Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

> Pix can't facilitate cross-border micro payments.

No reason it couldn't. Bizum (mobile payments in Spain) started with just Spain but can now be used for payments across & to/from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Andorra.

Bizum is also a member of European Mobile Payment Systems Association which I think will eventually lead to all members being able to make transfers to other members, but that might a somewhat dream rather than actual reality today.

there's a lot of reasons that it won't happen anytime soon. Those countries use euro as their main currency, also culturally and historically connected, which you can call them latins. Why don't you add Denmark to that group ? You can't because it will take ages :)

All Eurozone countries, all bu one an EU member (and that one is very small has a very close trade deal with the EU) so not really cross border except from a certain legalistic angle.

The practicalities are very different from transferring between say Brazil and the US.

> so not really cross border except from a certain legalistic angle

Is this a joke? Of course it's cross-border, it crosses international borders. It works because the countries involved put in the work to make it easy. The fact that you can't use Pix in the US has no bearing.

> The fact that you can't use Pix in the US has no bearing.

The comment I replied to was claiming Bizum operating "cross border" showed that Pix could do so, so it is very much relevant in context.

It is a very special case of cross border. It is technically cross border but does not have the difficulties of cross border in all of the rest of the world outside the EU.

In any case it is arguable whether these are separate countries or just states of the EU. It has a common currency, a parliament that can legislate (in certain matters - rather like the US Congress) for the whole EU, courts, a central bank, a public prosecutor and many other "national" institutions etc. it also have the symbols of a state such as a flag and a national anthem (albeit both shared with the Council of Europe), EU passports state they are EU as well as the issuing country's name etc.

Even if you do regard it as a cross border one it is very much atypical and cannot be replicated elsewhere.

The United Nations has a flag and anthem too.

The umbrella interoperability initiative that includes Bizum is Swiss (neither EU nor Eurozone).

Maybe you have a radical viewpoint, or maybe you're just unfamiliar with the subject matter, but individual EU countries are very much separate entities, notwithstanding many helpful treaties.

There are lots of transnational entities like the EU and monetary unions like the Eurozone.

There's nothing so special about this arrangement that means it couldn't happen elsewhere.

https://empsa.org/news/leading-european-mobile-payment-solut...

> All Eurozone countries, all bu one an EU member (and that one is very small has a very close trade deal with the EU) so not really cross border except from a certain legalistic angle.

So what? Sweden has it's own Swish system, Sweden is well integrated in EU, Europe and Eurozone yet it only works within Sweden AFAIK.

That Bizum works across four countries is not a given just because they're all within the Eurozone. Just like how Brazil and US would need to figure out how to send electronic money between themselves if Pix was available in both countries, so did Italy<>Spain<>Portugal when it came to Bizum, which is a private company btw.

But for similar application, you could use MobilePay (Vipps?). That works across Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

So although only Finland uses Euro (and rest have their own currency), you can easily transfer money between persons using just their mobile number as an example.

> The umbrella interoperability initiative that includes Bizum is Swiss (neither EU nor Eurozone).

and yet Switzerland is not one of the countries where Bizum can be used?

The UN does not have a common currency or a parliament etc.

You can, just the central bank /regulator of that country needs to want it. Example: Sweden, which now transacts on SEPA, jointly with EUR currency.

According to the wiki page for pix, Italy is in talks with Brazil to implement the exact same system.

Across the whole EU, there's already a pretty low limit on card transactions and a deadline of later this year for banks to implement SEPA instant transfers.