People underestimate how difficult it was to transfer money before Pix, even between local banks. The process was hard to use, it could take days and the fees were huge, depending on your bank. Pix solved all these problems.

What happens also is that many sellers provide discounts when using Pix, because you dodge the expensive fees charged not only by Visa and MasterCard, but the fees operators (banks, fintechs) charge to provide the infrastructure (PoS machines, financing for installments, etc, the last one being quite common in the country) to use these networks.

▲

cassianoleal 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I worked in a bank in Brazil in the early 2000s. Bank transfers were always easy and relatively quick. At worst, transfers would happen overnight during a national event called bank compensation where all banks would sync up with the Central Bank.

Pix solved a bunch of problems and made all of the above quicker and easier, but Brazil has been at the forefront of banking systems for a long time.

▲

augusto-moura 4 hours ago | parent [-]

We had TED, but it was not instant, nor was it free. It only worked on working hours and took a maximum of 1h, still better than American banks, though. QR Codes is also a big deal.

The deployment of PIX was also really well executed, if it took too much I'm 100% sure that Visa and Master would've made it worse. Being quick was a wise decision

	▲	cassianoleal 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> We had TED, but it was not instant, nor was it free. Not instant, but pretty close for the time. It might not have been free but most basic bank packages had a bunch of TED transfers included. For everything else, there was still DOC which would happen overnight and was either free or cheaper than TED. I'm not dissing Pix in any way. Pix is probably the most advanced transfers and payments system in the world, and I'm 100% with you on how well it was (and still is) executed. I was mostly responding to: > how difficult it was to transfer money before Pix, even between local banks. It was certainly not. I remember being in the UK a couple years after I was on that bank, and being shocked at how primitive everything related to banking was. Transfers would take days or even weeks and would be incredibly awkward to make. Cheques were the quickest way to transfer money between people - other than cash, obviously, but that was not always desired. A few years later I visited the US and it was even more retrograde than what I had seen in the UK all those years before.

▲

protastus 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think we need to put this in context for folks who are not from Brazil.

Comparatively, a domestic bank wire in Brazil before Pix was already easier and faster than one in the US today. I don't recall the bank fees being bad either.

The issue is that bank wires were never designed for buying lunch at the food court. They're not instant and not user friendly to set up.

Pix is alien technology next to the stuff we have in the US.

▲

Freak_NL 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It sounds a bit like the Dutch Tikkie with the QR codes and instant transfer. Of course, in the EU most bank wires are already free when using SEPA, and often nearly instant as well. This Tikkie thing is a way to easily create a payment request for people who can't be arsed to simply carry cash (and raise the country's resilience to system failure in the process).

▲

iurisilvio 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Brazilian living in NL, experienced in both. I think biggest difference is Tikkie doesn't give you an easy identifier. Great for privacy, but being able to send money to your email/phone number makes a difference for some real time use cases. QR code helps, but it is not the same.

	▲	usrnm 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		IBAN works pretty ok as an identifier when you need that. Bank transfers between Dutch banks are almost instant anyway

▲

12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲

jszymborski 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would you say that Pix is comparable to Canada's Interac Debit?

▲

protastus 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Speaking as a non-expert, I think Pix has much bigger scope. Pix is account-to-account. One can buy real estate, pay bills, make person-to-person and business-to-business transactions, government payments, recurring payments. The funds also settle instantly.

Most people don't experience the full scope of Pix which is impressive.

	▲	adrithmetiqa 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The credit card companies really missed the boat here to become the standard for consumer to consumer payments. Of course, from their perspective, they know that people would not accept having to pay for this service so the companies won’t go near it.

▲

johnea 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The entire problem solved by Pix is an artificially created obstacle put in place so banks can charge for something they do for free.

The article doesn't mention China's digital renminbi, but it is similar, including the aspect of being offered by the country's central bank.

Rather than this looking like "Alien tech" in the US, it's just another example of things in the US looking more like stone age tech to the rest of the world.

Like banned chinese EVs, and a pushback on solar electricity generation, all of these are manifestations of the US government primarily making it easier for multi-billion $$ multi-national corpses to filch the general population.

This isn't just the orange cheato, it's been the policy of every modern US administration, with the backing of the majority of the legislature.

And for some reason, the plurality of voters seem to be in favor.