What a weird spin. You know what worries me, fintech companies? It worries me that decades later the Paypal Mafia still has a full monopoly on recurring international online payments and...
gives the central bank a worrying amount of power
What a weird spin.
(...) 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.
You know what worries me, fintech companies? It worries me that decades later the Paypal Mafia still has a full monopoly on recurring international online payments and international credit card payments with the exception of Google's and Apple's app store niches. It worries me that it's literally impossible to run an international business in Europe without funding the american weirdos proactively trying to destroy the EU. Fintech companies suck.
Brazil's central bank is clearly doing its job. Unless you're this obviously biased, or your goal is tax evasion, I don't see why anyone would worry too much.
I agree. I have long been wishing that the government would create a digital instant payment system that is free to use for regular day to day use. Something that would not only make PayPal...
I agree. I have long been wishing that the government would create a digital instant payment system that is free to use for regular day to day use. Something that would not only make PayPal redundant, but also credit card companies and all of their related vampire middlemen.
Wero might get there in the EU eventually but I was a bit miffed to find out about Spain and Poland pulling out (as detailed in that page). Local solutions always exist, but what we need is a...
Wero might get there in the EU eventually but I was a bit miffed to find out about Spain and Poland pulling out (as detailed in that page). Local solutions always exist, but what we need is a truly international payment solution not beholden to private interests - especially if you live in a 27 country bloc!
Yeah, Wero is one of those projects where, after sufficient trialing, I wouldn’t be against all (edit: member states’) national banks being forced to participate. Payments and business are enough...
Yeah, Wero is one of those projects where, after sufficient trialing, I wouldn’t be against all (edit: member states’) national banks being forced to participate. Payments and business are enough US-dependent as is, no need for the EU population to rely on PayPal for the remaining transactions…
We've had something similar in Portugal for decades, SIBS . It works really well! The interbank cooperation isn't just about ATMs but also online payments including Wero-style and virtual credit...
We've had something similar in Portugal for decades, SIBS . It works really well! The interbank cooperation isn't just about ATMs but also online payments including Wero-style and virtual credit cards. So I can see Portugal integrating easily into a system like Wero. Currently, our system is limited in what you can do internationally; the only payment collection capabilities are one time payments from locals.
Even if it's being managed by all the banks (which are technically private enterprises) rather than directly by a central bank, I'd argue it's much better to have democratized cooperation between a crapton of banks at the EU level than a single foreign corporation calling the shots.
Ehh, there'd be some big pushback against that, because Wero is basically a solution from the French/German banks. There's SIBS in Portugal, Blik in Poland, Bizum in Spain, and probably a handful...
Ehh, there'd be some big pushback against that, because Wero is basically a solution from the French/German banks. There's SIBS in Portugal, Blik in Poland, Bizum in Spain, and probably a handful more that I'm missing out. I'd struggle to see a good reason for the EU trying to force a win for Fr/De banks over those others ... There's already a reasonably well-founded perception that the EU is basically France+Germany+others when it comes to who reaps the most rewards in return for their membership (looking beyond merely financial contributions).
So the next best reasonable-sounding idea would be to combine/integrate these systems then, right? Or at least have them functional in an interoperable state.
So the next best reasonable-sounding idea would be to combine/integrate these systems then, right?
Or at least have them functional in an interoperable state.
Yes, probably, or back them all and let them Darwin it out? I don't know, the environment is such a tricky one for a newcomer to break into, banking, payments, all of that.
Yes, probably, or back them all and let them Darwin it out? I don't know, the environment is such a tricky one for a newcomer to break into, banking, payments, all of that.
Lagarde seems to be suggesting something along those lines as well. Nation-wise we do have some pretty good alternatives in a few cases, e.g. Blik (contactless or OTP) in Poland is probably the...
Nation-wise we do have some pretty good alternatives in a few cases, e.g. Blik (contactless or OTP) in Poland is probably the most popular payment method here and is integrated in all major banks, and similarly IRIS (contactless or QR) is a similar system in Greece that the government has been pushing for in recent years. But it's very rare to see this implemented as a method for international payments.
For such a system (rather than credit/debit cards) I'd assume it's much more likely to see a standardisation in the Eurozone first, and the non-Euro countries later.
I'm not the biggest Lagarde fan, if I'm honest, but I wholeheartedly agree with her here. Right now, the Visa/Mastercard duopoly is essentially a US transaction tax on European (just focusing on...
I'm not the biggest Lagarde fan, if I'm honest, but I wholeheartedly agree with her here. Right now, the Visa/Mastercard duopoly is essentially a US transaction tax on European (just focusing on the European perspective) activity. It'd be great to bring that "in-house", as it were. The associated benefit of possibly shrugging off the corporate moralising re. certain activities would be significant too, in my opinion.
That would be nice, if we could trust our government to do something without being "lobbied" out of the idea by those who will lose out in the deal. The part where it's cheap for retailers is...
That would be nice, if we could trust our government to do something without being "lobbied" out of the idea by those who will lose out in the deal.
The part where it's cheap for retailers is rather appealing. Pix's 0.22% sounds great, everything is several percent higher than it could cost just because everyone compensates for debit and credit card fees.
I'd like a better name than Pix though. US Credit, e-dollar...
Yeah there's a weird disconnect between crypto/fintech people and everyone else where they will talk about central banks like their mere existence is self-evidently terrifying. No I actually want...
Yeah there's a weird disconnect between crypto/fintech people and everyone else where they will talk about central banks like their mere existence is self-evidently terrifying. No I actually want a well -regulated monetary system thank you very much.
They're not on the board of directors. I don't see the relationship between early investors and a large company as being all that close? They probably do take their calls, though.
They're not on the board of directors. I don't see the relationship between early investors and a large company as being all that close? They probably do take their calls, though.
I'm not concerned about their bad decisions when directly running the company - I'm concerned that every time I personally want to accept a payment from a customer, a tiny amount of that payment...
I'm not concerned about their bad decisions when directly running the company - I'm concerned that every time I personally want to accept a payment from a customer, a tiny amount of that payment is likely increasing the value of Musk's fortune. Musk's ridiculous fortune gives him power, and he personally wields that power in ways I don't like or approve of. Thiel is an asshole too.
Pix is a revolution in Brazil. If there's one thing our Central Bank has done right, it's Pix: free of charge (for personal use), mandatory for medium and large banks, frequently updated to...
Pix is a revolution in Brazil. If there's one thing our Central Bank has done right, it's Pix: free of charge (for personal use), mandatory for medium and large banks, frequently updated to address issues as they surface and improve the system, open source, deeply discussed with stakeholders… it's awesome as far as anything related to money can be (not a huge fan of money).
In November 2020 the Central Bank of Brazil (bcb) launched Pix, a digital payment system, into the teeth of the covid-19 pandemic. Avoiding physical contact at a time when that was much desired, instantaneous, free and easy-to-use, Pix took off. Users need the recipient’s national id number, phone number or a qr code to move money. By 2024 (see chart) it had become Brazil’s most popular payment technology, displacing both cash and cards. The number of transactions increased from 9bn in 2021 to 63bn in 2024, moving 26trn reais ($4.5trn). No country has adopted such a system faster.
…
Renato Gomes, one of the eight directors of the BCB, says Pix is fast supplanting cash payments. Cash withdrawals in Brazil are down by nearly 40% from their peak. Pix is expected to overtake credit cards to become the primary method of making online purchases this year. The central bank is constantly adding features to facilitate payments in an ever wider array of scenarios. In February Pix began rolling out contactless payments using smartphones. From June users will be able to use Pix to make recurring payments, such as those for utility bills. All this means more and more money flowing through the banks and retailers’ accounts. Mr Gomes says Pix’s mass adoption may well have boosted productivity. Perhaps coincidentally, Brazil’s gdp growth has beaten expectations for the past three years in a row.
Pix has also helped shake up Brazil’s banks, which used to be highly concentrated. In 2018 six of them accounted for 82% of assets and 86% of loans. Thanks to Pix, smaller firms without resources to open branches or maintain cash machines can now compete. Perhaps the best known of these is NuBank. In 2019 the digital bank, which does not charge users to open an account, had 17m customers in Brazil. In 2024 it surpassed 102m (with another 12m in Mexico and Colombia), becoming the world’s largest digital bank outside China. It has moved into loans, too.
…
Pix was not the first instant-payment method promoted by a central bank in an emerging country. That prize goes to India’s Unified Payments Interface (upi), which was launched in 2016. CoDi, Mexico’s version of Pix, got going in 2019. Yet Pix has been adopted much faster than either upi or CoDi. Other countries are following Brazil’s lead. In February Colombia introduced an instant-payment system, developed in partnership with one of the fintech companies that worked on Pix.
But unlike India, where upi is run by an industry body, Pix is managed entirely by the bcb. Though it consulted with financial institutions during development, the bcb alone runs Pix’s infrastructure and controls the encrypted database that stores all transactions. Virtually all big banks in Brazil were forced to start using Pix when it was launched.
God, I fucking love pix. Everything is easy, with QR codes everywhere in taxis or at the food stand on the street… Bills, online, even restaurants and supermarkets… Nu has a thing now too where...
God, I fucking love pix. Everything is easy, with QR codes everywhere in taxis or at the food stand on the street… Bills, online, even restaurants and supermarkets… Nu has a thing now too where you can use the credit card instead of the bank balance as pix as well, which just seems funny to me. Now if only I could use it at the public transportation instead of a prepaid card or credit card…
I share your love of Pix, but you lost me at "supermarkets". Contactless cards are sooo much faster than waiting for someone with a low end smartphone and bad internet coverage to slowly open...
I share your love of Pix, but you lost me at "supermarkets". Contactless cards are sooo much faster than waiting for someone with a low end smartphone and bad internet coverage to slowly open their banking app and make the payment!
This is fair, but speaking only of my own quickness (with a now-old smartphone) it does mean I don’t have to think about carrying a wallet. It used to be slow and ornerous, but now a few...
This is fair, but speaking only of my own quickness (with a now-old smartphone) it does mean I don’t have to think about carrying a wallet. It used to be slow and ornerous, but now a few supermarkets by me do QR for pix, and it’s nearly as fast as contactless! (Also the BB app is just slow, esp compared to Nu…) We’ll get there.
I agree there's nothing as convenient as tap to pay, that's got to be the gold standard for any new payments system. I appreciate the QR scanning/generation of Alipay and the like in China and the...
I agree there's nothing as convenient as tap to pay, that's got to be the gold standard for any new payments system. I appreciate the QR scanning/generation of Alipay and the like in China and the convenience of mobile phone-linked systems in Europe, but until they add merely touching a device (or some token, like a plastic ard) to pay, they'll struggle to take that market share.
What a weird spin.
You know what worries me, fintech companies? It worries me that decades later the Paypal Mafia still has a full monopoly on recurring international online payments and international credit card payments with the exception of Google's and Apple's app store niches. It worries me that it's literally impossible to run an international business in Europe without funding the american weirdos proactively trying to destroy the EU. Fintech companies suck.
Brazil's central bank is clearly doing its job. Unless you're this obviously biased, or your goal is tax evasion, I don't see why anyone would worry too much.
I agree. I have long been wishing that the government would create a digital instant payment system that is free to use for regular day to day use. Something that would not only make PayPal redundant, but also credit card companies and all of their related vampire middlemen.
Wero might get there in the EU eventually but I was a bit miffed to find out about Spain and Poland pulling out (as detailed in that page). Local solutions always exist, but what we need is a truly international payment solution not beholden to private interests - especially if you live in a 27 country bloc!
Yeah, Wero is one of those projects where, after sufficient trialing, I wouldn’t be against all (edit: member states’) national banks being forced to participate. Payments and business are enough US-dependent as is, no need for the EU population to rely on PayPal for the remaining transactions…
We've had something similar in Portugal for decades, SIBS . It works really well! The interbank cooperation isn't just about ATMs but also online payments including Wero-style and virtual credit cards. So I can see Portugal integrating easily into a system like Wero. Currently, our system is limited in what you can do internationally; the only payment collection capabilities are one time payments from locals.
Even if it's being managed by all the banks (which are technically private enterprises) rather than directly by a central bank, I'd argue it's much better to have democratized cooperation between a crapton of banks at the EU level than a single foreign corporation calling the shots.
Ehh, there'd be some big pushback against that, because Wero is basically a solution from the French/German banks. There's SIBS in Portugal, Blik in Poland, Bizum in Spain, and probably a handful more that I'm missing out. I'd struggle to see a good reason for the EU trying to force a win for Fr/De banks over those others ... There's already a reasonably well-founded perception that the EU is basically France+Germany+others when it comes to who reaps the most rewards in return for their membership (looking beyond merely financial contributions).
So the next best reasonable-sounding idea would be to combine/integrate these systems then, right?
Or at least have them functional in an interoperable state.
Yes, probably, or back them all and let them Darwin it out? I don't know, the environment is such a tricky one for a newcomer to break into, banking, payments, all of that.
Lagarde seems to be suggesting something along those lines as well.
Nation-wise we do have some pretty good alternatives in a few cases, e.g. Blik (contactless or OTP) in Poland is probably the most popular payment method here and is integrated in all major banks, and similarly IRIS (contactless or QR) is a similar system in Greece that the government has been pushing for in recent years. But it's very rare to see this implemented as a method for international payments.
For such a system (rather than credit/debit cards) I'd assume it's much more likely to see a standardisation in the Eurozone first, and the non-Euro countries later.
I'm not the biggest Lagarde fan, if I'm honest, but I wholeheartedly agree with her here. Right now, the Visa/Mastercard duopoly is essentially a US transaction tax on European (just focusing on the European perspective) activity. It'd be great to bring that "in-house", as it were. The associated benefit of possibly shrugging off the corporate moralising re. certain activities would be significant too, in my opinion.
That would be nice, if we could trust our government to do something without being "lobbied" out of the idea by those who will lose out in the deal.
The part where it's cheap for retailers is rather appealing. Pix's 0.22% sounds great, everything is several percent higher than it could cost just because everyone compensates for debit and credit card fees.
I'd like a better name than Pix though. US Credit, e-dollar...
Yeah there's a weird disconnect between crypto/fintech people and everyone else where they will talk about central banks like their mere existence is self-evidently terrifying. No I actually want a well -regulated monetary system thank you very much.
Do you consider Stripe to be part of the Paypal mafia?
It's hard at this point to trust an american payment processor that numbers Thiel and Musk among its early investors.
They're not on the board of directors. I don't see the relationship between early investors and a large company as being all that close? They probably do take their calls, though.
I'm not concerned about their bad decisions when directly running the company - I'm concerned that every time I personally want to accept a payment from a customer, a tiny amount of that payment is likely increasing the value of Musk's fortune. Musk's ridiculous fortune gives him power, and he personally wields that power in ways I don't like or approve of. Thiel is an asshole too.
Pix is a revolution in Brazil. If there's one thing our Central Bank has done right, it's Pix: free of charge (for personal use), mandatory for medium and large banks, frequently updated to address issues as they surface and improve the system, open source, deeply discussed with stakeholders… it's awesome as far as anything related to money can be (not a huge fan of money).
https://archive.ph/pZGLb
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…
God, I fucking love pix. Everything is easy, with QR codes everywhere in taxis or at the food stand on the street… Bills, online, even restaurants and supermarkets… Nu has a thing now too where you can use the credit card instead of the bank balance as pix as well, which just seems funny to me. Now if only I could use it at the public transportation instead of a prepaid card or credit card…
I share your love of Pix, but you lost me at "supermarkets". Contactless cards are sooo much faster than waiting for someone with a low end smartphone and bad internet coverage to slowly open their banking app and make the payment!
This is fair, but speaking only of my own quickness (with a now-old smartphone) it does mean I don’t have to think about carrying a wallet. It used to be slow and ornerous, but now a few supermarkets by me do QR for pix, and it’s nearly as fast as contactless! (Also the BB app is just slow, esp compared to Nu…) We’ll get there.
I agree there's nothing as convenient as tap to pay, that's got to be the gold standard for any new payments system. I appreciate the QR scanning/generation of Alipay and the like in China and the convenience of mobile phone-linked systems in Europe, but until they add merely touching a device (or some token, like a plastic ard) to pay, they'll struggle to take that market share.