Comment by augusto-moura

> 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.

Several backs had a good amount of TED limit. Although everything changed when Nubank launched, giving unlimited TEDs to everyone. Most banks followed at the time, so basically around 2015~ several big banks had unlimited TEDs.

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.

TED is still very much alive.

In fact, the BRL amount settled via TED is still higher than Pix, although the gap seems to be closing