Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

As a foreigner that visited Brazil for some weeks, I found the ubiquity of the PIX payment system to be a handicap for tourists visiting the country.

PIX is only for locals as you need to register with a CPF (Brazil ID number which is hard and tedious to get as a tourist). I ran into many scenarios where the only option was to pay with PIX and the staff aren't used to tourists and look at you funny when you explain you can't use PIX.

Also beyond PIX, if you try to book buses, planes, or take out a gym membership, while you're within the country, 99% of the time it's shockingly impossible to pay without a CPF, even by credit and debit card. I've even seen this for paying the laundry machine.

I'm sure the PIX system is great for Brazilians, and it was helpful having a local friend to make payments on my behalf, but Brazil really lives in a bubble where it seems a side-effect of their system is making things actively very hard for visitors to operate within the country.

Sounds similar to China / WeChat situation, from what I've read previously

> many scenarios where the only option was to pay with PIX

I guess you want to say "only option _beyond cash_ was Pix". Most places should accept Passport ID to replace CPF. But if you found hard to pay using credit cards, that has nothing to do with Pix...

You mean online right? Credit/debit card payment gateways are a little cumbersome for foreigners not only because they are a small amount of customers, but also because it opens a window for card fraud, which in Brazil, the online stores have to paid for it (as it is a non-physical credit card use).

Apparently Wise had a PIX functionality here in Brazil, but it seems that they removed it for some reason.

It's now quite trivial to connect a foreign credit/debit card to Wepay, and it worked flawlessly on a recent trip. (This was very much not the case only a few years ago.)

It might have worked for you but it's still not trivial. There's many hoops to jump through still like random ID verifications, many banks not being supported to be linked, account locks that can only be unblocked by having a WeChat contact vouch for you etc.

This was the case when I jumped through those hoops in 2019, but it's much more straightforward now. Passport, phone number (doesn't have to Chinese) plus credit/debit card unlocks up to RMB 50,000/mo, with no fees for transactions under RMB 200.

https://www.china-briefing.com/news/wechat-enables-foreigner...

That article is from 2023, things changed a lot in the past years. I just clicked on "Top up balance" (while being located in China) and it says "Please add a debit card issued by a Chinese Mainland bank to use the top-up function".

If you have a foreign credit card, there's no need to maintain a balance at all, transactions are passed through directly.

And yes, of course there are limits on what you can do as a visitor, but for normal touristy stuff it's quite sufficient.