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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

(www.economist.com)
666 points jcartw | 3 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:59 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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marcodiego ◴[08 Apr 25 11:55 UTC] No.43620631[source]▶
I'm a Brazilian. Everything here can be paid through pix. It's very convenient, fast reliable and, for a country like ours where walking on the streets with money is a risk, safe.

There's only one reason I don't use it: there's no FLOSS app (AFAIK) to use it.

Something as common as the dominant payment system should not depend on proprietary software.

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JusticeJuice ◴[08 Apr 25 11:59 UTC] No.43620665[source]▶
> Something as common as the dominant payment system should not depend on proprietary software.

Name one dominant payment system worldwide that doesn't? Banks are proprietary, credit cards are proprietary, paypal, crypto is all proprietary.

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Asraelite ◴[08 Apr 25 12:06 UTC] No.43620732[source]▶
> crypto is all proprietary

What?

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Etheryte ◴[08 Apr 25 12:08 UTC] No.43620747[source]▶
I think a steelmanned version of their comment is that crypto apps are proprietary, which I think is mostly true. There are open source apps, but most of the big ones are all proprietary.
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1. NiloCK ◴[08 Apr 25 12:22 UTC] No.43620862[source]▶
I still don't really get this. Do you mean that frent-ends have proprietary code?

Contracts on-chain can be slightly inscrutable in their bytecode format, but it's pretty uncommon for smart contracts to not be published with source code and a verifiable build.

Example, picked randomly from a transaction in a recent block: https://etherscan.io/address/0x388c818ca8b9251b393131c08a736...

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2. Etheryte ◴[08 Apr 25 12:28 UTC] No.43620926[source]▶
Apps as in applications, contracts are not apps.
3. JusticeJuice ◴[09 Apr 25 02:32 UTC] No.43628385[source]▶
> Do you mean that front-ends have proprietary code?

Yes, sorry for not being clear, but this is what I meant. When the average person uses crypto, they're not using an open source app to buy/sell it. They'll be doing it through a propriety service, with a non-open source front-end. That service will build on top of a lot of great open source tech yes, but the final layer is very likely a private company.

I know there are open source options, but my understanding is the overwhelming majority of human trades won't be using them. My point is, refusing to use pix because there's not an open source mobile app is odd to me.