Never understood why it’s tied to a phone number. I don’t like to leak mine just for silly payments.
Pix resolved this by allowing email, phone number, tax ID or random generated key as an identifier.
Readit Newsmzitelli commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas
mzitelli commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas
Europe (41 countries) has instant SEPA.
SEPA is a banking infrastructure layer and it is not consumer focused. Also, only ~60% of European banks adopted it. While Pix was mandatory for all banks to adopt and 80% of Brazilian population already used it.
mzitelli commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas
mzitelli commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas
I got in this thread with the expectation of seeing a comment like yours, so thank you for that.
I think what worries the U.S. more is the likelihood of Pix spreading around the world. It’s such a great public program that I believe many countries will eventually adopt it, or adopt some version of it. In fact, AFAIK some places already have it, like Thailand and Malaysia.
Consumers like it because it is widely available and free, companies like it doubly so, and even governments like it because it helps to combat tax evasion and fraud.
Right now, the only thing that makes credit cards a better proposition is being able to pay without having enough money in the bank, and maybe enjoying greater protection from fraudulent merchants. But I believe even that will change in the future, to the benefit of Pix-like systems.
> Right now, the only thing that makes credit cards a better proposition is being able to pay without having enough money in the bank
It will not take long. Banks are already offering products with credit on top of the Pix. Furthermore, contactless Pix is now available in Android phones. If we look from the financial and usability aspects, Pix will continue eating the credit card market share.
I didn't know Thailand and Malaysia had similar systems, though. I hope the example spreads! Creating a competitive infrastructure and product is an interesting way to deal with monopolies.
mzitelli commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas
Brazil central bank introduced Pix a few years ago. It took over the country as the public basic infrastructure for money transfer. Totally free and instantaneous transactions between people and companies, available to all banks.
Then, just last week, the US presidency launched an investigation considering Pix an unfair trade practice against the US.
Actions like that may show the current direction of the US government is aligned on preserving status quo. But still, I wonder how impactful a public digital infrastructure for the dollar would be.
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mzitelli commented on Interview with Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism wired.com/story/yanis-var... · Posted by u/helloplanets
mzitelli commented on Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone clicks.tech/... · Posted by u/guyinblackshirt
Nice horizontal scroll.
mzitelli commented on Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is barred from office until 2030 washingtonpost.com/politi... · Posted by u/matheusmoreira
> Brazil is area is 32x bigger than NZ, 42x bigger population.
How is that relevant? Australia is 29x the area of New Zealand and 5x the population; and like New Zealand, it uses paper-based instead of electronic voting. I see no reason why a paper-based process can’t be scaled to work for a country of any size, even one bigger than Brazil.
> We have election results 5h after election ends
A slower but more trustworthy process is superior to a faster but less trustworthy one. Nobody needs results ASAP
> and there is no evidence whatsoever of fraud.
Elections should be held to a higher standard than merely “no positive evidence of fraud”. We should demand everything reasonable has been done to make fraud as hard as possible. I think elections in Australia meet that standard (and probably several other countries too, such as New Zealand and Germany). I think Brazil, and the US, among others, fail it. Their election systems fail to take every reasonable measure to prevent fraud, and hence fraud is inherently more likely - and the absence of any specific evidence does nothing to alter that conclusion. Even in the absence of any specific evidence, claims of fraud are more likely to be true in a system which makes fraud easier
> How is that relevant?
Due to its size and historical reasons, we have regional power that many times could try to benefit from physical voting receipts. It was common for local leadership to offer favors in exchange for votes.
> Nobody needs results ASAP
You don't know Brazil. The system's speed reduces the change of undemocratic action by those in power. Since 1889 Brazil has faced ten coup trials by the army (eleven if we consider what happened on 8th Jan of this year), and six were successful. Our current system's new republic is the most prolonged period of political stability (and the most successful from the socioeconomic perspective) in the country's history, largely due to our election system. Australia, New Zealand, and other countries have different histories and, therefore, different needs.
> Even in the absence of any specific evidence, claims of fraud are more likely to be true in a system which makes fraud easier
Everything is auditable. Both civil and state institutions audit the system. It could be better. Making all open-source would be a massive step in transparency. But there are multiple mechanisms:
- random sampling checking comparing digital and printed results (each machine prints a summary of the votes)
- voters receive a number to double-check if their vote was counted (however, they can't see who they voted for to guarantee vote secrecy).
- parallel voting: in randomly selected locations, the vote is cast to a shadow voting machine and computed in parallel to identify discrepancies.
- public software and hardware inspection: any institution, civil or not, can inspect the entire system. The army (yes, the one that is proud of the multiple coups) was acting to reduce the system's credibility and did an inspection and could not find anything substantial.
We can't compare different countries without a historical and social lens. NZ electoral system in Brazil would be a disaster.