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.
It shocks me how well it works sometimes. Literally press pay and move eyeballs to notifications and it's there already.
Most people don't experience the full scope of Pix which is impressive.
It's like WhatsApp but with money!
If the e-krona happens, that would be a better comparison.
It kind of works and Swish does too, unless they're down which happens every now and then, but there is room for improvement that would be easier realised as a public sector endeavour.
People still increasingly pay their rent here via eInterac.
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.
On the former - paying is:
Unlock phone
Launch app
Authenticate
Choose to pay with pix
Scan QR code
Enter amount
Authenticate again
Wait
Payment made
Show cashier your phone
On the single point of failure side of things - I was at an event in Brasilia a month or so back, pix grinds to a crawl, taking 10+ minutes per transaction, and the drinks queues rapidly got out of hand. As nobody accepts cash any more, and because nobody has a card any more, this meant they sold practically no drinks.
So it ain’t bad but tbh passing bits of paper back and forth is still easier.
You can actually pay QR Code Pix now with Samsung by just opening the camera too.
Apple refuses to implement Pix on Apple Pay, and regulatory agencies are trying to change that...
Pix integration with Google Pay it's just amazing.
Imagine the situation in the US as if every app or website magically used Google Pay.
Well, that's Brazil now if you use Android. Because as soon as you copy a Pix code, it will prompt Google Pay :) And every service in Brazil have Pix... Even international ones as Stripe supports...
What's with people complaining that they can't terminate transfers out of their accounts?
How much does this matter in the context of paying in BRL, to a BRL merchant, in Brazil?
More fancy payment flow are also available, such as vendors generating one-time QR code that already include the payment amount, and the user apps generating one-time QR code that the vendor scan, thus switching some of user steps to the vendor.
In most cities I've lived and visited, using QR is far more convenient than paper. Good luck using contactless when most phones don't support it, and even when Visa & MasterCard pushed their contactless standard, I never encounter a single vendor with a working machine (this range from small shops to large hypermarket). Maybe because they have bigger MDR than QR, but from customers PoV contactless simply don't work, until QRIS also adopt NFC and suddenly it's workable (but not widespread yet since most phones still don't)
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.
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
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.
The problem with TED it's just how hard it was to send money. You had to insert, if I recall right:
- Person full name - Social security number - Select the Bank Name - The type of account (savings or checking account) - Agency and account number
This basically means that TED was used as a serious payment thing, like money you receive from your company, etc.
A lot of companies still use TED.
In fact, the BRL amount settled via TED is still higher than Pix, although the gap seems to be closing
And remember that credit card fees are greater in Brazil
Nearing 17:00 in a bank: Does anyone here need to do a TED or a DOC? Come to attendant now before the system shuts down for the day!
The difficulties were the same as everywhere. I worked in Bank in Brazil and in Germany. A lot of the difficulties we still face in Germany today.