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

https://www.elciudadano.com/en/brazils-pix-payment-system-faces-pressure-from-visa-and-mastercard/04/04/

by wslh • 3 months ago

396 360 3 months ago

bell-cot4• 3 months ago

It would be Un-American to overlook any chance to forcibly intervene in a Latin America country for the financial benefit of a large American company...wouldn't it?

manoDev• 3 months ago

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/amer...

jacknews• 3 months ago

Every country should have this.

Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?

It perhaps made sense when the technology was difficult, and America was trusted, but ...

hvb2• 3 months ago

I misunderstood, psd2 is Europe's equivalent.

And yes, every country should have this. Even America

Daedren2• 3 months ago

PSD2 is merely a framework for an uniform access to banking, same APIs everywhere. While you can send money through it, it's still through the same means as normal.

Many of the european countries have their own "Pix", but there's no European-wide alternative. The ECB wants to make one (tentatively titled "digital euro"), but it's going to take a long time to come out.

KK7NIL• 3 months ago

Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?

I don't think VISA/Mastercard takes such a fee? (They'd be some of the biggest companies in the world if they did.)

The fees they charge are actually fractions of a percent, the rest are charged by the card issuer, which is usually your bank.

You could, in theory, use the VISA network and not pay those fees to a card issuer.

surgical_fire2• 3 months ago

Still greater than 0.

There's absolutely no reason for a country to outsource paynent infrastructure to US corporations.

cyberax3• 3 months ago

You could, in theory, use the VISA network and not pay those fees to a card issuer.

You can not. The only way is to have a private agreement with the card issuer. That's why stores all try to push their co-branded cards.

ExpertAdvisor01• 3 months ago

It's interesting that we live in 2026 and people still don't understand the fees of credit card processing.

Visa charges only a Assessment fee the majority goes to Issuer Bank +PSP.

E.g: Interchange fee (0.8-1.8%): Paid by acquirer to issuer (card-holding bank)

Assessment fee (0.1-0.3%): Paid to card network (Visa, Mastercard)

Acquirer margin (0.3-0.8%): Retained by merchant’s payment processor

guntars• 3 months ago

The banks and the payment processors are the real customers of the payment networks and they all do better when they can squeeze more money from the end users - the cardholders and the businesses. Pix cuts out these middlemen and that’s an existential threat to their business model, ergo an “investigation” by the Trump admin.

Scaled• 3 months ago

The army of middlemen with their hands out is the worst part, where you also have fees paid to the merchant bank, the iso/payment service provider, and a chain of agents. In disfavored industries like adult content, this can reach 15% or more, plus thousands in annual "high risk" fees (even if chargeback rate is good). It's a huge anticompetitive racket, and the sooner US can shake off Visa/MasterCard, the better off we'll be.

varispeed• 3 months ago

All should be free. Imagine if government decided to impose 3% revenue tax, yet these companies get a free pass.

If these networks cannot run this for free, then they should be nationalised and tax payer should cover it. It will be cheaper (because it will become non-profit) for everyone and better.

laurencerowe5• 3 months ago

EU regulations limit those interchange fees to 0.2% for debit card transactions and 0.3% for credit card transactions so total costs are much lower for businesses. Cards have replaced cash even for small transactions in most European countries.

airstrike3• 3 months ago

Any percentage based fee for processing a transaction is borderline criminal.

plumeria• 3 months ago

Add an extra fixed fee if you need 3D Secure (and equivalents). This should be covered already by the assessment and interchange fees to begin with.

Card networks' moat is their network effect. If you need to take a payment from someone around the world, cards are very convenient. Unless Pix and friends get to interop globally, cards will always have a place.

gib444• 3 months ago

Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?

And spy on every single transaction

expedition322• 3 months ago

It made sense back in the 1970s when it was hard for an American to pay for a hotel room in Manilla.

But in 2026 data moves in a micro second from one continent to another.

dyauspitr• 3 months ago

Exactly and if you think 2-3% is a small number you should keep in mind that that is effectively half of what the market returns over the long-term at 7%.

usrnm2• 3 months ago

Every country should have this

Many countries do, it's really more common than you might think. The problem is international payments and things like tourism. Want to order something from another country? Want to go there for a week and not have to use cash? In most cases it's either Visa or MasterCard.

marcosdumay• 3 months ago

Heh, Lula has a just slight lead on the elections this year.

If he cedes to the pressure, odds are he will so completely destroy his popularity that he won't even be able to be a candidate. He almost certainly knows that.

The pressure is irrelevant. Pix is not going away.

mrkramer3• 3 months ago

Pix is for domestic use right? So tourists who come to Brazil still use Visa and Mastercard as well as Brazilian tourists who travel abroad. Visa and Mastercard are companies of the past, crypto and stablecoins will destroy them sooner or later.

SirFatty• 3 months ago

"crypto and stablecoins will destroy them sooner or later."

LOL!

mrkramer3• 3 months ago

I meant digital dollar and digital euro, you won't need Visa and Mastercard anymore.

wslh2• 3 months ago

No, for example Argentinian tourists use Belo[1] for paying in Brazil. No need for credit cards.

[1] https://www.belo.app/en-us/ar/

fmobus3• 3 months ago

How many transactions can you ran per second on major coins like BTC?

ric2b• 2 months ago

Depends on what you mean, if using batching technologies like Lightning Network it is theoretically unlimited.

If you mean on the globally replicated and stored forever blockchain, I think it's 50/s or something like that.

martheen4• 3 months ago

Cross border payment with QR codes are already a thing in plenty of Southeast and East Asian countries. Crypto and stablecoins aren't needed (nor wanted, due to money laundering risks).

madhacker• 3 months ago

Hey Visa/Mastercard — try that move in China and see how well it turns out.

yorwba• 3 months ago

Happens all the time: https://ustr.gov/search?q=initiates+section+301+investigatio...

g8oz• 3 months ago

Despite what the White House thinks American companies are not owed a business model.

bell-cot4• 3 months ago

...unless they generously grease the right palms, or push the right "us vs. them" buttons.

dbolgheroni• 3 months ago

People underestimate how difficult it was to transfer money before Pix, even between local banks. The process was hard to use, it could take days and the fees were huge, depending on your bank. Pix solved all these problems.

What happens also is that many sellers provide discounts when using Pix, because you dodge the expensive fees charged not only by Visa and MasterCard, but the fees operators (banks, fintechs) charge to provide the infrastructure (PoS machines, financing for installments, etc, the last one being quite common in the country) to use these networks.

protastus3• 3 months ago

I think we need to put this in context for folks who are not from Brazil.

Comparatively, a domestic bank wire in Brazil before Pix was already easier and faster than one in the US today. I don't recall the bank fees being bad either.

The issue is that bank wires were never designed for buying lunch at the food court. They're not instant and not user friendly to set up.

Pix is alien technology next to the stuff we have in the US.

Freak_NL2• 3 months ago

It sounds a bit like the Dutch Tikkie with the QR codes and instant transfer. Of course, in the EU most bank wires are already free when using SEPA, and often nearly instant as well. This Tikkie thing is a way to easily create a payment request for people who can't be arsed to simply carry cash (and raise the country's resilience to system failure in the process).

jszymborski2• 3 months ago

Would you say that Pix is comparable to Canada's Interac Debit?

johnea• 3 months ago

The entire problem solved by Pix is an artificially created obstacle put in place so banks can charge for something they do for free.

The article doesn't mention China's digital renminbi, but it is similar, including the aspect of being offered by the country's central bank.

Rather than this looking like "Alien tech" in the US, it's just another example of things in the US looking more like stone age tech to the rest of the world.

Like banned chinese EVs, and a pushback on solar electricity generation, all of these are manifestations of the US government primarily making it easier for multi-billion $$ multi-national corpses to filch the general population.

This isn't just the orange cheato, it's been the policy of every modern US administration, with the backing of the majority of the legislature.

And for some reason, the plurality of voters seem to be in favor.

madaxe_again• 3 months ago

Pix is ok - but it’s clunky to use and has a single point of failure.

On the former - paying is:

  Unlock phone
  Launch app
  Authenticate
  Choose to pay with pix
  Scan QR code
  Enter amount
  Authenticate again
  Wait
  Payment made
  Show cashier your phone

Which is considerably more involved than a contactless payment.

On the single point of failure side of things - I was at an event in Brasilia a month or so back, pix grinds to a crawl, taking 10+ minutes per transaction, and the drinks queues rapidly got out of hand. As nobody accepts cash any more, and because nobody has a card any more, this meant they sold practically no drinks.

So it ain’t bad but tbh passing bits of paper back and forth is still easier.

cassianoleal3• 3 months ago

I worked in a bank in Brazil in the early 2000s. Bank transfers were always easy and relatively quick. At worst, transfers would happen overnight during a national event called bank compensation where all banks would sync up with the Central Bank.

Pix solved a bunch of problems and made all of the above quicker and easier, but Brazil has been at the forefront of banking systems for a long time.

augusto-moura• 3 months ago

We had TED, but it was not instant, nor was it free. It only worked on working hours and took a maximum of 1h, still better than American banks, though. QR Codes is also a big deal.

The deployment of PIX was also really well executed, if it took too much I'm 100% sure that Visa and Master would've made it worse. Being quick was a wise decision

neves• 3 months ago

Man, It is perder of magnitude different. I've noticed it when I gave small money for a beggar using pix. It's really revolutionary.

And remember that credit card fees are greater in Brazil

sjtgraham• 3 months ago

Speaking of the forefront the UK has had interbank realtime payments (Faster Payment) since 2008. It also used to have something like Pix, i.e. bank account referenced by user's phone number called Paym from 2014, until it was discontinued due to lack of demand in 2023. Faster Payments is still operational.

pelasaco6• 3 months ago

Exactly, I worked in the SPB (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_de_Pagamentos_Brasilei...) and was/is pretty well structured and well implemented.

orochimaaru• 3 months ago

Is this similar to India's UPI? Visa and MasterCard exist (and grumble from time to time) but aren't needed.

vitorgrs10• 3 months ago

Yep.

pelasaco6• 3 months ago

People underestimate how difficult it was to transfer money before Pix, even between local banks.

The difficulties were the same as everywhere. I worked in Bank in Brazil and in Germany. A lot of the difficulties we still face in Germany today.

alphager• 3 months ago

What difficulties do you mean? We got Sepa instant transfers nowadays...

SomeUserName4323• 3 months ago

People underestimate how difficult it was to transfer money before Pix, even between local banks. The process was hard to use, it could take days and the fees were huge, depending on your bank. Pix solved all these problems.

Nearing 17:00 in a bank: Does anyone here need to do a TED or a DOC? Come to attendant now before the system shuts down for the day!

DanielHB6• 3 months ago

When I tell that I used to withdraw cash at the ATM in one bank, cross the street, deposit the CASH in another bank ATM people think I am crazy. But I was doing monthly that circa 2014, all to avoid paying ~3 USD transfer fee (what was called a DOC/TED).

In Brazil your employer kinda chooses which bank they use and you kinda have to open a bank account with them to get paid, but it is hardly worth it to move your credit card to another bank. This is why my salary came in one bank and my credit card bills came in another.

gota3• 3 months ago

Sorry that you wasted time but - it was wasted time!

"Salary portability" is ensured in Brazil by the Banco Centra, at least since 2006. Employees can receive salary in any bank account they choose, even if their employer processes payroll through a different bank.

The original bank must automatically transfer the funds to the employee’s choice of account without charging a transfer fee: https://www.bcb.gov.br/meubc/faqs/p/existe-algum-custo-para-...

jnettome• 3 months ago

How difficult is for USA administration learn good practices and initiatives and think into implementing those? And also, why Master and Visa haven’t came with a solution where they integrate with all of that and innovate?

This idea that all they do should be de facto standard for the whole world is so démodé.

protastus3• 3 months ago

My understanding is that FedNow could become something like Pix, but implementation is voluntary. In Brazil, the central bank required all retail banks of significance to implement Pix by a certain deadline.

Visa and Mastercard are very much against FedNow becoming widely used, as it would destroy their business.

yndoendo• 3 months ago

For what MAGA views as good for the USA is actually deplorable loss for the civilized world.

protocolture• 3 months ago

And also, why Master and Visa haven’t came with a solution where they integrate with all of that and innovate?

There are a lot of people who integrate with them. The issue is that anyone who does so must comply with the PCIDSS. Most hobbyists cant stretch that far and use intermediaries.

This idea that all they do should be de facto standard for the whole world is so démodé.

I dont know what Brazil's issues were, but Visa and Mastercard show up, they integrate with terminal providers directly and indirectly, and they bring a battle tested data security standard with them. Compared to other industries they are basically self regulating, and in some countries they adopt the PCI DSS into law.

shpx• 3 months ago

It's surprising that Visa and Mastercard are even private companies. I expected that the government would be in charge of money and not let a group of people impose a 1-3% tax on their population. In the US, credit cards account for "71% of nationwide retail sales dollars".

Governments aren't competent enough to do tech stuff well and they would never make something that works in a different country as well as credit cards do, but still.

ronsor• 3 months ago

Banks are private companies. The Federal Reserve is partially private.

rbanffy• 3 months ago

a group of people impose a 1-3% tax on their population.

It seems the consensus is that a taxes are only bad if you have to pay the government. If it's a small set of companies that collectively own a virtual monopoly, it's because they earned it.

contingencies• 3 months ago

Competition is for losers. - Peter Thiel

Qem2• 3 months ago

This is probably the Holy Grail of neoliberalism: Even taxes are privatized!

tardedmeme2• 3 months ago

Most countries have some kind of bank wire system that is in charge of the money itself. Cards are pre-authorization system. The movement of money is authorized when you swipe the card, but not actually moved until up to a few days later, through the existing bank wire systems. If there's a currency conversion involved it can be even trickier.

nitwit005• 3 months ago

The US already has a competing payment system for benefits (EBT cards), as do many other countries.

Payments themselves are not a technical challenge, no matter who's doing it. The fundamentals are trivial. You move numbers between accounts.

It's tackling fraud and dealing with disputes that's a challenge.

hakfoo• 3 months ago

The hardest part is network effects.

Consider that the largest payment card network on Earth (China UnionPay, 7 billion cards) - decided it was easier just to bootstrap acceptance in the US by a partnership with Discover rather than connecting directly to merchants.

If you want a new scheme to work, distribute something like social security and welfare cheques through it. That immediately forces broad acceptance.

numpad0• 3 months ago

Isn't US EBT card on the same payment network as credit cards? That doesn't count as an independent system. The same set of "they" as Visa/Mastercard gets the fee.

estebarb2• 3 months ago

It is not only "their" population. Mastercard and Visa captures a % of each sale done globally with their cards. It is perfectly reasonable for all countries to want to develop their own payment systems and stop paying taxes to the USA.

RobotToaster• 3 months ago

The US is controlled by finance capital, the elections are just to choose it's spokesperson.

x-complexity• 3 months ago

It's surprising that Visa and Mastercard are even private companies.

Asianometry provides a great summary as to how both of them came to be: For Visa, a 1976 rebranding of the BankAmericard program. For Mastercard, a 1966 meeting of banks as opposition to BankAmericard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2rKS4l6MAk

Qem2• 3 months ago

Governments aren't competent enough to do tech stuff well and they would never make something that works in a different country as well as credit cards do, but still.

There's some counterexamples: Postal systems, GPS and the internet were started as government projects that now interoperate and cover almost the whole globe.

pimeys7• 3 months ago

In EU we have multiple national systems, but now they are trying to unify them to the IBAN system, so you can pay in the same way by opening your bank app and scanning a QR code:

https://wero-wallet.eu/

My bank (N26) should support this later this year. I hope it becomes as big and successful as Pix.

laurencerowe5• 3 months ago

Wero sounds similar to the US Zelle system but the big reason for that to exist in the first place is that bank account numbers are not safe to share in the US since they can be used to pull payments so there was never an option for easily transferring money to friends and family other than writing a cheque.

In the UK and Europe I could just share my bank account number or IBAN and make payments through online banking since the late 1990s (though in the UK they only became instant in 2008.) So Wero sounds like a nice convenience but much less of a game changer.

It will be interesting to see if it manages to expand to goods and services since the EU strictly regulates the fees Visa and Mastercard can charge there so there is less incentive to switch than in some other countries.

pimeys7• 3 months ago

I think the biggest reason is sovereignty: we cannot risk US cutting our payment system if they for example don't give Greenland for them.

I think this is the biggest reason to ensure you can pay with a local system in shops and restaurants.

Nathanba• 3 months ago

Sharing banking information is not safe in Europe, decades ago a phone scammer convinced me to give them my information and they were able to pull money from my account without any permission from me whatsoever, they just acted like I already signed up to their scam service when I never did. That was a completely foreign and insane idea to me (and it is still insane and should not be allowed) that someone can simply withdraw money from my account. They sent me some contract in the mail that I had to apparently reject and otherwise it was automatically approved. Which itself is surely also not legal but the point is that they were able to take money from my account just with my information.

tardedmeme2• 3 months ago

To be pedantic, IBAN isn't a payment system, but only an identifier. It's like an IP address - you still need to enlist the services of an ISP to reach it, and that ISP has to find an actual route and send packets over actual cables.

raron5• 3 months ago

Wero is just another private company trying get their cut of payment fees. You can do the same thing with SEPA Instant Payment (or some member states outside of the Eurozone have their own similar thing).

I don't see why Wero should exists, their business model seems like "trying to get money for the same service you can get for free".

Pooge9• 3 months ago

I couldn't have said it better. I don't understand what they solve.

We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock. Switzerland is not part of SEPA but IBAN is used so it is trivial to send payments to foreign accounts that have an IBAN.

I always say that the day Trump decides to block Visa/MasterCard outside the US is the day we get instant payments and finally get rid of cards.

rkachowski• 3 months ago

wero is a european initiative set up by a consortium of banks that is built layered upon instant payments. it's not a private company like paypal or visa, its an attempt at making European payment infrastructure

jeroenhd6• 3 months ago

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

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

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

ChrisArchitect• 3 months ago

Some coverage from September:

Brazil's Homegrown Payment System Is Target of Trump Admin https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/world/americas/brazil-dig...

cloche• 3 months 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_fire2• 3 months 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?

fmobus3• 3 months 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.

DanielHB6• 3 months 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.

mikeweiss2• 3 months ago

When ever I visit Brazil now I feel very left out for not having Pix! I wanna join the electronic cash club. Don't think it's possible for foreigners tho

yangm97• 3 months ago

It should be possible, they issue CPF numbers even for tourists if you want.

mikeweiss2• 3 months ago

Problem is you need a Brazilian bank account... Opening a foreign bank account creates tax nightmares.

bill38• 3 months ago

In India there is 'UPI' system that is similar.

scheme2712• 3 months ago

Seems fairly logical for any large country to create something like this. Visa/MC is nice but allows the US to apply undue pressure to individuals. E.g. the US applied financial sanctions on ICC officials in the EU resulting in them losing access to Visa/MC credit cards and banks even those are that are purely EU based.

bell-cot4• 3 months ago

Visa/MC is nice but allows ...

Not sure how it is overseas - but in the US, the #1 problem with Visa/MC is the huge percentage that they skim off every transaction. Businesses running on tight profit margins often give a discount if you pay with cash instead.

scheme2712• 2 months ago

I think the fees are on order of 1-3% depending on your risk and business type. Certainly an issue but it's mitigated a bit by the decreased costs of going cashless. I.e. cashless operations avoids theft by employees; overhead for stocking, counting, and handling money; reduced insurance due to less chances of robbery; etc.

airstrike3• 3 months ago

I've been living abroad for over a decade now, so I never got to experience Pix.

I went back to Brazil a few years ago for a couple of weeks, and a kid on the streets asked me if I could buy some chewing gum and help him out. I wanted to, but I had no cash, so I told him I had no cash at all.

He said "It's fine, just send me some with Pix".

I still remember the incredulous look on his face when I told him I also didn't have Pix. He was certain I was lying. "_Everyone_ has it. How come you don't?"

pelasaco6• 3 months ago

had the same experience.. "how come you dont have Pix?"

cesarb2• 3 months ago

"_Everyone_ has it. How come you don't?"

To put it in context: everyone with a Brazilian bank account can use Pix. That's the reason "everyone" has it.

airstrike3• 3 months ago

That's underselling it. Even people without a bank account have Pix.

dannyr• 3 months ago

Philippines has QR/Instapay. Not sure if it's complete equivalent of PIX. But basically you can scan a QR code and you can pay using any bank or digital wallet.

burnJS• 3 months ago

Brazil can do this. Why can't we?

esperent• 3 months ago

Vietnam has a system like this too, QR based and free. India has UPI.

martheen4• 3 months ago

QR payments are ubiquitous in South East Asia. The eventual goal is ASEAN-wide interoperability, and some are even already interoperable with South Korean, Japanese and Chinese counterparts. And as expected, the US is also complaining about those, merely because Americans can't grasp the concept, like how they lag on pin adoption.

throwaway4738255• 3 months ago

Most likely because your country's banks are heavily lobbying against such initiatives.

It's easy to blame Visa and Mastercard, but the reason why the EU doesn't have this is that the EPP (the largest political group in the European Parliament) answers to European banks, which don't want it.

jeroenhd6• 3 months ago

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

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

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

pelasaco6• 3 months ago

who are we?

projektfu• 3 months ago

I think it's an echo of "If Japan can... why can't we?"

https://youtu.be/vcG_Pmt_Ny4?si=KbAxOSFSjoPT3vK_

I could be wrong.

petterroea2• 3 months ago

Visa is trying hard to take over Japan at the moment and it's painful to watch. I'm really rooting for Pix, because the Visa MasterCard monopoly isn't doing us any favours

Pooge9• 3 months ago

Could you elaborate? Genuinely interested.

petterroea2• 3 months ago

Visa and MasterCard are basically redundant except for international transactions. We already mostly use QR code payments, which is a semi-open standard and somewhat vendor agnostic(with caveats). It works internationally.

Japan has it's own card companies, and payment systems. Recently, some train lines have started adding support for Visa, but trust me that if you use it in rush hour you will be considered a knob head by everyone behind you as contactless is much slower than the native cards and can't keep up with a fast walking pace. Of course part of the problem here is Sony being greedy and making the international adoption of Felicia hard, but it's complicated.

The cards are most useful for tourists, and the best argument to introduce cards is international compatability. But international interop doesn't have to look like this, it's just how the playing field ended up looking.

Last, Visa and MasterCard are both known for being strict on what goods and services they are happy accepting, and it's not ok that so much power is consolidated in two entities in one country.

I'm not an expert on payment systems, but when I see the large scale advertisements Visa especially are pulling off in Tokyo I see a foreign company trying to disrupt and gain market share while not really benefiting locals who do have mostly moved beyond the need for card payment. I.e my reaction isn't "yay, finally Visa is here too save me" it's "oh no, how will they disrupt and destroy"

h4kunamata• 3 months ago

Read: The USA does not like what they cannot control!!

I am glad to see the EU following Brazil with its own payment system.

Visa/MasterCard/Paypal era is gone!!

raverbashing• 3 months ago

Yup

Americans will be "pro free market" until it's somebody else doing the competition, then they will be very butthurt about it (at best)

pndy• 3 months ago

Considering the times we're living in, each country should consider implementing own payment system, and never abandoning cash for digital currency. Both systems should coexist and complement each other but we aren't living in a perfect world.

bjohnson225• 3 months ago

Absolutely. The US has shown it is happy to threaten allies and weaponise everything it can in international relations. It would be madness to leave critical payments infrastructure dependent on the US.

forinti2• 3 months ago

The US has a long tradition of arm-twisting to forward its business interests.

This habit is starting to do more harm than good (to them) and they should try to focus on innovating the way China does.

shimman• 3 months ago

I think you mean this habit has benefit no one outside of a small elite moneyed interests that want to protect their fief.

US foreign policy does not benefit Americans, it benefits the elites.

pkphilip2• 3 months ago

India's UPI is also extremely quick and easy to use - instant transfers with just the person's phone number or via a QR code or via a UPI id which looks like an email id.

We are talking about 19-20 billion transactions per month.

Apart from UPI, there are other interbank transfers methods such as NEFT, IMPS, RTGS etc. All quite convenient and easy to use.

dd_xplore2• 3 months ago

In some setups UPI doesn't even internet! Just an SMS is sufficient

jeroenhd6• 3 months ago

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

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

someonenice2• 3 months ago

There is UPI wallet (preload your wallet) that require no internet. But this still require a smartphone.

The SMS option is mainly to avoid requiring a smartphone. There is a huge population that do not have a smartphone.

thefossguy69• 3 months ago

Online UPI is IMPS, with a good UX

pkphilip2• 2 months ago

There is a transaction charge for IMPS which is not there for UPI. Also, IMPS only works against already pre-approved bank accounts

pjg2• 3 months ago

It is delightful to see PIX's exponential growth. It was preceded by India's UPI and borrowed heavily from it Here's a paper describing the experience: https://www.braziliankeynesianreview.org/BKR/article/view/33...

bpavuk2• 3 months ago

a question for Ukrainians who maybe rode to Brazil and got to try Pix: is it this fast? is monobank faster or slower than Pix?

znnajdla• 3 months ago

They're not really comparable because Pix is interbank while monobank in Ukraine is a single bank.

bpavuk2• 3 months ago

I know, but with almost every third Ukrainian above 14 having a mono card we can at least compare the UX (speed, steps required, ease of use, etc.)

ksec• 3 months ago

There is also UPI in India, and I assume something coming soon from China.

I sometimes do wonder if these Goverment can work together on a single payment system, federally operated but connected.

reese_john16• 3 months ago

It is worth noting that despite all this cheap sovereignty talk from Brazil’s president, in practice Brazil would not be able to operate Pix at that scale without heavily relying on American hyperscalers companies.

Brazilian institutions are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to US cloud providers, specially AWS, to be able to process that many transactions.

Earlier this year, when sa-east-1 was down, major banks were forced to suspend Pix payments for nearly 3 hours. When this happens, some people are literally not able to buy anything because that’s their only payment method. So much for “President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva proclaiming a nationwide campaign: “Pix is ours, my friend”.”

Don’t get me wrong, Pix has been a great success and a major achievement, but all this adversarial political talk between the US and Brazil administrations is really cringe, both countries are better doing business together.

[1]https://economia.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2026/02/07/falh...

DoctorDabadedoo• 3 months ago

Only reinforces the point that relying on american infrastructure as a critical piece of your stack, in 2026, is a liability.

reese_john16• 3 months ago

This is not a real problem outside of niche industries

American companies are great to do business with.

Most countries, including Brazil, simply don’t have the capability to pull this on their own. Not enough tech talent nor infrastructure

propagandist• 3 months ago

So they get to decide when a transaction is in their national interest and do business on that basis?

That sounds like "sovereignty" to me. You don't need to be fully protectionist to be sovereign.

If you have an ax to grind with Lula, just say so.

wurstburst• 3 months ago

Don't get me wrong. But mentioning Brazil's president on this meter just adds even more politics to the discussion. Which global systems don't depend somehow on US infrastructure? Do you have the same opinion about the European leaders that are creating/created cloud infrastructure? I believe just one of the parts is really into adversarial talks lately. Brazil is just following what other countries are also doing.

reese_john16• 3 months ago

But mentioning Brazil's president on this meter just adds even more politics to the discussion.

This quote is literally from the linked article — he is mentioned there

Do you have the same opinion about the European leaders that are creating/created cloud infrastructure?

I don’t understand the question, I think it’d be great to have an European AWS equivalent just for the sake of competition, but as far as I know, we are very far from that

potamic• 3 months ago

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

thehouen• 3 months ago

This is just a legacy of the hopefully-soon-to-be past. We all went way to hard on the aws bandwagon (myself included). I worked for a bit in the past for a company doing 100 mio. API requests daily off of 6 boring old servers.

There is no explicit need for AWS in this. But it was probably easier to build since it is what we are used to.

expedition322• 3 months ago

Yeah we need to accept that sovereignty costs money. American hyperscalers are the cheapest alternative- but freedom isn't free.

Xunjin• 3 months ago

Context is important, the Brazil's President said that about USA investigations with allegations that Pix is a "unfair business practices"[0] he is not at all saying that Pix is "100% powered by Brazil", in his political proselytism he does make clear that Brazil and USA are partners by centuries and should keep being.

0. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cm2vrnq17vdo

reese_john16• 3 months ago

Please, he literally went on national TV on Brazil’s Independence day to claim that

“We will defend PIX from any attempt at privatization. PIX belongs to Brazil, it's public, free, and will remain so.”

Lula has been historically hostile to the US for ideological reasons.

He’s done plenty to undermine that relation, stemming from attacking the dollar dominance, ignoring Iran sanctions, to indirectly financing the Ukraine war by becoming the largest buyer of cheap Russian oil — and that’s why we have those investigations going on

gaigalas6• 3 months ago

You are incorrect.

What went down were apps from banks that use PIX, not the core infrastructure.

That is responsibility of the banks. It means private banks like Itau and Nubank rely on Amazon, not the Central Bank. They relied on those hyperscalers for their operation, and their gateways went down with it.

PIX has sovereign, private infrastructure on brazillian soil managed by Banco Central. NIC.br and other essential services do the same.

PIX is ours.

reese_john16• 3 months ago

This is a minor technicality, if private banks are down then the SPI is basically useless. Banks can send money to each other but clients can’t see it.

What went down were apps

Plus, this is an oversimplification.

Transaction authorization, Fraud/AML screening, account validation are not just part of an “app”, they are core functionality of private banks operations, and they are made scalable by big cloud providers.

The true scaling burden is on private banks not the BCB

DanielHB6• 3 months ago

Funny annecdote: I have a friend who worked at iFood (brazilian food delivery company) and apparently they moved their entire AWS stack to us-east-1 because sa-east-1 did not have enough capacity to handle the load they had. This is why iFood has a very high latency* during user interactions.

*: for people used to online gaming

samrus• 2 months ago

Baby steps. If AWS starts unfairly exploiting its market position the way visa and mastercard do then brazil will move pix to another provider

vitorgrs10• 2 months ago

It was not Pix being down, though. This is about banks using US cloud providers. The issue here was with private banks even.

As far I remember, Banco do Brasil and Caixa - both public banks, didn't went down, because they use Brazilian owned servers...

reese_john16• 2 months ago

… and yet they both suffer from availability issues despite not having nearly the same scale as e.g. Nubank who uses AWS

Caixa was down yesterday: https://www.techtudo.com.br/google/amp/noticias/2026/05/caix...

m101• 3 months ago

The main issue in this market is that the consumer doesn’t pay the cost of the transaction, therefore there is no pressure to reduce costs, and hence no innovation. All of this could be solved if a government regulated that consumers must pay the fee. Here, in the UK, we have obviously regulated the exact opposite of a sensible regulation and were “shocked” when total fees paid on transactions exploded.

pelasaco6• 3 months ago

The only problem I actually face with Pix in Brazil is:

Some stores only accept Pix and don’t want Visa or cash. As a tourist, you end up unable to access a lot of things because, well, we don’t have Pix.

While I was in Brazil, some thugs with pistols came into a bar where I was. They forced people to send a Pix payment to a specific account, and their money was gone. In the credit card era, I guess the companies, insurance providers, and banks could reverse the transaction and cover the losses. With Pix, as I understand it, nobody feels responsible for it and the money is gone.

eb0la• 3 months ago

Reminder: always travel with a spare phone with a broken screen just in case.

gota3• 3 months ago

While I was in Brazil, some thugs with pistols came into a bar where I was. They forced people to send a Pix payment to a specific account, and their money was gone.

Sorry, don't mean to be rude, but your story doesn't track for many reasons. First, PIX keys are associated to formal bank accounts. If what you described happend, that account was blocked by the bank likely within the hour after the 'robbery'. And "stealing" accounts from other people in a way that allows you to withdraw cash from is exceedingly difficult and uncommon.

Furthermore, it might have been possible in early days of pix, but it's been some time now (maybe from the start? Making your story impossible) that Pix has a 'undo' feature that the sender can do on their bank app or ATM even; similar to the 'block this credit transaction' from a credit card.

With Pix, as I understand it, nobody feels responsible for it and the money is gone.

Incorrect, see above. Are you confusing PIX for some kind of crypto transfer?

reese_john16• 2 months ago

Have you ever worked in a financial institution?

This is such a common occurrence that the BCB had to impose a default $200 nightly limit for Pix trns between 8pm and 6am.

The way it works is, criminals use money mules, or stolen identities, to open legitimate bank accounts, then once the cash hits the account, they fan out the stolen proceeds to crypto rails or other money mules (“laranjas”)

BCB has been trying to solve this with MED 2.0 but it is still a duct tape over the real problem: rampant crime and fraud in Brazil

And let’s not dive into the digital bank heists that have been happening since the last year, when hackers have already managed to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the financial system by exploiting Pix’s 24/7 network [0]

Such attack to the financial system would have been akin to a war declaration in serious countries, but crime is so widespread and normalized that Brazilians lowered their standards to accept these absurd situations

  [0] Hackers steal R$400m in attack on Pix-connected fintech: https://valorinternational.globo.com/google/amp/markets/news/2025/07/02/hackers-steal-r400m-in-attack-on-pix-connected-fintech.ghtml

pelasaco6• 2 months ago

Sorry, don't mean to be rude, but your story doesn't track for many reasons. First, PIX keys are associated to formal bank accounts.
If what you described happend, that account was blocked by the bank likely within the hour after the 'robbery'.
And "stealing" accounts from other people in a way that allows you to withdraw cash from is exceedingly difficult and uncommon.

There you have the straw man ou front man accounts, when the bank comes to act, they have 96 hours to handle the case, the accounts are already empty. I am not sure, but maybe some Brazilians can confirm if my story is impossible or not. I am not from there. I just saw it happening and people explained me that the money was gone forever. I am definitely not confusing PIX for some kind of crypto transfer.

nottorp• 3 months ago

Duopolists whining about competition eh?

WinstonSmith842• 3 months ago

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

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

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

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

melting_snow• 3 months ago

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

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

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

alexaholic• 3 months ago

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

International transfers between MB Way (PT) and Bizum (ES) are working e.g. via phone number. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Alliance

ginko• 3 months ago

What's needed in Europe is federation of the existing systems, not one winner taking it all.

kakacik• 3 months ago

Twint is in Switzerland for more than 10 years, hardly a new idea

BrandiATMuhkuh• 3 months ago

since the end of last year we have had instant payment in the EU. no more need for Mastercard/VISA. what I see missing is education.

That's why I'm telling each merchant I come bye to use it. super simple.

someonenice2• 3 months ago

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

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

lmz• 3 months ago

some UPI users to some Paynow users. (limited to participating institutions only).

gmerc• 3 months ago

Thailand Promptpay is federated too, as are some Japanese services.

SomeUserName4323• 3 months ago

To be able to pay with Pix, one needs to get a CPF (Brazilian Tax ID).

There are third party apps you can use to pay with pix using a credit card, can't recall that name, but read about it here a few months back, on another pix-thread.

CPF (Brazilian Tax ID). Then to open a bank account

Getting a CPF is absolutely trivial, but I'm not sure you can open a bank account without RN/RNE, at least not with local banks. Can probably manage with one of the online banks.

somewhatgoated2• 3 months ago

I think you need a RN/RNM to open a bank account even with online banks - I haven’t tried all of them of course so there might be some that work with cpf only

trollbridge2• 3 months ago

For comparison, one does not need need to get US tax ID number to use a Visa card.

cess114• 3 months ago

"we are going to go back to how people used to travel 50 years ago: with a lot of USD bank notes hidden in your hotel room or elsewhere ..."

Who did that?

Most people except for criminals and refugees used traveller's cheques:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller%27s_cheque

I think some banks, like AmEx, still issue them.

spwa4• 3 months ago

People did that? I took one look at the fees and ... "no thank you", and took cash.

Zardoz84• 3 months ago

on Europe there is talks about using Spanish's Bizum as the oficial European replacement for Visa/MasterCard

M95D• 3 months ago

It's not a replacement until they issue cards that work without a phone.

papichulo2023• 3 months ago

Wero already has more presence in Europe though

is_true2• 3 months ago

You don't need a brazilian tax ID to use PIX, I've used it from MercadoPago from another country and there are a lot of options to use it besides MP.

WinstonSmith842• 3 months ago

Well .. How did you register to MercadoPago? I never was able when I was in Argentina (end of last year). It also asked me for some official IDs in Argentina which is even harder to get than a CPF (or probably impossible as a non-resident, I didn't bother at that point)

vitorbaptistaa• 3 months ago

To be able to pay with Pix, one needs to get a CPF (Brazilian Tax ID).

It's not ideal, but you can use Wise to pay using Pix and India's UPI. You simply transfer the money from your local bank account to Wise and they transfer to whatever Pix you tell. It's almost instant.

Meanwhile, there are talks about integrating these systems. This is the obvious long-term game, a clear threat to Visa and MasterCard.

Right now in Brazil the only advantages of using a regular credit card are the cashbacks and convenience to use contactless. The convenience is going away -- Pix now supports contactless payment, but it's not widely accepted yet.

Antirust3743• 3 months ago

Wise remains one of the worst professional support experiences I've ever had at my company and would highly advise people not to use them.

kspacewalk22• 3 months ago

Another advantage is anti-fraud measures and remedy (chargebacks). This (BTW clearly AI-generated) article mentions some fraud thing they're working on (Special Refund Mechanism), so we'll see how long it takes for that to take effect.

For now, I'll be using our Canadian not-quite-Pix called Interac to pay small amounts of money to people I trust, but I won't any time soon be buying a fridge with it, or booking a week-long cottage stay on a website I've never used before.

guiraldelli• 3 months ago

It's not ideal, but you can use Wise to pay using Pix

If your Wise account is Brazilian. If you have a foreign account, base currency or whatever the name is for that concept, you cannot.

vitorgrs10• 2 months ago

tbh even cashback these days might be worthless. It need to be a considerable amount. Because most things you buy, you have a discount when buying with Pix or money...

What still make credit cards strong in Brazil it's installments though...

throwaw12• 3 months ago

Europe is already moving towards having own payment system with Wero

Shoue• 3 months ago

Wero is a private effort, the digital euro is closer to Pix but it keeps being stalled (given the article in question, one could make some guesses as to why).

embedding-shape2• 3 months ago

Most European countries I frequent already have their own local equivalent to Pix. In Spain almost everyone has Bizum, and not uncommon for vendors at markets to accept it too, Sweden has Swish which is the same deal for the Swedes. I think this lists the most prominent ones that are in wide usage today already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...

Apparently, some of these already have interoperability between each other too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Alliance), happy to learn I can now send/receive money to/from my Portuguese brethren :)

aqme28• 3 months ago

I was shocked that none of my cards worked for lots of stuff in the Netherlands. They also have their own system.

bilekas5• 3 months ago

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

There is no problem to continue using maybe Visa/Mastercard when dealing abroad or external, but when you are a normal citizen, it's far better to use Pix in this case, you are supporting a national company, paying fee's to them and not at the whims of an external countries policies.

Edit: They also tend to be non profits ironically enough.

In Ireland many years ago there was a system called "Laser" which was very similar, the only reason it was changes was for 'convenience' but in reality it was because Visa and MC had taken over all the POS market, and so Laser cards couldn't give cash back. So the banks just folded.

I can't wait to see Europe being some competition to the duopoly that is Mastercard and Visa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(debit_card)

jangxx• 3 months ago

We might be getting something soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro

registeredcorn3• 3 months ago

in reality it was because Visa and MC had taken over all the POS market

Do you happen to have any insight on this? I mean, how is it that one or two companies can manage to squeeze everyone else out so completely? If two big players control Point of Sales (POS), shouldn't someone be able to come in and make a business out of underselling the competition? I would think that smaller overhead means smaller margins are needed.

I've talked to small businesses about fees and charges for their POS and they are always thrilled when people pay with cash, because it means they get the full amount. (These conversations have come up because I've run small businesses in the past, and I remember how horrible it felt to "sell" something for $30, only to get like...$5 out of it between fees, taxes, and insurance costs. It seems like every business I've spoken to hates Visa and MasterCard with a passion, so I would think that small business would be thrilled to have a new player.

At a guess, I would think that part of(?) the reason may be due to (and rightfully so) whatever regulations are in place to force money transfer companies into meeting certain security ratings or whatever. Even so, surely there are people that are willing to fight for a piece of the action, right? It seems crazy to me that no one else sees that as an opportunity to do it better. I'd really like it if fees for small-to-medium businesses could be dropped entirely, and it was only the major players that offset the costs for everyone else.

janpeuker3• 3 months ago

Europe already has plenty of alternative card systems e.g. France's Cartes Bancaires (CB) and ironically Germany just last year turned it's Girocard/Maestro system off in favour of Visa/Mastercard; the problem is the banks in individual countries in Europe are not willing to give up their control in favour of a compatible standard.

jmyeet• 3 months ago

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

Oh they absolutely will. And the US government will come to their aid.

Consider the case of Bombardier [1], a Canadian airplane manufacturer. Boeing was caught with its pants down by Airbus with the A320/321 and panicked into making the 737MAX. Boeing has a captive audience with US airlines and the 737. A shared type rating is a massive advantage for Boeing but the economics of the Airbus narrow bodies were just too good.

Then along comes this Canadian companiy who saw an opportunity to create a narrow body commercial jet in this range (100-150 seats) and some US airlines were interested. To avoid this Boeing offered United a deep discount to not buy the CSeries and Bombardier responded with discounts of their own.

What happened? Boeing then went to the government and accused Bombardier of "dumping" as well as having goavernment subsidies. This is particularly funny if you know anything about the billions in subsidies Boeing gets from both Washington state and the federal government. The US governments made complaitns to the WTO and ended up imposing a 300% tariff on Bombardier, effectively killing that business. It eventually became the Airbus A220.

Free markets, by the way.

The US will punish foreign companies for competing on price by abusing process and treaties, ignoring it whne it's inconvenient, use tariffs with flimsy excuses, punish unrelated industries to apply pressure and otherwise bully other countries for daring to compoete.

Being American companies is unacceptable. So is doing anything that serve as a model to any other country that might threaten an American monopoly or oligopoly.

So prepare for accusations of government subsidies and the US applying pressure in unrelated areas because of this.

As an aside, the US does this with governments too. "Oh, you wanted to profit from your own natural resources and use that money for the benefit of the people? I think not. Look at this system of government that isn't working. Nevermind that we're starving it with brutal economic sanctions. It doesn't work. Look away. Nothing to see here."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...

brabel3• 3 months ago

Lovely how China is now beating the Americans in their own game. And the reaction is predictable: accuse the Chinese of being a threat to National Security and stop them from taking over the American market after they have already taken most of the rest of the world. Eventually, Americans will be the ones paying the price for the overly protectionist policies of their government.

Hernanpm• 3 months ago

Other countries adopting it is already happening. I live in Bolivia, and a few events made QR payment systems widely used across the country. I have family in Peru, and it is a similar case with Yape, another QR payment system. In Bolivia, fintech companies also offer integration with Pix in Brazil without the need for a CPF to send and receive payments. Since we are neighbors, this is very handy.

lucasban• 3 months ago

They can federate the systems, I know Singapore’s PayNow connects to Malaysia and Thailands systems

abdullahkhalids• 3 months ago

China's UnionPay and AliPay are to various extents are integrated with the systems in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia [1]. Each country has its own system, but integrates with others.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/china-indonesia-have...

bobthepanda3• 3 months ago

UnionPay and AliPay are more akin to Visa and Mastercard than Pix.

wslh2• 3 months ago

Pix is certainly great, but locally only,

Pix is no local as a user, you can use it without a CPF: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053527>.

bobthepanda3• 3 months ago

Does Pix have an equivalent of a prepay debit card? That seems like the most logical easy setup.

If you must have integration with identity, just tie it to whatever visa or proof of arrival. Last I went to Mexico they were issuing QR codes for inbound travelers.

3x35r22m4u• 3 months ago

I wonder if I showed up (as a foreign visiting) in the US how long it would take and what kind of documents would it take to have a Visa/Mastercard. I guess it would be the same as having or even longer to have your CPF issued and a digital account here in Brazil.

rpgbr• 3 months ago

Pix isn't intended (yet) for foreigners to use. It's mostly for local Brazilians, and here it's brilliant: free for personal use, really fast (frequently instantaneous, has a 10 second limit), and accessible (every major bank and most of the smaller ones supports it).

I can understand why Visa and Mastercard are worried. Apple is as well, since it refuses to support Pix in Apple Pay, which is mandatory in Brazil. But honestly? Fuck these companies. (Sorry about my French, I couldn't think of another way to put it.)

Schiendelman• 3 months ago

Have they said "we refuse" or could it be that they have other priorities that come first?

malvim• 3 months ago

Lots of countries around Brazil are taking pix. Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay.

And you can totally expand the idea. The fact that you need national id for pix doesn’t mean the idea “doesn’t scale.” It means the current implementation of it is not focused on use by visitors.

I really don’t understand what you’re getting at, it seems like a pretty narrow view of the possibilities.

Meanwhile US citizens are using paper (cash and cheques) for lots of transactions. Or one of the big credit card corporations.

IG_Semmelweiss• 3 months ago

I actually see it as quite worrysome. This would crowd out competition, but then gives full monopoly of payments to the local government.

If you are say a political outcast, there's a single point of failure in getting debanked. Not good.

I do like processing fees down, but definitely not at the cost of creating a single point of failure with power over the entire population.

schubidubiduba• 3 months ago

Visa and Mastercard already are a single point of failure (see e.g. the French judge that cannot use it anymore because the US government did not like it when he did his job). This way, there'll be at least two points of failure.

kwanbix• 3 months ago

VISA an MasterCard have Credit Cards. Pix is just a way to transfer money you have in your bank account. In europe we can do that with IBAN. It goes from one account to another. In Argentina we have something similar in all banks. What is unike from VISA and MasteCard, at least untill now, is the Credit part of it.

janpeuker3• 3 months ago

Lots of other Asian countries already did something similar, e.g. Singapore had PayNow QR Codes (probably the closest to Pix) since 2017, Thai PromptPay was even earlier and India UPI (slightly different wallet system) since 2016. China was even earlier but different though private superapps.

What has changed, and I find interesting, is that Card rails are more and more used for political pressure [1], and I feel the "American hemisphere" is probably the reason Pix gets more of this pressure than Asian countries.

1) https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-strongly-rejects-new-us-san...

pjg2• 3 months ago

There is nothing preventing PIX from going global (just like VISA/MC). If you look at the history of domestic systems e.g. China Unipay, India UPI/Rupay, Japan JCB they started off as local systems and went global.

Japan JCB is Internationally accepted. China Unipay is also considerably "international" i.e. internationally accepted and India's UPI/Rupay card is adding new countries at a fast clip. The reason most people "don't know" whether they can pay with China Unipay or India's Rupay is because they are not advertised with the same logos as VISA/MC on acceptance sites.

However both China Unipay and India's Rupay through their partnership with Discover Card (now owned by CapitalOne ) are accepted anywhere Discover card is accepted

The place where these "domestic" systems haven't quite measured up to VISA/MC is the issuing side i.e. the entities controlling these systems currently do not allow foreign banks to issue cards with their logos or use their network to settle the transactions. If you're in the US, you may not get a Unipay or Rupay card from a local bank. There are multiple reasons for that, some strategic some political.

It will be interesting to see how they evolve over time. In spite of the exponential rise of PIX , UPI and Unipay, VISA and MC themselves have been doing remarkably well in the past 10-20 years. Unlikely either of them will go belly up.

sfifs• 2 months ago

Visa and Master have basically lost the enormous India market outside of credit card business when UPI was more or less mandated by the Indian Reserve Bank and really took off during COVID. Now these regional payment networks are starting to be interconnected like UPI with Singapore's NETS etc. This must be driving intense paranoia among payment networks.

sschueller• 3 months ago

The Swiss nation bank and other central banks should also do something similar. They are loosing control to private foreign corporations which decide what you can and can not purchase. Not based on laws but on risk.

One of the jobs of the SNB is to enable payments. But because most people are using digital payments now they are loosing this ability and control.

If you get sanctioned by the US you loose access to all digital payment systems. In Switzerland where access to a bank account is a right written in the law you can only use one bank (Postfinance) and this bank has to limit you to basically a useless account (No wires, no credit cards etc.) because even the internal digital payment system (Twint) touches some US system.

ares623• 3 months ago

If there is a company in New Zealand working on a similar system, I'd love to hear about it because I would like to work for you.

glimshe• 3 months ago

Pix is a great alternative for cash but a poor alternative for credit card. The safety is abysmal IMHO.

fodkodrasz• 3 months ago

I guess this is largely equivalent to Qvik in Hungary.

- Instantenous transfers (<5 sec hard requirement, usually sub-second) between local banks, - All local banks must implement support (not sure about the deadline, system is working reliably since a few years), - money can be sent or requested (needs approval, of course). - Primary IDs (bank account numbers) and optional secondary IDs (Phone number, email address) can be used - Supports QR codes for requests, - Free from any transfer costs for private people (not sure about companies) under 20M HUF (~50k EUR).

It is implemented using an Erlang according to my information, and is a very robust, well designed and tested scalable system.

uxhacker• 3 months ago

You actually have many alternative money transfer systems around the world.

Like Qvik you mention, UPI in India, Blik in Poland, and Swish in Sweden.

Even cross border systems like Revolut pay.

Surprisingly the first system started with MPESA in Kenya. Showing that innovation can happen Africa, and does not need to limited to Europe or the USA.

u8080• 3 months ago

+SBP in Russia with similar qualities. Russia also implemented compatible Visa/MC backbone which allowed friction-less migration after both companies left country at 2022.

aretology• 3 months ago

I have a credit card from BB, and I also use pix from time to time but not as much as a credit card. When Uncle Sam started bullying PIX I did what I never thought I would actually do. Since I can't stop using credit card (because it's helpful in my life) I canceled my Visa card with BB and requested ELO cc, created in 2011 by Bradesco, Banco do Brasil, and Caixa, not regretting anything. Blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours shine any brighter.

pedroneto3• 3 months ago

I am Brazilian and I can tell PIX is the future of transactions. It's free (until now), fast and easy. All the world should adept it, plus with bitcoin at my opinion

yakkomajuri• 3 months ago

TIL that there are fees for Pix under certain circumstances (e.g. as a business receiving payments). I mostly use Pix for person-to-person transactions, and those are free (and instantaneous).

I don't even remember how we used to split bills back in the day anymore.

silexia• 3 months ago

The article is very hard to read with all of the ads on the site.

2025080421473• 3 months ago

Looking forward to a European-wide payment system. Sure, there are apps probably in each individual country that you can use to pay (via a QR code) or easily transfer money (usually using a phone number). But there are cases like renting a car or paying abroad which are not covered. Seems a bit crazy considering this is a common market. Why don't these apps look to expand more aggresively in the EU? I know there's Wero, but why aren't they more bald in their approach? I also know there's the digital euro promoted by the European Commission, but I'm not holding my breath for that. It takes way too long and my feeling is that it is being used mostly to pressure the US. I don't think we'll be able to use it anytime soon.

LeonidasXIV• 3 months ago

Yes, I agree. It's a bit weird because finally, after decades SEPA ICT is here and could be used to back this thing. It just needs to be more user-friendly.

mg794613• 3 months ago

Visa and Mastercard are just secret services of the USA by now.

Couldn't be more glad that Trump is unknowingly bringing down that hegemony and freeing us from the arm twisting USA.

Don_pelvis• 3 months ago

Brazilian here! For people from other countries, I can say with 100% certainty: There's not a single chance of Brazil's Pix going away — even if a far-right government wins and aligns with the USA. Even then, it's impossible. The ONLY way this could ever happen is if the USA invades Brazil.

skeeter20204• 3 months ago

Visa and MC definitely use their consumer features (subsidized by merchants) to help maintain the duopoly, and a huge one is global acceptance. Does something like Pix require a strong, trustworthy central bank, and can it work outside of your home country? Or do even modern banking countries run into the LCD issue with international settlement?

cbgonz• 3 months ago

I´m always baffled by the fact that PIX discussions (almost?) never address issues of privacy: the whole system is offered (and run) by the Brazilian central bank. Due to its popularity here, the central bank has enormous, detailed and live insight into a citizen´s financial life.

Even the dullest and most unimaginative civil servant / tax office employee / security or police member must have wet dreams imagining all the possibilities...

DanielHB6• 3 months ago

Yeah, but it is technically protected by "Sigilo bancário" law:

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigilo_banc%C3%A1rio

Meaning you need a court order to get access to personal transfer statements and the government already forced private institutions from reporting certain types of transactions to the central government.

It is not ideal, since this is not a constitutional right, just a law. But not that different from how it was before. However I believe the central bank can use anonamized data, which can be a good (analytics on where population spend money) or a bad (cracking down on certain types of business) thing.

Also it has come to a point that data going to private companies (like VISA/Mastercard) always ends up sold to private (and usually foreign) data-brokers to make profiles on you, at least the gov doesn't do that*. The main argument is that PIX is killing cash transactions, that is the _real_ loss here.

Like the political targeted ads backed by Russia during the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal, preventing foreign companies from analytics on your population is now a national security concern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

Scoring6931• 3 months ago

As if Visa and Mastercard did not sell customer data...

hmokiguess• 3 months ago

It's baffling to me how the US thinks they are entitled to anything related to this. Calling Visa and Mastercard global credit companies is a stretch, they're clearly American monopolies.

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

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