Posted by wslh 19 hours ago
I went back to Brazil a few years ago for a couple of weeks, and a kid on the streets asked me if I could buy some chewing gum and help him out. I wanted to, but I had no cash, so I told him I had no cash at all.
He said "It's fine, just send me some with Pix".
I still remember the incredulous look on his face when I told him I also didn't have Pix. He was certain I was lying. "_Everyone_ has it. How come you don't?"
Some stores only accept Pix and don’t want Visa or cash. As a tourist, you end up unable to access a lot of things because, well, we don’t have Pix.
While I was in Brazil, some thugs with pistols came into a bar where I was. They forced people to send a Pix payment to a specific account, and their money was gone. In the credit card era, I guess the companies, insurance providers, and banks could reverse the transaction and cover the losses. With Pix, as I understand it, nobody feels responsible for it and the money is gone.
Why would you let America take 2-3% of your transaction volumes?
It perhaps made sense when the technology was difficult, and America was trusted, but ...
Visa charges only a Assessment fee the majority goes to Issuer Bank +PSP.
E.g: Interchange fee (0.8-1.8%): Paid by acquirer to issuer (card-holding bank)
Assessment fee (0.1-0.3%): Paid to card network (Visa, Mastercard)
Acquirer margin (0.3-0.8%): Retained by merchant’s payment processor
Card networks' moat is their network effect. If you need to take a payment from someone around the world, cards are very convenient. Unless Pix and friends get to interop globally, cards will always have a place.
If these networks cannot run this for free, then they should be nationalised and tax payer should cover it. It will be cheaper (because it will become non-profit) for everyone and better.
I don't think VISA/Mastercard takes such a fee? (They'd be some of the biggest companies in the world if they did.)
The fees they charge are actually fractions of a percent, the rest are charged by the card issuer, which is usually your bank.
You could, in theory, use the VISA network and not pay those fees to a card issuer.
There's absolutely no reason for a country to outsource paynent infrastructure to US corporations.
You can not. The only way is to have a private agreement with the card issuer. That's why stores all try to push their co-branded cards.
Many countries do, it's really more common than you might think. The problem is international payments and things like tourism. Want to order something from another country? Want to go there for a week and not have to use cash? In most cases it's either Visa or MasterCard.
And yes, every country should have this. Even America
Many of the european countries have their own "Pix", but there's no European-wide alternative. The ECB wants to make one (tentatively titled "digital euro"), but it's going to take a long time to come out.
My local app (MB Way, PT) can be used to send money to Spain and Italy. Others will follow.
https://www.mbway.pt/a-interoperabilidade-e-o-futuro-dos-pag... (link in portuguese)
And spy on every single transaction
But in 2026 data moves in a micro second from one continent to another.
If he cedes to the pressure, odds are he will so completely destroy his popularity that he won't even be able to be a candidate. He almost certainly knows that.
The pressure is irrelevant. Pix is not going away.
Indonesia's electronic wallet have two tiers, unverified and verified. You don't even need a bank account (because most people don't), just a local number (which even tourist can buy easily at airport), with the limitation on unverified tier is that you can only top it up (by cash if you don't have local bank account) and spend it on merchant, no receiving nor sending money. There's also transaction limit but most of the population won't cross that in normal days.