44 ms·

> Since 2022, Mastercard Brazil’s CEO, Marcelo Tangioni, has voiced his concerns: “Pix is great, beneficial for the industry. What’s not great is that it falls

by cloche 5mo ago

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

surgical_fire 5mo ago
This is a free market. All he has to do is offer a better service than the public offering. I always hear that the government is inefficient, should be easy no?
- fmobus 5mo ago
  Whenever people start arguing about inefficient government they should be reminded that pix costs like 10M USD a year to run. An absolute bargain for what it delivers.
matheusmoreira 5mo ago
[flagged]
- Lvl999Noob 5mo ago
  > Pix is already 100% surveilled And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled? Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games). At least with Pix, the costs get lower for the end users.
  - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
    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.
    - pyrale 5mo ago
      > Theirs is a more corporate surveillance, though. The thing about US' corporate suveillance system, and why the US government is so tolerant about it, is that US government branches either buy or are given all the data they need. You don't get government surveillance or corporate surveillance, you get government surveillance or government and corporate surveillance.
    - kristjank 5mo ago
      Third party doctrine means corporate surveillance is state surveillance. And unlike Pix covering just Brazil, CC companies cover the whole world.
    - subw00f 5mo ago
      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.
      - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        Nothing naive about it. Brazil is not the USA. It hasn't exactly demonstrated an ability to "deeply embed" itself into internet backbones the way the USA does. The problem with Pix is: they don't need to. Lack of capabilities limit the scope of government tyranny. It used to be that the government didn't have the manpower required to audit everyone and everything, so only the bank transactions above some threshold would be monitored. With pix, they are monitoring 100% of transactions now. This is a massive gain in capability that should not be ignored.
        gota 5mo ago
        >With pix, they are monitoring 100% of transactions now. First, I don't think they are. Second, good - they should have an _algorithm_ checking every transaction. MasterCard and VISA do it and do nothing for me; the government could catch all the money laundering that is the lifeblood of crime, or maybe just finally eradicate tax evasion, the necessary first step towards rationalizing our tax code and one of the core issues of our country? Your opinions read like you have misplaced worries, if not values.
  - x-complexity 5mo ago
    > > Pix is already 100% surveilled > And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled? Who is doing the surveilling is the difference. In the latter, the surveillance is done by the private sector, in aims of better targeted advertising. In the former, it's done by either the government or by a government-tied organization, and thus invites a left-hand-passes-to-right-hand scenario, wherein the data & metadata obtained from the system could be passed to law enforcement for prosecution (doubly so if the transactions could be bundled as evidence). > Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games). The censorship pressures made onto Visa & Mastercard was done not by the government, but by PACs & non-governmental organizations. It is through the use of "think of the children" that they push them into censoring transactions, under the implicit threat that lawsuits will be filed if such transactions remain allowed.
    - vitorgrs 5mo ago
      The government already have card transaction access though. If you are in the banking system - you are being tracked. Doesn't matter if is Pix or a card. Doesn't mean they will automatically expose you, as it requires justice approval technically...
    - altacc 5mo ago
      The censorship is a massive issue though as it effectively means that private companies can overrule the law if they effectively monopolize critical infrastructure. Private companies are even less accountable to individuals than governments are when there is no real market choice.
- c7b 5mo ago
  Visa/Mastercard are also 100% surveilled. The nightmare of your transactions being monitored and arbitrarily blocked that's peddled as an argument against CBDCs or public financial infrastructure like Pix is already a reality for all of traditional finance (with the exception of physical cash, which happens to also be a central bank product). Sometimes even balances get confiscated, read the horror stories by Stripe customers. Americans seem to believe that the same thing is necessarily worse if it's done in the public sector. Other countries tend to see it differently. Just let them be.
  - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
    I'm not american. I'm commenting on my own country. As I said, I'm not defending credit card companies here. Just pointing out the fact that there are problems with pix. It's not the silver bullet people think it is. And yes, it is worse when the public sector does it. You can actually use the government to fight the private sector when it screws you over. When the government does it, then it's just the system working as intended.
    - c7b 5mo ago
      You cannot "use the government". I'm not aware of any countries where it would work like that. You can use the judiciary, which is independent of the government, and you can use it to go against the government the same way you can go against corporations.
      - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
        The judiciary is literally one of the three powers.
- jeroenhd 5mo ago
  > Pix is already 100% surveilled Visa and Mastercard are 300% surveilled: once by the Brazilian government, once by the payment providers themselves, and then finally by the American government. There are privacy implications of cashless societies, but these foreign companies are worse in every aspect.
  - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
    Nowhere did I say otherwise.
- AnAfrican 5mo ago
  Not really. All financial institutions are surveilled and regulated. There's a reason Patio 11 describe the industry as an "arm of the government". But furthermore, his argument is not about surveillance (which he accepts when he describes the central bank as the regulator) but about the competition. It's the very idea of something being provided as a public good that is considered "anormal" and "anti-competitive" here.
DanielHB 5mo ago
It can't really, but public services don't necessarily need competition. In fact it can even make sense to run them at a loss. And alternate payment methods are allowed, so if there was space for a private entity to offer a better/cheaper service they could. But it is hard to compete with a fully integrated (mostly) free service.

by cloche 5mo ago

surgical_fire 5mo ago

This is a free market. All he has to do is offer a better service than the public offering. I always hear that the government is inefficient, should be easy no?

fmobus 5mo ago
Whenever people start arguing about inefficient government they should be reminded that pix costs like 10M USD a year to run. An absolute bargain for what it delivers.

matheusmoreira 5mo ago

[flagged]

Lvl999Noob 5mo ago
> Pix is already 100% surveilled And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled? Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games). At least with Pix, the costs get lower for the end users.
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  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.
  - pyrale 5mo ago
    > Theirs is a more corporate surveillance, though. The thing about US' corporate suveillance system, and why the US government is so tolerant about it, is that US government branches either buy or are given all the data they need. You don't get government surveillance or corporate surveillance, you get government surveillance or government and corporate surveillance.
  - kristjank 5mo ago
    Third party doctrine means corporate surveillance is state surveillance. And unlike Pix covering just Brazil, CC companies cover the whole world.
  - subw00f 5mo ago
    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.
    - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
      Nothing naive about it. Brazil is not the USA. It hasn't exactly demonstrated an ability to "deeply embed" itself into internet backbones the way the USA does. The problem with Pix is: they don't need to. Lack of capabilities limit the scope of government tyranny. It used to be that the government didn't have the manpower required to audit everyone and everything, so only the bank transactions above some threshold would be monitored. With pix, they are monitoring 100% of transactions now. This is a massive gain in capability that should not be ignored.
      - gota 5mo ago
        >With pix, they are monitoring 100% of transactions now. First, I don't think they are. Second, good - they should have an _algorithm_ checking every transaction. MasterCard and VISA do it and do nothing for me; the government could catch all the money laundering that is the lifeblood of crime, or maybe just finally eradicate tax evasion, the necessary first step towards rationalizing our tax code and one of the core issues of our country? Your opinions read like you have misplaced worries, if not values.
- x-complexity 5mo ago
  > > Pix is already 100% surveilled > And Visa and MasterCard aren't surveiled? Who is doing the surveilling is the difference. In the latter, the surveillance is done by the private sector, in aims of better targeted advertising. In the former, it's done by either the government or by a government-tied organization, and thus invites a left-hand-passes-to-right-hand scenario, wherein the data & metadata obtained from the system could be passed to law enforcement for prosecution (doubly so if the transactions could be bundled as evidence). > Isn't one of their selling points that they surveil every transaction and automatically block anything suspicious? And increasingly, the parameters for suspicious include anything pornographic or even 'pornographic' (see: the bullying of steam to remove explicit games). The censorship pressures made onto Visa & Mastercard was done not by the government, but by PACs & non-governmental organizations. It is through the use of "think of the children" that they push them into censoring transactions, under the implicit threat that lawsuits will be filed if such transactions remain allowed.
  - vitorgrs 5mo ago
    The government already have card transaction access though. If you are in the banking system - you are being tracked. Doesn't matter if is Pix or a card. Doesn't mean they will automatically expose you, as it requires justice approval technically...
  - altacc 5mo ago
    The censorship is a massive issue though as it effectively means that private companies can overrule the law if they effectively monopolize critical infrastructure. Private companies are even less accountable to individuals than governments are when there is no real market choice.
c7b 5mo ago
Visa/Mastercard are also 100% surveilled. The nightmare of your transactions being monitored and arbitrarily blocked that's peddled as an argument against CBDCs or public financial infrastructure like Pix is already a reality for all of traditional finance (with the exception of physical cash, which happens to also be a central bank product). Sometimes even balances get confiscated, read the horror stories by Stripe customers. Americans seem to believe that the same thing is necessarily worse if it's done in the public sector. Other countries tend to see it differently. Just let them be.
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  I'm not american. I'm commenting on my own country. As I said, I'm not defending credit card companies here. Just pointing out the fact that there are problems with pix. It's not the silver bullet people think it is. And yes, it is worse when the public sector does it. You can actually use the government to fight the private sector when it screws you over. When the government does it, then it's just the system working as intended.
  - c7b 5mo ago
    You cannot "use the government". I'm not aware of any countries where it would work like that. You can use the judiciary, which is independent of the government, and you can use it to go against the government the same way you can go against corporations.
    - matheusmoreira 5mo ago
      The judiciary is literally one of the three powers.
jeroenhd 5mo ago
> Pix is already 100% surveilled Visa and Mastercard are 300% surveilled: once by the Brazilian government, once by the payment providers themselves, and then finally by the American government. There are privacy implications of cashless societies, but these foreign companies are worse in every aspect.
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  Nowhere did I say otherwise.
AnAfrican 5mo ago
Not really. All financial institutions are surveilled and regulated. There's a reason Patio 11 describe the industry as an "arm of the government". But furthermore, his argument is not about surveillance (which he accepts when he describes the central bank as the regulator) but about the competition. It's the very idea of something being provided as a public good that is considered "anormal" and "anti-competitive" here.

DanielHB 5mo ago

It can't really, but public services don't necessarily need competition. In fact it can even make sense to run them at a loss. And alternate payment methods are allowed, so if there was space for a private entity to offer a better/cheaper service they could. But it is hard to compete with a fully integrated (mostly) free service.