This is hands down one of the best instant payment platforms at the moment. Only India's UPI can match it in features, and China and Thailand in adoption. Most Western countries have had a (somewhat timid) taste of instant payments, but most don't know what it means to just drop credit and debit cards and cash altogether for a system that is not just universally adopted (from apps to flea markets to online payments and subscriptions), but preferred by merchants and consumers alike.
Obviously credit cards give you credit, if that's what you want/need, maybe a postponement until your monthly statement is closed, or chargebacks and maybe insurance, but CCs should be an exception, not the norm they are now, with a bunch of embedded costs we all pay for, one way or another.
Systems like these are very common in Europe. Here in Norway, you can pay for almost anything, anywhere with Vipps. It works very similarly to Brazilian Pix. Another system I have used in the past is the Portuguese MBWay which although similar to Pix and Vipps, doesn’t seem to be as widely adopted as the former.
Interesting these platforms have existed for so long now (MBWay from 2014 and Pix 2016 if I’m not mistaken). I recall, back when it was launched, explaining it to friends in other countries (ie. UK) how good it was, not only the seamless payment network shared with friends, but also to be able to spin virtual cards with fixed value for online payments, and getting a puzzled reaction, “is that even legal?”
Credit cards give me cashback, worldwide acceptance and peace of mind. The country I live in, Switzerland, has a very widely accepted QR-based payment system... but credit cards (in mobile wallets) are more convenient, safer, faster. The only time I use the QR codes is when a merchant doesn't have a card terminal.
Poland has the fantastic BLIK system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik
Used country-wide, it's popular enough that global stores allow using it, like AliExpress or Steam.
It may be good, but what does the Brazilian law say[0]?
In 2021, Brazil enacted Law No. 14.063, which governs the digitalization of public services. Its Article 16 is clear:
“Information and communication systems developed exclusively by the public administration shall be governed by open-source licenses, allowing their unrestricted use, copying, modification, and distribution by all public agencies and entities.”
In short, software developed solely by the public sector—funded with taxpayer money and intended to serve the public interest—must be made available under an open-source license.
Pix is exposed to a legal instrument called 'Mandado de Segurança'.
> This is hands down one of the best instant payment platforms at the moment. Only India's UPI can match it in features, and China and Thailand in adoption.
I'm not familiar with Pix or UPI, so out of curiosity, how are they better than Alipay/WeChat Pay (which I am familiar with)?
> … CCs should be an exception, not the norm they are now, with a bunch of embedded costs we all pay for, one way or another.
To spell it out, the merchant pays fees to the payment processor and carries risk (chargebacks, etc) and these costs are included (“embedded”) in the purchase price of whatever you’re buying.
Moving to instant pay moves these risks to the purchaser, which is probably not ideal for the merchant because it forces purchasers to be more careful with their spending. New merchants in particular would have to work harder to establish their reputation. Larger merchants would probably start offering credit again.
Where “insta pay” shines is for merchants with less credit worthy customers, because it allows them to operate online and in an electronic world. Currently in the U.S. that job is done with cash, but perhaps very soon with privately issued stablecoins. I guess the big question is whether the U.S. government should issue a stablecoin or similar electronic cash-like thing.
Developed countries (like the US) do have these capabilities, there's fed now in the US, but the banks have captured the government apparatus so that the government can't force it to become the default cos they wouldn't be making interest money on the cash they get to hold without instant payments.
While it is a private service by a company called Mercado Libre (which means Free Market), in Argentina we have Mercado Pago (which means Market Pay), has instant payments and it is free for 99% of the people that do P2P transactions. It is free for anyone, meaning, you don't pay to use it. You only need your national document. Of course, after seeing the success, the banks tried to implement MODO, but it was already too late.
Malaysia has duitnow which they recently started making it international. You can buy a coffee in Thailand with a duitnow wallet (ie: BigPay). It is also integrated with AliPay, so you can pay wherever AliPay is accepted (most of China).
I honestly think, at this point, they should just drop the bomb; take their currency to the blockchain (stablecoin) and make the wallets fully connectable to the crypto ecosystem. China doesn't seem keen to take a more open role to capital markets, so there is a void there.
agreed. Additionally it may reduce the power of fringe groups from pressuring private companies who are doing legal business. The recent Steam and itch.io takedowns due to collective shout come to mind.
Last week Trump targeted Pix and Brazil for discriminating against Mastercard and Visa[0]. Also last week there was the Steam debacle involving the same two companies which brought attention to the power that this duopoly holds all across the world. In Brazil many people, if not the majority use interest free instalments to pay for anything above groceries - “parcelas”, all of which, until now, were done through Mastercard & Visa. So this is yet another blow to these companies and perhaps accelerated by Trump’s threats.
It also highlights how desperately the EU is behind other countries in this space, with the news of the dependence on Azure and their aims to decouple from the US.
It’s a nice apt story for what’s being going on this last week.
yes, but at the moment the user facing interfaces are not greate (in most countries, they are pretty good in some countries)
- sending money (P2P, P2B, B2B) often requires manually entering a IBAN in your banking app/website (_except in some countries_, and some systems on top of it can also reduce the friction) which is okay for many P2P use cases but not good for physical shop checkout P2B use case or ad hoc bill sharing use case in P2P (also compared to some other solutions this often comes with less consumer protections)
- doesn't interface (well) with the card payment/payment terminal ecosystem (but technically can and you do find it in some edge cases)
- fast (in seconds) payment cost extra and price is bank/country dependent (through in some countries it's free or consistently "cheap" e.g. a fixed 15ct(€) independent of amount and recipient)
but this is likely too change, some countries have already put up standards for more convenient P2P (and P2B??) payment methods and they seem to be in the process of being adapted EU wide (but not necessary UK and other non EU SEPA members)
in addition there are standardized interfaces for 3rd parties companies to link up with SEPA and/or you bank account which do technically allow companies to innovate on improvements. Practically this often runs into issues, 1) from a consumer POV in many (not all) EU countries the state of card payment is just fine and convenient features like easy bill sharing many people either don't need or don't know what they miss out on. 2) many issues are on the (physical) shop side, but you need to provide things users can use and having multiple systems in parallel is often not very practical, 3) at the same time without shops allowing new systems customer don't have any reason to adapt such new systems
anyway all of this likely will improve quite a bit relatively soon
From the comments it seems it supports direct person to person transfers, but how easy is it to use it for payments? Can you use SEPA to pay for your groceries? Or buy something on the Internet?
> It also highlights how desperately the EU is behind other countries in this space,
(you seem to be drifting into the server center topic but I will take "this space" as payment processing)
It's complicated, EU has many payment standards which 1) are required between banks, and 2) theoretically allow integration with new payment processing methods needing only the end-users agreement not the banks. So you can relatively easily send money between people (and to company accounts, too) without touching visa/mastercard at all (how easy that "relative part" does still vary a lot tho. (Also if you are willing to pay a fixed up price (commonly free or 15ct) also fast, like in seconds).
At the same time when it comes to 1) banking cards, 2) payment terminals, pretty much everything is build on Mastercard/Visa (where I live mostly Visa). Like there is no competition when it comes to the secure chips this systems use. (But then both PayPall and pretty much all of China have kinda shown you don't really need them as long as you have internet, which payment terminal often need to for any non very small payment amounts). Also because people are so used to a well working reasonable secure card payment system many tries to push for app based alternatives kinda fail, sure due to their dominant position in online shopping Paypal is still a thing, but also commonly relegate to at most one of multiple options in online shopping. Just to be clear the exact dynamics differ _vastly_ between country in the EU.
Any I really don't like the generic pay in rates functionality, it's a trap which really can fuck up peoples life (similar to using the dipso all the time/not getting out of it, or large credit boundary or however it's called for credit cards; to be honest dispo tends to be worse tho).
"interest free" deserves quotes. It appears to be so because the installments have the same value but in reality it's priced in the overall length vs price.
The installment culture is so pervasive in Brazil a lot of places don't even bother to show the full price (a vista). And some of them refuse to give a discount if you want to pay the full price now. Not because it doesn't make economic sense, but it's simply not an option a regular employee in major retail stores is even allowed to do, as companies default marketing and systems to installment payments.
I believe the greatest story behind Brazil's Pix, India's UPI and Kenya's Mpesa is the emergence of a lot new forms of money.
We will have strong national currencies supported by these payment systems, destroying Visa and Mastercard and hurting PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. These systems have a lot more potential than most people imagine (e.g.: micro lending , even for illiterate people).
We will have "gangster money", a.k.a. crypto currencies, to sustain illegal activities. There is no other use case for crypto, only this.
And we will probably have "economic blocs" money (e.g.: whatever thing the BRICS come up with).
In this scenario I'd hope for a big change in the international payments system.
The dollar will not have one rival, will have many. I hope it dies by a thousand cuts.
In a sense, Trump's rant against Pix is promoting it to the world. Moreover, some stores in Portugal and more recently France are accepting Pix as form of payment.
I wonder what the total value to the Brazilian economy is to keep Visa/MasterCard's cut of so many transactions in Brazil instead of being siphoned offshore.
When I first moved to LatAm, the cashiers always asked how many "cuotas" I wanted to pay. I was initially confused and realized it meant I could take a (interest free?) loan to pay for my purchases in installments.
I never understood how this was common in high interest countries in LatAm, but unheard of in the USA.
Does anyone know? Like actually know, not speculating.
This is such good news. The amount of value extracted of the brazillian people from outlandish interest rates from credit cards is unbelievable and this will free all of us from it.
Pix is great now - one concern is that it needs to be nimble enough to evolve as the country does. If it is still meeting the needs of Brazil & Brazilians in 10+ years time that will be an even greater triumph.
Meanwhile to the Brazilian people, congratulations & enjoy being world leaders in payments!
It's time for all of us that travel to have 2 pins: the regular one, and a second one that notifies the issuer that the transaction happens at gunpoint, in which case the amount that can be taken is drastically reduced.
39 comments
[ 1996 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadObviously credit cards give you credit, if that's what you want/need, maybe a postponement until your monthly statement is closed, or chargebacks and maybe insurance, but CCs should be an exception, not the norm they are now, with a bunch of embedded costs we all pay for, one way or another.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...
[1] Polski Standard Płatności S.A. - Polish banks' joint venture, which created and operates BLIK.
In 2021, Brazil enacted Law No. 14.063, which governs the digitalization of public services. Its Article 16 is clear:
“Information and communication systems developed exclusively by the public administration shall be governed by open-source licenses, allowing their unrestricted use, copying, modification, and distribution by all public agencies and entities.”
In short, software developed solely by the public sector—funded with taxpayer money and intended to serve the public interest—must be made available under an open-source license.
Pix is exposed to a legal instrument called 'Mandado de Segurança'.
I have written about it:
https://d1gesto.blogspot.com/2025/06/brazils-pix-system-face...
[0] https://www.gov.br/governodigital/pt-br/plataformas-e-servic...
I'm not familiar with Pix or UPI, so out of curiosity, how are they better than Alipay/WeChat Pay (which I am familiar with)?
To spell it out, the merchant pays fees to the payment processor and carries risk (chargebacks, etc) and these costs are included (“embedded”) in the purchase price of whatever you’re buying.
Moving to instant pay moves these risks to the purchaser, which is probably not ideal for the merchant because it forces purchasers to be more careful with their spending. New merchants in particular would have to work harder to establish their reputation. Larger merchants would probably start offering credit again.
Where “insta pay” shines is for merchants with less credit worthy customers, because it allows them to operate online and in an electronic world. Currently in the U.S. that job is done with cash, but perhaps very soon with privately issued stablecoins. I guess the big question is whether the U.S. government should issue a stablecoin or similar electronic cash-like thing.
I honestly think, at this point, they should just drop the bomb; take their currency to the blockchain (stablecoin) and make the wallets fully connectable to the crypto ecosystem. China doesn't seem keen to take a more open role to capital markets, so there is a void there.
It also highlights how desperately the EU is behind other countries in this space, with the news of the dependence on Azure and their aims to decouple from the US.
It’s a nice apt story for what’s being going on this last week.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/e17e6de1-d863-46f8-bfab-fa8cbfc49...
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea...
- sending money (P2P, P2B, B2B) often requires manually entering a IBAN in your banking app/website (_except in some countries_, and some systems on top of it can also reduce the friction) which is okay for many P2P use cases but not good for physical shop checkout P2B use case or ad hoc bill sharing use case in P2P (also compared to some other solutions this often comes with less consumer protections)
- doesn't interface (well) with the card payment/payment terminal ecosystem (but technically can and you do find it in some edge cases)
- fast (in seconds) payment cost extra and price is bank/country dependent (through in some countries it's free or consistently "cheap" e.g. a fixed 15ct(€) independent of amount and recipient)
but this is likely too change, some countries have already put up standards for more convenient P2P (and P2B??) payment methods and they seem to be in the process of being adapted EU wide (but not necessary UK and other non EU SEPA members)
in addition there are standardized interfaces for 3rd parties companies to link up with SEPA and/or you bank account which do technically allow companies to innovate on improvements. Practically this often runs into issues, 1) from a consumer POV in many (not all) EU countries the state of card payment is just fine and convenient features like easy bill sharing many people either don't need or don't know what they miss out on. 2) many issues are on the (physical) shop side, but you need to provide things users can use and having multiple systems in parallel is often not very practical, 3) at the same time without shops allowing new systems customer don't have any reason to adapt such new systems
anyway all of this likely will improve quite a bit relatively soon
https://wero-wallet.eu/
how can you discriminate against a duopoly ;)
> It also highlights how desperately the EU is behind other countries in this space,
(you seem to be drifting into the server center topic but I will take "this space" as payment processing)
It's complicated, EU has many payment standards which 1) are required between banks, and 2) theoretically allow integration with new payment processing methods needing only the end-users agreement not the banks. So you can relatively easily send money between people (and to company accounts, too) without touching visa/mastercard at all (how easy that "relative part" does still vary a lot tho. (Also if you are willing to pay a fixed up price (commonly free or 15ct) also fast, like in seconds).
At the same time when it comes to 1) banking cards, 2) payment terminals, pretty much everything is build on Mastercard/Visa (where I live mostly Visa). Like there is no competition when it comes to the secure chips this systems use. (But then both PayPall and pretty much all of China have kinda shown you don't really need them as long as you have internet, which payment terminal often need to for any non very small payment amounts). Also because people are so used to a well working reasonable secure card payment system many tries to push for app based alternatives kinda fail, sure due to their dominant position in online shopping Paypal is still a thing, but also commonly relegate to at most one of multiple options in online shopping. Just to be clear the exact dynamics differ _vastly_ between country in the EU.
Any I really don't like the generic pay in rates functionality, it's a trap which really can fuck up peoples life (similar to using the dipso all the time/not getting out of it, or large credit boundary or however it's called for credit cards; to be honest dispo tends to be worse tho).
The installment culture is so pervasive in Brazil a lot of places don't even bother to show the full price (a vista). And some of them refuse to give a discount if you want to pay the full price now. Not because it doesn't make economic sense, but it's simply not an option a regular employee in major retail stores is even allowed to do, as companies default marketing and systems to installment payments.
There were reports that Apple doesn't want to implement on Apple Pay...
No surprise.
1. Apple is irrelevant in 3rd world countries. It is a luxury brand for millionaires. Doesn't have mass appeal.
2. If Apple were to implement it they wouldn't be able to get away with the huge margins they charge.
We will have strong national currencies supported by these payment systems, destroying Visa and Mastercard and hurting PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. These systems have a lot more potential than most people imagine (e.g.: micro lending , even for illiterate people).
We will have "gangster money", a.k.a. crypto currencies, to sustain illegal activities. There is no other use case for crypto, only this.
And we will probably have "economic blocs" money (e.g.: whatever thing the BRICS come up with).
In this scenario I'd hope for a big change in the international payments system.
The dollar will not have one rival, will have many. I hope it dies by a thousand cuts.
I never understood how this was common in high interest countries in LatAm, but unheard of in the USA.
Does anyone know? Like actually know, not speculating.
Meanwhile to the Brazilian people, congratulations & enjoy being world leaders in payments!
Ave Brasil
[0] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow