But in more developed economies like the US, UK, or EU, similar developments could be done by the private sector.
• hrdwdmrbl 2y ago
  CBDCs and privacy don't necessarily need to be at odds! Cryptography makes it possible to have both! We can have a payment system run by the government and at the same time not need to give up our privacy!
• nunesvn 2y ago
  Privacy conscious people: we can still use your preferred private super secretive way to pay for important stuff, and use PIX for a Coca Cola. One thing doesn’t stop the other.
  • NoImmatureAdHom 2y ago
    Oh it absolutely does! "Which one's the donation to the rebels?" "The Monero, obvously..."
• dkga 2y ago
  Saying this as a user but especially as a central banker and financial economist: Pix is truly amazing, and in fact an inspiration for many other countries. Beyond the payment sphere, we are only now beginning to scratch the surface on the effects Pix (and fast payment methods in general) can have on the economy.
• hei-lima 2y ago
  Pix is amazing, really. The technical side is incredible—I remember reading or watching some really good content about the architecture, but I can’t recall exactly where and haven’t been able to find it again. All payments have to be completed in under 100ms, which is impressive considering how resilient the infrastructure needs to be to handle thousands of transactions per second.
  • cyberax 2y ago
    I once looked at the requirements to be able to handle all the debit/credit transactions in the US, and you can do that on _one_ mid-range server easily. With regular PostgreSQL, no need for anything exotic. Of course, the real deployment will need redundancy, failover, multiple levels of audit records, etc. But still, modern computers are _powerful_.
    • hei-lima 2y ago
      Yeah, probably. What impresses me the most is the resilience — there’s been downtime only a handful of times.
• 8thcross 2y ago
  was it based on India's UPI? If so, this is the basis for SWIFT for BRICS?
  • Vilian 2y ago
    No, also no, totally different things, brics use each country currency instead of converting it to dollar
• whall6 2y ago
  How does Pix deal with fraud?
• digianarchist 2y ago
  The EU would do well to study Pix and it's rollout as it seeks to replace US payments systems across the bloc: https://www.businesstoday.in/world/us/story/march-to-independence-christine-lagarde-wants-eu-to-ditch-visa-mastercard-for-own-platform-470816-2025-04-05 https://www.businesstoday.in/world/us/story/march-to-indepen...
  • Vilian 2y ago
    Italy is considering implementing the mechanism https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/brazil-takes-its-central-bank-digital-payments-app-pix-across-borders https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/brazil-ta...
• jacooper 2y ago
  This like a public-run PayPal alternative. Other countries have moved beyond this, Saudi Arabia for example created Mada, it's alternative for visa and mastercard. They take close to nothing on transactions, and that's how the government could enforce card payments everywhere. And the cards are hybrids, they support both visa (or mastercard) and mada.
• hunglee2 2y ago
  “Now we live in a democracy, but imagine if this existed under an autocracy and all your information was available to the government,” the belief that democracy is some sort of bulwark against government surveillance is mindbogglingly naive
• robocat 2y ago
  Brazil government should open Pix to tourists in South America. I would loved to have used it in Argentina & Brazil. I tried to find a way to use Pix as a tourist (I'm from New Zealand). It would have been really super handy in Argentina tourist destinations (lots of Brazilian tourists so Pix accepted). Argentina was so painful for transactions I ended up buying Argentine Pesos using crypto. Argentina missed out on thousands of dollars export income from me because I hated their payment bullshit so much that I just left Argentina and went to Brazil instead (with different shenanigans). Turned out I enjoyed Brazil more too (great people). I also wanted to use crypto because it is such challenging fun to play with using it for money (versus speculating), plus I wanted to learn how to manage the risks of using crypto (so I was willing to pay spreads and risk losses; since I highly valued educating myself). One American I met had taken thousands of USD in cash to Argentina because blue dollar exchange rate (cambio / cuevas) to gain much better ARS per USD than other ways to pay as a US tourist. More reliable too (I had a few problems paying by card which sucked). South American governments charge expensive fees and have crappy exchange rates to withdraw their money from ATMs: foolish foolish foolish dickhead governments. I hated their greed so much I just won't return to Argentina (goodbye 10x - 100x the export income versus the gains they nicked from me). Plus ATM limits to withdrawal well below a couple of hundred NZD (or USD) so I couldn't withdraw enough cash to spend - just damn retarded - print some more ya fools. Result is I'll warn friends against travelling to some South American countries (especially Argentina). Tourists are fickle - treat them fairly and make it easy for them to spend money, or they'll visit a different country that cares about earning export income. New Zealand has heaps of tourists so I know both sides of the equation (Overseas visitor arrivals to New Zealand totalled 3.3 million in the 2024 year; with a population of 5 million). I really really loved Brazilians - I'd return ASAP if Chilean LATAM airlines didn't dominate costs (USD1600).
• 1024core 2y ago
  I was in Mexico City recently, and boy did I hate rummaging around for cash to make payments. True, many places accept credit cards, but that seems like an unnecessary tax on the merchant (credit cards charge nearly 3% in fees). A system like Pix (or UPI from India) would be a godsend for Mexico. However, any such system should have support for tourists (non-residents visiting the country briefly).
• DadBase 2y ago
  In '98 I rigged something like Pix using IRC bots and a cron job on a Solaris box. Worked beautifully until daylight saving time, then everybody got paid twice.
• gfarah 2y ago
  We are getting a copy of Pix here in Colombia called Bre-B, it will be launched in September 2025.
• sparin9 2y ago
  India's UPI is similar and runs at even larger scale Reference: https://www.gonuclei.com/blog/upi-vs-pix-unpacking-the-similarities https://www.gonuclei.com/blog/upi-vs-pix-unpacking-the-simil...
• nmca 2y ago
  The original dream of crypto was a good one.
• shaky-carrousel 2y ago
  > it gives the central bank a worrying amount of power Heh, only an American would say that. What a peculiar worldview.
  • irusensei 2y ago
    I say that as a Brazilian. I have no idea why one would trust a central institution specially on corruption ridden Brazil.
    • Vilian 2y ago
      because companies aren't corrupt somehow right
• darthrupert 2y ago
  Is it possible to calculate how much wealth they are saving by not having to create a profit and other kinds of free market deficiencies?
  • Vilian 2y ago
    Take the average fees that Visa or MasterCard require and multiply by the volume of transactions that goes through pix i guess
• okeuro49 2y ago
  I am wondering if this payments system would be able to make society more resilient to crashes in the banking system. e.g. banks being allowed to fail, without the payments system stopping working.
• enopod_ 2y ago
  There's a similar system here in Switzerland, called Twint. It is run by a group of banks though, and I don't know if the central bank is involved. Each bank issues its own App. It had a slow start, but suddenly got a lot of traction, and nowadays you can pay literally everywhere with it. Online shops, regular shops, restaurants, the bars in the stadium of your favorite football club. Person to person payment is also possible. You can also easily create a QR code if you set up a stand at a flea market or something like that, but it's not necessary, since all you need is the cell phone number of the recipient. Everybody with a cell phone is using it, even my grandma. It's a huge success. It works like a regular bank transfer between bank accounts. The banks get no information about what was paid with it, only the amount and from where to whom. The only downside: The banks set fees according to the market, so it's in competition with bank transfers, but also with credit cards like Visa and Master, or Paypal. It's still possible to pay very small amounts of cash like CHF 2.- or 3.- though. Recently, I had a walk with my kid and we walked past a stand where kids sold self made popcorn and cookies. They asked 1.- per piece, and they accepted Twint. I bought some things and paid by Twint to the cell phone number of the kids dad they gave me. :)
• HeavyStorm 2y ago
  I've worked with banking tech for almost 20 years in Brazil. The Pix system is great, but before that we already had TED which was slower but very reliable (the main downside is that it that it closes outside commercial hours for post processing). There are a lot of a lot of other things like Boleto (which are use for billing) and more recently the "Open Finance" system which allows different institutions to share customer data and even perform operations using connect accounts. It allows a customer to, for instance, check all of their balance in a single place. It allow institutions to learn more about you which can facilitate credit. The reason? Why is a third world, poor country like Brazil so advanced on finance? While there's no single reason myself and most of the execs I've worked with tend to believe in two: - Fraud, which is rampant in Brazil, incentivizes banks to invest a lot into modernizing their systems - Complex financial rules, imposed by our government, required a lot of investment in systems as well These all come from the 80s, so by now we have modern, fully digital systems in all our financial institutions, so things like pix and open finance can be easily implemented.
  • loufe 2y ago
    While "third world" isn't a modern term and you should try to avoid it, it's also not correct by any means. If we consider 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countries to be analogous to high, medium, and low income countries, Brazil is easily a medium income country[1], and considered to be in the higher end of that bracket, for what it's worth. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=BR-XT https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=BR-XT
  • lucasoshiro 2y ago
    > poor country like Brazil You can say several bad things about Brazil, but it being poor is not one of them. > The reason? A friend that worked in banks in Brazil and Canada thinks that it may be because Brazilian banks went digital later, so it was easier to implement more modern features. This is, banks that went digital earlier stuck with older technologies because them just worked. In the opposite way: Japan. It was a futuristic country in the past but now they still use fax and recently abandoned floppy disks
• Febra33 2y ago
  It's surprising how far Brazil has come in terms of financial transactions. Truly something amazing. It's also unsurprising to see outlets like The Economist somewhat criticise this, along with fintech corporations, because the government is offering a free and high quality alternative to something that companies would have done exactly the same but for money.
• breakyerself 2y ago
  The government already spends money administering the original payment system of cash and coins. I don't see why electronic payments shouldn't also be administered by the government. Letting visa handle electronic payments has turned them into a private tax collector.
• piuantiderp 2y ago
  Brazilians are the proverbial boiling frogs....
• gytisgreitai 2y ago
  Is there a tech blog of how Pix is built?
  • Tremeschin 2y ago
    There's an OpenAPI specification in a repository [1] from the Central Bank of Brazil, which might give some insights and contains links to a lot of manuals. Information seems to be complete about the protocol, but implementations are often proprietary. [1] https://github.com/bacen/pix-api https://github.com/bacen/pix-api