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666 points jcartw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.24s | source
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afarah1 ◴[] No.43620640[source]
WhatsApp is omnipresent for communication in Brazil, and WhatsApp Pay was ready before Pix, but the government blocked the launch to launch Pix first.[1] I rarely see this mentioned.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/brazil-suspends-w...

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paintbox ◴[] No.43620799[source]
It's a question of national security not to let Meta eat that cake, and Brasil made the right choice.

Tangentially related, I've heard talk of EU alternative to VISA and Mastercard, which I also believe is the right direction.

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afarah1 ◴[] No.43620945[source]
WhatsApp Pay is available today in Brazil. The official reason for blocking the launch was missing paperwork, but word on the street at the time was that it was to favor Pix. This is all mentioned in the Retuers article. The reasons for favoring Pix are left for one to speculate. You say national security, the other says financial surveillance and control over the population. Time will tell.
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ave_b_2011 ◴[] No.43621094[source]
Financial surveillance would happen either way. It’s either from your government or to a foreign company, bundled and sold en mass.
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1. afarah1 ◴[] No.43621192[source]
In this case, maybe. But it's not the only option. The old payment system was a bit more private, as payments went through commercial banks and one needed a court order to access transaction history. According to The Economists' article the instant payment system in other countries adopts a similar scheme, which is more private than Brazil's, and which could have been adopted here too. Also, there exists technology today enabling private micro-transactions, such as Monero. But governments - including Brazil's - prevent exchanges to offer it. Europe is no different.[1] One may argue this prevents abuse, which may be true, but it also prevents financial privacy.

[1] https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/support-for-mon...