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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: 0.289s | 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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1. matheusmoreira ◴[09 Apr 25 20:20 UTC] No.43637403[source]▶
> There's only one reason I don't use it: there's no FLOSS app (AFAIK) to use it.

And there will never be one. Not too long ago I actually gave this a try. Tried to coordinate with my bank's managers and everything. I didn't even intend to publish the result, I just didn't want to use the bank's shitty apps anymore. Turns out that in order to touch the banking system you need an actual company with special permission from the central bank.

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

Cryptocurrency is the only way to make that a reality. The sooner people accept this, the better.