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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

(www.economist.com)
666 points jcartw | 1 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:59 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bestouff ◴[08 Apr 25 11:47 UTC] No.43620573[source]▶
> Pix has spiced up Brazil’s fusty banking sector, but it gives the central bank a worrying amount of power

I think a largely prefer a government-run payment system than an US company monopoly.

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rebanevapustus ◴[08 Apr 25 12:29 UTC] No.43620937[source]▶
The Brazilian government is a *very* corrupt authoritarian oligarchy. I would take any US company over that any day.
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xinayder ◴[08 Apr 25 12:35 UTC] No.43620990[source]▶
Yet we, a developing "third-world" country, have a better functioning payment system than the US, where it takes days, or even weeks, for a wire transfer to land, and you pay a huge amount of fees for that.

Cases in point:

- To transfer money to a broker, I need to pay around $5 in transfer fees via ACH or wire

- I want to change the custody of my stock market assets from one broker to another, and it will cost me $75 to move $60 worth of shares. Meanwhile, in Brazil, this process is free in every broker.

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ave_b_2011 ◴[08 Apr 25 12:39 UTC] No.43621031[source]▶
I don’t understand this binary. The UK was able to create a near-instant bank transfer system without monopolizing in the same way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments

It costing more for instant transfers is just a regressive tax on the working poor.

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1. xinayder ◴[08 Apr 25 12:45 UTC] No.43621092{3}[source]▶
I can't find the details of the UK system, but it's not "monopolized" in Brazil. Perhaps due to the fact that the infra is provided by the Central Bank, and banks choosing to implement Pix support must implement the Pix APIs in their system.