Comment by marcandre

7 months ago

The devil in the details. Pix allows you to give your account nb, but also email or phone to locate. Vendors can produce a QR code which embeds the destinator as well as the amount to be paid. Pix feels quicker than IBAN to IBAN. Very importantly, Pix is available even without a bank account. Opening a bank account is quite challenging and expensive for non-residents, among others.

> Pix is available even without a bank account

this may be a big angle, esp. for lots of poor people (which is a thing in brazil), as it gets them secure transfers.

getting cash remits from the gov was/is a huge challenge in india, for example. lots of people qualify but don't have a bank account or card or other basics.

Netherlands has implemented Tikkie on top of iDEAL, which is essentially the same outcome. You link your bank account, send a payment request URL or put up a QR if you're a business. That's good UX, and it's getting better adoption.

  • That's definitely closer to Pix, but the advantage of Pix is because since the Brazillian Central Bank forced adoption for almost every player (not just banks, but even things like PagSeguro that is the Brazil equivalent of PayPal), so you can just assume that everyone has a Pix account already.

    Last time I went to Brazil I remember that at least twice I asked if the person seeling me something would accept Pix in place of cash since I generally don't carry any cash, and they happily accepted even if they didn't advertise this.

  • And iDeal is being expanded across Europe; the technology is now owned by the European Payments Industry and rebranded as Wero, which will replace iDeal in the Netherlands, Giropay in Germany, Paylib in France, and Payconiq in Belgium and Luxembourg.

    This fragmentation of digital payment methods has had a... less than optimal effect on European payment traffic, with a lot of e-commerce going through American payment providers like credit cards (Visa, Mastercard mainly) and Paypal. A lot of internationally operating online outlets have added support for iDeal over time though, so hopefully Wero will be deployed very fast.

  • Portugal the same. I heard there's an initiative to unify all national Tikkies/Mbways/Pixes and make them inter-compatible.