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666 points jcartw | 8 comments | | HN request time: 0.955s | source | bottom
1. koyote ◴[] No.43620835[source]
So this sounds just like PayID in Australia or what was payM in the UK (which got shut down a couple of years ago due to lack of use), minus the QR code generation part.

It's used between private people to make it easier to send money to one another without having to type in bank account details, but never really used to pay businesses (except under the table).

How come this is so popular in Brasil for paying businesses vs using a card or your phone to tap and pay (which seems more convenient)?

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2. DanielHB ◴[] No.43620967[source]
Brazil has massive amounts of fraud so credit cards are very inconvenient, card cloning and websites leaking credit card numbers is a huge problem. Banks are super aggressive about blocking cards if they see suspicious transactions. Tap and pay is popular in Brazil as well, but only for physical transactions. For online small purchases PIX is definitely the best option.

PIX (and similar systems like Sweden's Swish/BankID), don't have fraud protection, once you send the money it is gone with no contest possible. But when you send a payment with PIX there is 0 risk your account's money will get highjacked, at most you lose your one transaction.

But PIX is also accepted in many physical places because it has smaller fees, with some stores and informal commerce not accepting cards. I used to work at an IT service provider in Brazil around 2012 and one of the projects my company did was monitoring of those card machines. They actually kept GPS information of the machines and blocked them if they were moved around. Those card machines are surprisingly expensive in Brazil (or at least they used to be).

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3. guax ◴[] No.43621075[source]
The pix revolution is for very small business: food stalls, mom and pop shops, seasonal sellers, street vendors, independent and informal professionals (plumbers, electricians, etc).

Brazil adopted banking cards very fast and I remember using them virtually everywhere in debit or credit mode as early as my first card in 2008, I never had to carry money around. But they require two things that are a problem in a Brazil sized country with a Brazil density and infra structure: cell coverage and equipment. So small towns, small shops, independent professionals, etc would not have them or even be able to use them sometimes. Even today there are lots of places with internet but not cell coverage (radio, fiberglass or other infra but no cell tower).

This was changing on its own recently, many companies launched new machines that are cheaper and allow more small vendors to accept cards (+ working over the internet). This is still worse than the free approach of pix (for normal people) and a potentially lower fee for companies. Plus it allows people to buy with something they will have on them way more than their wallet, their phones.

I was in Brazil last week and I had to use pix only a few times to pay: parking (beach lot), tire fix (very small shop on the road) and thats it, everywhere else I used my credit card. Even though they accept pix, its not that huge of a difference for traditional business as far as I can tell, the payment terminal will also facilite pix transactions.

ps. you can tap and pay with pix too! https://support.google.com/googlepay/answer/14615541

4. pjc50 ◴[] No.43621081[source]
> payM in the UK (which got shut down a couple of years ago due to lack of use)

I'd never even heard of this! Certainly never seen anyone offering it. Guess it got run over by lack of state capacity during Brexit etc.

> paying businesses vs using a card or your phone to tap and pay

These schemes (izettle etc) have higher costs. The poorer the country the more significant a low-cost business TX option is.

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5. moefh ◴[] No.43622345[source]
> once you send the money it is gone with no contest possible

That's not true; PIX requires your bank to provide a way (called "MED"[1]) for you to request a reversal up to 80 (!) days after a transaction. It can only be used in case of fraud, and it may take up to 7 days for the bank to analyze the situation and deny/allow your request. If it's allowed, you'll get the money back in up to 4 days.

If the bank denies the request (i.e., if they conclude there was no fraud) you can always sue the transaction recipient; you'll have access to all necessary information since they must be registered with some financial institution to be able to receive a PIX transaction.

So it's not as easy as a credit card, but I think it's fair for a free payment service.

[1] in Portuguese: https://www.bcb.gov.br/meubc/faqs/p/o-que-e-e-como-funciona-...

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6. koyote ◴[] No.43628267[source]
I remember most banks having it when it first came out, I used it a couple of times to pay friends but few people knew about it.

It was pretty simple and worked well, especially compared to having to give bank account details.

That being said, I am in Australia now which has a similar system and I'd say 95% of my friends just give me the bank details instead of saying 'just use PayId with my phone number'.

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7. girvo ◴[] No.43629324{3}[source]
All my friends just use PayID/phone number or email instead of the bank deets.

The big benefit is really Osko internally, which is what makes the payment instant (except for stupid CommBank)

8. DanielHB ◴[] No.43633177{3}[source]
Oh I didn't know that, the Swedish system doesn't have anything like that as far as I am aware. But credit card fraud reimbursements are relatively straightforward. The PIX one seems more complicated, but the chance of being defrauded on PIX transactions is much smaller as well.

as in you can't get your card cloned and then a bunch of transactions show up.